Transmission Failure
 

21,XXX miles

Gears will not engage. In PARK, the vehicle still rolls. When shifter is in R, D, or S, metal on metal noise like gears clashing.

New car warranty covered towing. Transmission should still be under warranty. Now there's nothing to do except wait.

Turned out to be a broken axle.

Normally, axles just don't break. So was there anything out of the ordinary that caused it to break?

that a fricken bummer.. which side and any indication how or when it broke?? i have a '12 that the transmission was replaced by ford under warranty at 106K miles. It appears the transmission is **** and they got a LOT of complaints and decided to replace them under warranty. it was a "factory" rebuild according to the shop that installed it. We use one in our chimney cleaning and log log service company. great gas mileage for sure.. chimneykeepers.com

On my car, it was the passenger side. No indication as to how it broke. Luckily, my local dealership replaced the axle under warranty, no questions asked.

My own suspicion is operator error. That's right. I may have done it myself. Could have been one of the many hundreds of potholes and open trenches in The City. Believe it or not, utility workers have been known to cut 6" - 8" wide trenches, going 100' across a 6 lane street, and leave it open as cars drive through the area. My personal suspicion is that I may have driven into 1 or more potholes, which may have caused it to break, or fracture, then break over time with enough wear.

The Ford 6 speed transmissions, in this case a 6F35, have experienced a lot of issues. A lot of people will say that you should exchange the transmission fluid every 25,000 or 30,000 miles, in order to keep the fluid fresh. It is known that 6 speed transmissions darken the LV transmission fluid within that amount of time. There are Ford engineers who claim that just because the fluid changes color and odor, it is no reason to change the fluid, and that the fluid is still within it's useful life. Some engineers claim that modern Ford spec fluids are good for 150,000 miles. My personal experience is that regular fluid exchange is beneficial.

The 1st generation of Transit Connect sold in U.S.A. had a lot is issues with brakes, bearings, axles, and transmission. The entire front end of the car was just not strong enough for what people wanted to do with the car. People tended to overload the car beyond it's engineered capacity. Makes sense. I see a van, I load it up. I'm not weighing what goes in. I'm just going to fill the van with everything that fits. Fill the interior, then load ladders and pipe on the roof.

Some of us drive vans like a truck. We forget that we are really driving a Ford Focus under the hood, with a van body.