I have a 97 F-Super Duty with the E4OD. I was driving it around town and came home. Went to back up and it would barely go. Kinda like you were slipping the clutch of a manual. Anyway, if you held it at about 1500 RPMS, it slowly engaged and then started backing up gradually faster. If you stop, it would take awhile to get moving in reverse again.

When I put it in any forward gear, it works just fine. It'll burn out on the gravel driveway in drive.

No overdrive light is blinking.

Anyway, does anyone have any experience with this? Could it be anything besides pointing toward a tranny rebuild?

Thanks in advance,
Ryan

 

Had forward, zero reverse. Was nosed into a gravel parking lot, needed reverse to back up a slight grade & exit. Tried a few times, turned off, let sit, tried some more, let sit, got good reverse maybe the third time I started it up, on first try for reverse. No problems since.

My thought at the time was gunk in fluid. The day before, I had gone up a slow dirt forest service road, and come coasting down in D2 or D1. Figured something loosened up and blocked a fluid passage for reverse. Once it got reverse, no problems, but I did do transmission fluid & filter. Fluid coming out looked good and clean with no obvious issues.

 

That's funny....

I did the exact same thing. I was getting the truck warmed up because it had a bad engine oil leak, so I drove a couple miles up the road and headed up a hill on a gravel forest road to get everything warmed up. Went up just slow in D1. When I came down, I left it in D1. Just coasted down cause it was steep enough.

Anyway, now it won't back up very well. You really have to give it some throttle to move but it eventually backs up. Forward is not a problem.

Somone on another forum mentioned the MLPS. Could this be a problem?

 

The MLPS cannot cause this problem. It is not anything electronic, the reverse engagement is made without electronics.

 

Also have the e4od
I have the same problem but my forward gears take a second to engage but no

 

Pull the trans out and either replace or rebuild it. It's toast.

 

I have a 97 f250 with the e40d, my issues started with it not wanting to shift out of first gear. I swapped the solenoid pack, valve body gaskets and transmission range sensor with no luck. Then I all of a sudden lost reverse.
no codes ever popped up and every time I’d disconnect the batteries, everything went back to working fine until the trans would get up to temp. I read every forum I could find and never had any luck, I tested every wire one by one with no luck. I was mad cause this was my baby and fer the first time ever it had me stumped and then I got lucky, yes sir luck was on my side I just knew I had finally found that aggravating issue, so I fixed it and jumped in , fired that bad *** up and put it to the floor. Lord and behold it fixed the issues and I haven’t had them again going on a month now.
the issue was the pigtail that’s plugged into the solinoid pack!!!! It had a hairline crack between numbers 3 and 4. Yes I couldn’t believe it and by the grace of god I found it!!! 3 is the solenoid one shift control and 4 is the torque converter clutch solinoid. If my fix helps anyone that has had the same aggravating issues I have had with months of forum searching then god bless cause it’s amazing what caused these issues