I'm well aware the transmission is done, I'm just curious if anyone has any ideas as to what happened. A little over a week ago I drove my truck to my friends house before we went out camping. We took his truck since mine was almost out of gas. Came back the next day, hopped in my truck, backed up a few feet and no forward gears at all. Checked the transmission fluid, it was full even though I had to put a litre in it every couple days. Crawled under and asked my friend to shift it so I could make sure it was going into position as it should and it was. Said screw it, left the truck over night and got a trailer the next day so I could get the truck home. The truck had really hard shifts from 1-2 if you were on the throttle( getting up to highway speeds from a stop) for as long as I could remember, then about two weeks before it went out it started to smoothly shift between 1st and 2nd, almost like it was slipping. It leaks fluid out the front of the transmission. From what I have read, the leaking at the front is a sign of a bad torque converter or seal, but the hard shifting then smooth shifting is something to do with the forward clutches or planetary but I'm not sure which it was exactly. Also, anyone have any ideas why there's what looks like transmission fluid on top, pretty much centre of the transmission? Almost looks like it sprayed the bottom of the cab from there..

 

A liter of fluid every couple of days? That is a crazy amount of fluid to be adding so often. I would think there would be a steady stream of fluid coming out when running. Are you shire it isn't overfilled and it blew it out through the dipstick seal? ( grasping at straws since I no longer have my E4OD equipped Bronco to go look at for a vent or dipstick reference) Have you checked for codes and/ or tested it electrically to see if it 'knows' what gear it is in?

 

It seemed to mostly leak over night since my driveway is a slight incline and I backed in. From what I understand 1st and second manual rely on nothing electronic to shift into gear so nothing electrical would cause them to not work but I could be wrong. Haven't checked anything yet but the overdrive light would flash every now and then on the highway and on rare ocasions the speedometer would stop working so I figured that was a the VSS, but even now the overdrive light doesn't flash

 

Forgot to mention it got worse after this night with a couple friends. It went from a litre every 2-3 days to " oh there's a small puddle after 45 minutes ". Got very very stuck that night and all 3 of us got very muddy trying to get the truck out

 

I been building these E4OD' since they came out . Of the truck didn't leak while driving but leaked over nite it is more than likely the front pump o ring and gasket . The o ring gets hard and cracks . If the bushing was worn on the hub it would pump out when running .
Further more a litre of aft every few days is crazy nuts . More than likely you burnt up the forward clutches or the fwd shaft where it goes through the center support stripped out or broke . If you get it rebuilt make sure they do the main update and convert from bushing to bearing in the center support for the fed drum . If you could afford it your best option would be to get a ford reman . 1996 is the best year for that trans both gas and diesel .
There are many other updates including the converter drain back ball in the line fitting and also the accumulators . Trans technologies sells the best updated reprogramming package for the 2 valve bodies . Also sonnex makes a great solonoid pack with an adjustable EPC