My wife has a 94 ford explorer and when your at a complete stop it's hard to get the manual stick into 1st and Reverse. If I rev the gas lightly then it will fall right into 1st or Reverse. All the other gears are fine. Does anyone have any input on this?

 

Im thinking of worn clutch or mis adjustment or worn 1st, rev, synchro in tranny.





Mike: 1995 Explorer XLT,4.0 litre, 3.73 non-slip.

 

My 93 gave me similar problems, several times. The first time, the dealer rebuilt the transmission under warranty. (Was only supposed to change the syncros but when they forgot to put oil in the tranny and let me drive it home, the replaced the entire transimission.) This seemed to do the trick at about 50K miles. Then the problem came back and was noticeably worse when it was hot, escpecially the summer in Phoenix. After the dealer refused to acknowledge the problem and the warranty ran out, I replaced the cluthc master cylinder assembly - purchased from Ford for about $115. This made the tranny shift great and removed the problems found at a traffic light, trying ot get it in gear. Then for some reason the master gave out after about 6 months. (May have been the fact I was 4 wheeling and about 30 miles from a highway.) Just prior to giving out, I noticed it was getting hard to get in gear again. Being the weekend, I went to Napa auto and got the exact same unit as Ford was selling, same casting number, for about $60 and it has a lifetime garuntee. Ford refunded my money. I was again able to shift but it was still a little tough getting into gear. Well since it had been about 70K miles since Ford replaced the tranny and I had done nothing to it, I changed the oil and replaced the 3 rubber plugs at the top to stop the famous leak. Then all shifting issues went away...until summer hit. When it got hot again, it didn't like stop lights. I think there is an inherent design flaw in the clutch master. Oh, I primed the master per Ford's TSB procedure, upside down in the vice, and I bleed the hell out of the line on the car so there's no air in there.

Good Luck!