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I don't know what's wrong that caused your noises, but I suspect there is SOMETHING wrong inside.
One point that you may or may not know about Ford dealerships. They are all franchises. Because of that Ford has limited control over what they do at the dealership. Ford can recommend to a dealer that they take care of you, or they can pay for parts and/or labor, but they cannot make a dealer do much of anything.
About a decade ago Ford started an experiment where they bought out all the franchised dealers in one market and made them company owned stores. Ford was trying to get rid of customer service like you described. They felt if the company owned the dealership they could control what happened in the customer service arena. Lawsuits from other dealers forced Ford to sell off all of the company owned stores before there was a chance to see if they worked any better than the current situation.
I'm glad you brought up that analogy, Curtis, because I'm actually a physician. This might in part explain me being Type-A. You're right, a surgeon won't do exploratory surgery unless there is an identifiable problem, and that's why the workup has to proceed beyond a road-test (which is what we also call it in the hospital, when you walk a patient up and down the hall to see if they're steady enough on their feet to go home).
We are lucky in the medical field that we have easy access in this day and age to detailed noninvasive testing ranging from labs to advanced imaging like CT, US, MRI, PET, etc. But in the old days, yes, indeed, surgeons would open you up if you complained of abdominal pain, just to see what was wrong. And until the auto repair field has equivalent noninvasive diagnostic testing (beyond compression gauges, OBD-II and borescopes), they need to swing wrenches and remove covers to visualize the problem. How hard is it pull a transmission pan on a new $5K transmission job?
What upsets me is that there was no diagnostic testing or investigation beyond a test drive. It was the equivalent of a someone who just had an elective knee replacement come back and complain of nightly fevers and excessive pain with catching and grinding in the joint (witnessed by the wife and physical therapist) that wasn't reproducible in the ER by "road test". No diagnostic testing was done, then the patient was sent home, only to discover later that he was suffering from hardware loosening from a MRSA infection. (I've seen this before, BTW).
Here's some inside knowledge for you laymen. If you're in the hospital for whatever reason, and you feel like you're getting substandard service from the doctors, nurses, or other ancillary staff, you can now complain to the Patient Care Advocate (all hospitals have them in one form or another), who will then set into motion process to appease you. That means nurse managers and administrative staff discussions with the physicians on your behalf, extra attention and TLC, and possibly extra unnecessary additional testing, extra medications, and lengthier hospital stays.
This is done in part to preserve and improve patient satisfaction scores for the hospital, which has an impact on hospital ratings, marketing, etc. This is very important to them. I believe Ford has an equivalent process to air your grievances, whereby Ford Corporate gets in touch with the dealership in question to address your problem, and hopefully kicks their service attempts into a higher gear.
But as a physician, you don't do all this testing like lab work, advanced imaging, and follow up post-surgical checkups for free, do you?
That's what I was getting at. When a patient has a problem and you're trying to diagnose or follow up on after a major procedure, that patient is still paying you and everyone else for all that testing and time.
But who is paying the dealership for this diagnosis of your transmission? You weren't volunteering to pay labor time to take everything stuff apart and diagnose it, you don't have insurance or coverage that will pay for it, and unless something happen to be obviously wrong - there was no guarantee of warranty pay from Ford. A dealership has to consider this because they are in business to make a profit, and I think many people here understand that they get a ton of customers on a daily basis who want or demand free work to be done. It makes it even harder when after checking it out they can't duplicate the issue you described.
Yes there are procedures where Ford can get involved in an escalated issue. But many times that dealer and technician working on it won't necessarily get paid from Ford unless there's an actual problem, which the dealer couldn't see anything obvious other than what you explained to them. And people aren't too willing to take a lot of time out of their day to do their job for free. I haven't seen many doctors do that with me either, and at the same time I don't expect them to.
I'm not doubting at all that you may have a transmission issue, and I sincerely hope that you get it resolved quickly and to your satisfaction. I simply commented on a few of your statements in your post where you described your interaction with the dealership. I don't work in a dealer, but I do work with dealers every day, and I have the advantage of simultaneously looking over both sides of the fence and seeing the customer perspective as well as the dealer perspective. Often times dealers do deliver bad customer service, and just as often customers are not fully aware of what a dealer is or is not capable of doing to help them, and what resources a dealer can lean on, and so their expectations are at times unreasonable.
Here's the good thing after reading the rest of this thread and your follow up posts..... the dealer has a record of you coming back for problems, and Ford knows there is a concern. Any issues that do crop up in the future that can be seen and duplicated by the dealer will most likely result in a swift replacement and getting you back on the road quickly and without much hassle from the dealer or from Ford.
Please don't take this as me trying to bash or anything. All I'm saying is work with your dealer, not against them and not trying to get Ford to swing a hammer for something they can't duplicate or find wrong. From what I can tell just by the information in this thread is that they are trying to help you.
Curtis, I don't want to go off on too much of a tangent, but you'd be amazed at the amount of high quality health care delivered for free . I do it all the time. Comes with the job.
Back to the truck. I took it out to start my "stress test" by hauling around my 6000lb car hauler (it's fully optioned and has tool cabinets full of tools and spares). I didn't even make it to the trailer storage site.
While rolling to a stop at a red light, the truck lugged and stalled. Like it couldn't drop into first gear or something. I luckily got it going again, then took out my phone to video the rest of the ride. Sure enough, within a quarter mile, it stalled again when coming to a stop. When I figure out how to post to YouTube, you'll see it for yourself.
It's continuing this lugging behavior in my driveway, but without actually stalling. When shifting into park, the RPMs jump up briefly to 1000 or so before coming right back down. Got video of that, too.
My motorcycle event is tomorrow, I have to scramble to find alternative transportation.
Im going to agree with the above post, that your torque may be locked, I am half tempted to say either a solinoid is gone or something in the valve system (I know the part im referring to is a large plate/box with lots of holes in it) may possibly be clogged up with something I think, don't want to put too much into this as I am not a trans tech and I don't have the ability to pull yours and look at it as I would want to do...and have done for my parents and saved there Nissan Altima from a similar situation...
one thing I would be doing is recording video of the noises/behaviors and showing the ideos to the techs and service people (keeping in mind they have procedures to follow) and let them see this info....this would be invalueable to the techs at least....
one thing I would be doing is recording video of the noises/behaviors and showing the ideos to the techs and service people (keeping in mind they have procedures to follow) and let them see this info....this would be invalueable to the techs at least....
Like I said, the dealer needs to duplicate the issue or at least see what's happening. Videos help for sure.
Like I said, the dealer needs to duplicate the issue or at least see what's happening. Videos help for sure.
thats why I stated that I would be making the videos, so that way when they say "we can't produce the issue" you have something tangible to show them so they at least can say ok there is an issue, we need to look into replicating driving conditions....
Your torque converter signal. Chipped or stock, the tune is expecting that stock whimpy-*** torque converter - but getting something with meat on it. I hear the TC gripping a little too tight.
I was told they don't alter the tune on the PCM, but the brochure says they do. Cody rode in Stinky (with HD4R100) while we were live tuning. He commented on how tough that torque converter is and that he would be buying a HD4R100. He eventually bought one.
Hah! Here it is, lugging then stalling when rolling to a stop.
The only way that can happen is if the torque converter is stuck in the locked on position. It isn't the torque, it's the torque converter. Torque is a rotational force produced by the engine.
It could be low fluid, something wrong with the internal filter, a bad pump, leaking internal seals, a stuck valve in the valve body, a bad torque converter clutch solenoid, or a bad torque converter.
Has the OD OFF light flashed? If not, maybe driving it for a while like this will get it to set a code and flash the OD light. Try driving it slow enough to make it lug, but don't slow enough to make it stall. That might be enough to set a code. Once there is a code they have evidence to find out what's wrong.
Thanks again everyone for your insight, especially you, Mark. I haven't yet seen the OD Off light flash. Currently, the truck is now worse in that it stalls just by engaging Drive. It's stuck in my driveway, currently undriveable, except in reverse. It will need another 10 mile tow to the dealership. And I'll need another loaner.
Hopefully, the problem will persist for them, or at least a code is stored in the computer. At the very least, I have my little video. If they can't replicate the problem again, I'll take them up on their offer of keeping the truck for a few days and having one of the techs live with it commuting to work. Then it might pop up again.
So the latest is that the dealership is ordering another transmission for me. I forgot to ask what the failure point was, but apparently it was bad enough. Hopefully back up and running by the end of this week.
Like I mentioned earlier, I had a motorcycle track day I was signed up to attend, and luckily my buddy was able to transport me with his F-150. Really nice truck, despite the short bed .
While my truck was laid up twice, the dealership set me up with loaners through Enterprise. The first time around, I had this maroon Chebby Silverado with the short bed. I wasn't particularly impressed with it. I may be a little biased against GM for various political/economic reasons.
Then the second time (currently), I got this Dodge Ram 1500 Big Horn edition. I like it better than the Chebby, but I'm still a Ford guy. It has a shortish but still longer bed than the Silverado. Also, while the Chebby had no hitch, this one does. So I can tow or carry a Moto-Tote if I had to. In this picture, I caught it in "God Light," but the truck isn't THAT good.
I still prefer my F350. I appreciate that Ford doesn't give their trucks names like "Silverado," "Ram," "Tundra," or "Titan." "Ranger" is okay. "Raptor" would be pushing it if it weren't such a good truck.
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