My 2001 f350 is about to get a second rebuilt tranny since I've owned it. The truck only has 95000 miles and it has only been 2 3/4 years and a little less than 20,000 miles since the last rebuild. BTW the last one was done by Ford. The warranty was unlimited miles and 2 years. Oh well.

It is not my daily driver, I use it for hunting, camping, upstate NY trips and I pull a 5th wheel trailer about 3-4 times a year but only about 4 miles round trip each time so I don't think I'm overworking the truck. I love the truck and don't really want to get rid of it, Its great to have around and its in mint condition for a 15 year old truck, but I also don't want to spend thousands to repair it so often especially when I hardly use it. It kills me because I love to brag about my trucks reliability but its getting harder to do.

Driving home from work the other night about a 20 mile trip everything seemed fine. I came off the highway stopped at a light and that was it, the truck would not go forward. Reverse was the only gear that worked.

Do you think I was just unlucky with the last rebuild? Or are these transmissions inherently weak? Any info on how to better protect the tranny would be greatly appreciated. I'm having the shop install an after market add on transmission cooler but not sure that I'm ever really heating it up too bad.
Thanks

 

The earlier '01 models had issues with a faulty one way clutch design, but if yours was a Ford rebuilt unit I would think that issue would have been dealt with. An "add on" transmission cooler to the factory set up is usually not recommended as it makes too much of a flow restriction. The "go to" fix is installing the 6.0 trans. cooler in place of the stock one.