This last weekend I overheated and I believe runined the tranny on my EX. Prior to scheduling to get it fixed I figured I would check with you the experts to see if there are some upgrades, etc that I should consider since I have to repalce it anyway.

Thanks in advance for your insight

 

Brians Truck Shop will sell you a trans. $4100 plus shipping. That is the route to go if you intend to keep the truck since he warranties it for pretty much anything and has fixed transmissions even AFTER the warranty period for free. As he has said, it is the last trans you are paying for in the truck even if you use it for something as abusive as snow plowing.

OTOH, if you are going to dump it soon, get something cheap like a Ford reman or Aamco.

 

Thanks for the heads up on BTS.
I Just heard from the shop and it was the transfer case that was ruined. The condidtion of the tranny is unknown but may be okay, and may just need serviced.

 

I don't follow. The transfer case is ruined? How did you do that? If the fluid is burnt, there is nothing good that comes out of the trans and you are living on borrowed time even if you flush it and it works.

 

My bad for not waiting until I had all the facts before I did the original posting.
As for what I did. I was towing a large dump trailer (7000 lbs) and needed to turn it around. I thought it easiest to drive down to the bottom of a hill at my place, turn around and drive back up. I made a number of attempts to make it back up and couldn't make it. It's a dirt hill and I was in 4 low. I finally hooked up a tractor and pulled it while my wife drove the EX. Next thing I knew I had a fire under the engine from tranny fluid spraying on the hot exhaust. No damage from the fire.
The word from the tranny shop is the transfer case was totally runined, and they had to replace the torque converter, pump and some seals in the tranny.

 

I'm still not sure how the transfer case would get damaged before the tranny would. AFAIK, the only failure on a Transfer is jumping/breaking the chain or gears. Where was the fluid spraying from, and why? Has this shop worked on your driveline in the past? I'm smelling somthing rotten, and it's not burned ATF.

 

I must be missing something here. Or is it possible this guy is "missing something" upstairs ? There are THOUSANDS of us out there pulling MUCH heavier loads than this guy, racking up HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of miles on Ford truck transmissions.

In my own case, the combined weight of our motor yacht (when gassed up and full of provisions) and its three axle heavy-duty trailer is 12,000 lbs "plus". Of course I use 4wd low when pulling up steep slimy boat-ramps.

The big problem I had, when trying to find a mint mint mint low mileage Excursion, is that there were so few to be found. Most are being USED HARD, and thus most I could find to buy had well over 100,000 mi. on them, with NO evidence of trans. problems.

Someone explain this guy and his problem to me..?

 

to be fair one of the signs of a imminent torque converter failure is fluid overflow (way too hot) and jockying ? a rig around fwd & rev etc will do it fast. that being said Yeah I'm still puzzled about the transfer case too.

 

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I disagree - too many of us manuver VERY heavy loads back and forth with this excellant transmission, and have not had this happen ( absent some particularly bazzare situation such as I incurred when I first got mine).

As I noted approx. a year ago, my EX was one of the last ones built; apparently on a MONDAY MORNING ! There was no clamp on a high pressure oil line to the transmission cooler. Obviously, from the "mint/virgin" condition of the trailer receiver, mine had never pulled a real load until I got it. The line blew, the transmission immediately lost its oil and over-heated and destroyed itself. Since mine was within warranty, and a "Certified" used car purchase from a dealer, there were no problems in getting Ford to replace everything.

As a side note, the service manager, who himself was quite familiar with the technical aspects, said the trans. temp. guage (do the earlier Ex's have a factory TRANS temp guage ? ) is quite accurate, and give the over-capacity of the factory trans. oil cooler, should NEVER move off the center, no matter how much you "load" it.

We live in the high country of northern Arizona. We make frequent trips with our VERY heavy boat and trailer to Lake Mead, and also, with our equally heavy car trailer, to Los Angeles. Both trips involve pulling long grades from approx. sea level at the Colorado River, to just under 6,000 ft. Even in the worst extremes of load and heat in August, no problems.

So again, we need to know more about this failure, then this guy is letting on.

 

I was speaking from personal experiance, I've toasted two TQ converters, one on the first trip with a tow. the second took a little more time maybe two summers what h2O skier discribed is what happened to me (minus the fire) that is fluid spraying out . and no oem tranny gage on the earlier Ex's. replaced ford tq with a cascade triple billet and a trans go pak , and a 46,000# tranny cooler and a mag hytech tranny pan not one problem since. still need to put in a tranny gage thou. I will agree that the load he was pulling was not that heavy, but if the tq was failing well who knows. it does bear further investigation.