Hello folks, I've got a 4x4 converted 96 E350 with the 7.3 and E4OD. I have had less than stellar transmission luck, two rebuilds in short time as I am driving around around Latin America. Granted it's 4WD and the Andes are steep and lots of mud and slightly oversized tires and bad roads and and and, but I baby it, use low range extensively, and am really sick of transmission, brake, and suspension problems. I can remedy my own brake and suspension issues, the transmission is much harder for me.

First rebuild after buying the van was everything including billet TC and larger pan by a first rate shop in San Diego. That lasted about 20,000 miles but I probably didn't baby it as much as I could have. Though I was far from stupid, I probably didn't use low range to reverse when off pavement or on hills as much as I should have. The second rebuild was only the discs, the pump and solenoid pack were cleaned and re-installed, no problems with valve body found. Good thing, too, as some of those parts would have been impossible to get where I was (Guayaquil, Ecuador). I'm now in Buenos Aires, Argentina, catching up on maintenance.

As part of outstanding maintenance, I finally replaced my passenger side wiring harness end as the old plug was in poor shape and occasionally caused problems that were invariably remedied by crawling under the van and wiggling it. I did it myself, cut one wire at a time, soldered the new ones in place, used marine grade weather sealing heatshrink, and am confident I didn't foul any wiring. As well, the lovely burnt aroma in the transmission fluid has been developing again over the past 5000-8000 miles. Yay.

So now after replacing the plug that goes into the solenoid pack as mentioned above, I have a blinking OD light and hardish shifts from 1-2 but not too hard from 2-3 or 3-OD. It feels like the TC isn't locking up but I'm not a real transmission person and am not positive in my diagnosis there. I have Autoenginuity with the Ford package but as a 96 I have to run the tests to get codes, and both the KOEO and KOER tests give me P1111 - System passed. IE, no problems.

Is there something else I need to do / can do with Autoenginuity to pull codes?

I know the first place to start with just about all problems is the passenger side wiring harness but I truly feel like I replaced it correctly. I was an electrical engineer in a former life, soldering is not rocket science for me, and I do think that this was not the cause of the OD light blinking, rather it's more coincidence. Or is it possible an aftermarket connector (bought mine on eBay) could be a cause of something wonky?

Any other suggestions for diagnosis that can be done without codes, or can the OD light blink but not set any codes anywhere?

Cheers,
Josh

 

As I remember (and it's been more than 20 years) we did have some problems with diesels of that era flashing the OD light and setting codes, but they didn't store in memory. As I recall that problem was fixed pretty quickly and not many vehicles should have that software, but you might have one of them.

I've never used Autoenginuity so I can't help you with that..

 

Thanks for the comment Mark. Not exactly what I wanted to hear but c'est la vie!

I think my next step is probably calling around and seeing if I can find a shop that can get parts and that has seen an e4od before. Fun fun.

 

Just thinking out loud here...

With long steep inclines (!), and low speeds, and thin air, wouldn't you want one heck of an auxiliary cooler for the trans?