Greetings!

We have a 1996 Ford Explorer XLT 4WD - 4.0L 6-cylinder engine. The transmission started acting up yesterday when my wife was driving it home from about an hour away. She said it was having problems shifting, would only shift at high RPM's, and she couldn't get it above 3rd gear or 40mph. I took it out for a drive today and had the same problems. To get it to shift at all I have to get it up to 3300-3500 RPM's, then back off the gas for a second or two, and then it will shift to the next gear up. When it finally shifts it is extremely rough and gives the vehicle a severe lurch, very similar to what you would feel if you got rear-ended, minus the loud crunching noise of course. This only works for going from 1st gear to 2nd gear, and then from 2nd gear to 3rd gear. I can't get it into 4th gear at all. While in 3rd gear I've tried revving the RPM's up to 4000, then backing off the gas, but it won't shift. It also downshifts extremely hard (i.e. the severe lurching) when coming to a stop after having been in 3rd gear.

I checked the fluid and that looks fine as far as I can tell. (Unless it's bad for the fluid to be bubbly? Neither my owner's manual or repair manual say anything about it having bubbles in it...so I'm not sure if that's okay or not...)

Anybody have similar problems with their Explorer in the past? I'm assuming the worst - that the tranny is going bad and needs to be replaced or rebuilt. Is there anything else that could be causing problems like what I described? Nobody's open on the weekend where I live, so I have to wait until Monday to call any repair shops. If anybody has any advice or comments I'd appreciate hearing them.

Thanks!

 

does the OD light work in the dash? if its burnt out you could have codes and running on fail safe mode and just not seeing it , the other thing i would suspect would be the speed sensor.
just some ideas.

 

A bad or out-of-adjustment transmission range sensor can also cause both of these symptoms. (No O/D because the computer doesn't believe the lever position, and hard shifts because the computer enters "performance mode" when it doesn't like the sensor input).

This ~$40 part mounts on the side of the transmission and is not too hard to change. If this is the problem there should be DTC codes set in the computer.

A few bubbles in the fluid is OK. Large amounts of foam is not.

A competent and honest trans shop should be able to pull the codes and show them to you. Similarly, an honest shop should be able to pull the transmission pan while you watch. Look in the pan, if you see "1/2 pound of ground round" (lots of broken bits of metal) in there, the trans has internal damage. A few small slivers of metal and remnants of clutch fiber is OK.

 

Well, I feel a little like an idiot now. I figured out what the problem was.

I'll spare you all the details and background explanation material, but essentially all that was wrong was that it was stuck in 4WD LOW mode. The fuse had blown on that circuit, and kept blowing when we tried to replace it, so we couldn't see the 4WD indicator lights. I finally got a fuse to stay in today with blowing and that's when I discovered that it was in 4WD LOW mode, even though the switch said it was in 2WD mode. I put it in Neutral, got it out of 4WD LOW, and the problems went away. Apparently the very hard shifting is normal behavior when in 4WD LOW. The owner's manual says: "Transmission upshifting in 4WD with transfer cases in 4WD LOW may be quite firm due to large total gear reduction. This condition is normal." We had never had it in 4WD LOW mode before, so I had no clue that this was normal behavior in 4WD LOW.

I'm happy though! I'll take feeling like an idiot any day over forking out $1000-$2000+ for a rebuilt/replaced transmission. Besides, I don't feel like a total idiot! I had been told that the vehicle had been put back in 2WD (and the switch verified that) and I believed that - I never considered the possibility that something had gone wrong with the switch out of 4WD LOW.