Had this over in the Ranger section. Had a suggestion that I should post it over here. I have a 1996 Ford Ranger Super cab auto with a 3.0v6 with 118,000 miles. Every once in awhile it will act up. I will be driving down the road and it will just stop shifting and be stuck in what ever gear it happens to be in. Other times i will start it up and it will not go into gear, it will just sit there. It will do this hot, cold, loaded, or unloaded no specific conditions that I can identify being assoiciated with it's acting up. In every case however all I have to do is turn off the truck and restart it no cooling down time required and will be fine for a few months before it happens again. I have done now mods to the truck and have always kept the transmission serviced every 15,000 mile no matter what the fluid looked like. I have always used the recommended fluid. It's been doing this for about the last 60,000 miles. To me it's just been a nuisance, but it drives my wife nuts and has got me running out to rescue her the first couple of times it did it with her. Now as far as the history on the truck. When I first got it I had to take it back to Ford three times with computer related problems. The first two times the Ford tech said my software was corrupt (sounds like BS) and the third time they replaced the computer, checked the grounds and all that. The computer problems never really had any affect on the tranny's operation. The only thing close was the one time that the wipers only would work if the truck was in park. Are the transmissions on these things controled by a computer and if so could that be my problem? Would that account for it working fine after I restart the truck sort of like rebooting a computer when it freezes up? Did Bill Gates write the software for my truck? I used to think Knight Rider was cool and that having a computerized car would be great, now I would just like to take a fu***** sledgehammer and smash KIT to pieces.

 

Ponyracer over in the Ranger section just came through for me and brought up it may be the valve body gasket. Don't know if it's that yet or even sure that would cause cause such an intermittent shifting problem. If anybody in this forum has any better ideas please let me know.