02 mounty 5r55w problems

Ok, long story short been doing tons after tons of great reading on here about how to fix alot of my problems since I bought this used about 4 months ago and have to give a big thanks to everyone with solutions to alot of problems. Now I had the normal issue of the o/d light blinking with the ses light on had it scanned checked out to be pressure solenoid B. Ordered reman. solenoid replaced it last night and fixed some of the problem...

Problem started and continues to be a long delay before shifting from 1st to 2nd. After you feather the gas and it shifts into 2nd it all goes great until overdrive then refuses to go into o/d. After replacing the solenoid block it shifts a whole lot smoother but still has the long delay before shifting to 2nd. All other gears do fine and actually thought it went into overdrive a time or 2 in my test drive, but every other time still get the flashing o/d light but so far after 20 miles no ses light. Question is after replacing the solenoid block and still having the delay between 1-2 and essentially still no overdrive what do I check next?

UPDATE: Went for a longer drive, after about 15 miles got the dreaded o/d light flashing and ses light came back on. No time to get it checked again right away but after turning it off and back on the flashing went away and stayed away the whole time back. Still dont believe it went into overdrive running about 2300 rpm at 55 mph. Also still has a long harsh shift into 2nd but other than that shifts smooth and just fine. Any help or suggestions appreciated.

You have either broken overdrive band or overdrive servo piston. P0775 for solenoid B failure is just a diagnostic code. You will have p0732 and p0735 in the pcm also but only shows up with ford scanners. Everybody replaces the solenoid pack which wont fix any problem except harsh engagements into drive and reverse. I have been a trans guy for the last 16 years and seen lots and lots of these. The 5R series of transmissios are junk!

I agree after all my reading they are without a doubt a problem child. So pretty much my next step is taking it to a transmission shop and paying out the nose to have the servo piston deal changed? I changed the solenoid pack myself (mechanically inclined) but not sure what all is involved or how hard this is to do.

chanman said:

I agree after all my reading they are without a doubt a problem child. So pretty much my next step is taking it to a transmission shop and paying out the nose to have the servo piston deal changed? I changed the solenoid pack myself (mechanically inclined) but not sure what all is involved or how hard this is to do.

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First, knowing exactly which gear(s) are affected is important. You "think" it is not going in to OD, but are not sure. Take vehicle out on a road where you can avoid interference from other vehicles, do a "minimum throttle upshift" check. Watch the tachometer, the shifts will be obvious. The first drop in tach reading is the shift into 2nd. gear (1-2). If 2-3 does not happen reasonably soon, advance throttle slightly until it does, after 3-4, the Torque Converter Clutch will normally occur, with about a 300-400 rpm drop which looks like a shift, but actually is not. TCC engage produces almost no "felt" jerk like a gear change does. Keeping throttle steady, at perhaps 40-45 mph, the shift into OD should be fellt and seen on the tach. This is 5th gear, and it produces the least felt "shift jerk", may be undiscernible.

Assuming the flashing "OD OFF" light WAS caused by faulty solenoid, and that has been remedied, you should be able to tell whether 5th gear (OD) is being achieved. The rpm level you mentioned, 2300-2400 (?) at 55mph is consistent with being in 5th. gear with TCC engaged. Under that condition, VERY SLIGHT throttle increase, not enough to DIS-engage the TCC, should slowly increase vehicle speed, "seeable" on the tach. If the engine increases speed and continues to do so, that is, beyond the 300 or so rpm increase due to a TCC dis-engage, the 5th. gear system is probably slipping, for reasons stated above. I am not a transmission-man, and cannot advise whether the servo is fixable without trans. removal, I THINK it is, but do not have my Ford Shop Manual available here in "snow-bird heaven"; that book should be at the top of your "must get" list, if you even THINK you might proceed further yourself. Having the Manual also allows one to sift through the miasma of bullshit received from some transmission expert.

Regarding the flashing "O/D OFF": PCM constantly knows the speed of the transmission INPUT SHAFT and OUTPUT SHAFT, and therefore knows what the ratio of those 2 speeds SHOULD be in each gear. If speed ratio is not within acceptable limits, it alerts the driver to the fact by flashing that little light. It further evaluates it's reading, and generates a "trouble code" based on the MOST LIKELY cause(s) for it's determination. It ain't always SPOT-ON, obviously......

Yes, the 5R55- may be a poor transmission. We who love our Explorers have to live with that, if it's so; I have heard of many 5R55's which have successfully weathered 200K mi. Driving habits/luck are no doubt in play. I can expect "expert flack" in response to my posturing, no doubt. I welcome it. When I'm wrong, I accept it, and try to learn from it. Nearing the end of my stay in this world, I know that EGO gets a man little satisfaction.....imp

The overdrive staying engaged is what Im not so sure about. If I do give it very little throttle it stays around 2300 but as soon as I come to a little hill or give it more gas it jumps up to 2600. Then if you slowly give it gas before it does that on a flat road it will be around 3500 rpm before you get to 75 mph. Just didnt seem to me that it should be that high at only 70-75 mph although as mentioned Ive done alot of reading but only bought this 4 months ago so not completely sure of how everything should be. Only other thing that gets me is the long delay and hard shift to 2nd only under decent acceleration. If you baby it, it will shift just fine but a little throttle and it will run up to 4000 rpm before it jams itself into second. When the o/d flashing light is off sometimes that hard shift will cause it to come on right away other times it takes a few miles. Im leaning towards just taking it in to get fixed by pro just read alot about people fixing small problems by themselves and wondered if I could be one of them.

Not saying it will fix all your problems, but something to consider would be making sure you've got the latest transmisision software, see this link on transmissions section of this forum:

http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=228805

Hope this helps.

chanman said:

The overdrive staying engaged is what Im not so sure about. If I do give it very little throttle it stays around 2300 but as soon as I come to a little hill or give it more gas it jumps up to 2600. Then if you slowly give it gas before it does that on a flat road it will be around 3500 rpm before you get to 75 mph. Just didnt seem to me that it should be that high at only 70-75 mph although as mentioned Ive done alot of reading but only bought this 4 months ago so not completely sure of how everything should be. Only other thing that gets me is the long delay and hard shift to 2nd only under decent acceleration. If you baby it, it will shift just fine but a little throttle and it will run up to 4000 rpm before it jams itself into second. When the o/d flashing light is off sometimes that hard shift will cause it to come on right away other times it takes a few miles. Im leaning towards just taking it in to get fixed by pro just read alot about people fixing small problems by themselves and wondered if I could be one of them.

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Agree that you have problems beyond simple failure fix. What seems to still be unknown generally regarding this type of transmission is how unpredictable are symptoms given failure of one link in the powertrain. Sorry I cannot be of further help........imp

No problem, like I said I appreciate everyone's input and suggestions. Like you said so many simple things can go wrong Im just not sure what to throw money at next. Does anyone have pics or a write up on the procedure of checking and fixing the servo bores? Im willing to look at that or tear into it if it can be done without pulling the tranny. At that point I might as well find a shop thats willing to do it but once again who do you find that knows the problem and how to fix it without making up a bunch of other repairs and overcharging for that?

Possible Fix?

Hello, just joined (long time reader though) and I don't know if it is too late to reply to this thread or not but I have the same lazy shift from 1st to 2nd.
In researching I found this:

http://www.fordservoboretransmissionfixsolution.com/index.html

That claims to fix these problems without major rebuild or dropping the tranny.
I' almost willing to try this at $220 as opposed to a $3000 rebuild.

brentburton123 said:

Hello, just joined (long time reader though) and I don't know if it is too late to reply to this thread or not but I have the same lazy shift from 1st to 2nd.
In researching I found this:

http://www.fordservoboretransmissionfixsolution.com/index.html

That claims to fix these problems without major rebuild or dropping the tranny.
I' almost willing to try this at $220 as opposed to a $3000 rebuild.

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That looks pretty awesome! I might just give that a try when I get some time.

5r55w fix?

I just bit the bullit and ordered this kit yesterday. I will hopefully be installing in a couple of weeks.
I'll chime back in after the install to let ya know if it took care of the shift prob.

brentburton123 said:

I just bit the bullit and ordered this kit yesterday. I will hopefully be installing in a couple of weeks.
I'll chime back in after the install to let ya know if it took care of the shift prob.

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Awesome, keep us posted! I wish the directions page had the pictures working, I would love to see how they are getting to it.

Pictures

If you go here:

http://www.fordservoboretransmissionfixsolution.com/pictures.html

Scroll the pictures over to the right and you can see how much room you have to work on the side of the tranny after the CAT is removed.
It also shows what the removal of the solinoid looks like and placement of the "Crow bar and block of wood" that he used to push on the solinoid when he removed the snap ring.
All in all it doesn't look to bad of a job. Looks easier than when I rebuilt the limited slip diff in my rig.

brentburton123 said:

If you go here:

http://www.fordservoboretransmissionfixsolution.com/pictures.html

Scroll the pictures over to the right and you can see how much room you have to work on the side of the tranny after the CAT is removed.
It also shows what the removal of the solinoid looks like and placement of the "Crow bar and block of wood" that he used to push on the solinoid when he removed the snap ring.
All in all it doesn't look to bad of a job. Looks easier than when I rebuilt the limited slip diff in my rig.

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Thanks! It must be some plug-in that is blocked here at work. I plugged it into my phone and can see the pictures now. BTW, that is a really long-winded URL!

I am not here to say that this doesnt work or, but I tried the servo's and it worked only for a short time before i had to bore them. I paid a local trans guy to bore and sleeve them for just a little bit more than these servo's cost. I have a set if anyone wants them. The o-rings tore at some point and the ones at the tip were in bad shape.

To each his own, but I would tear it down and rebuild it. If you are any bit technical this really is not a hard job to do yourself with help from someone to do the machine work.

skid809 said:

I am not here to say that this doesnt work or, but I tried the servo's and it worked only for a short time before i had to bore them. I paid a local trans guy to bore and sleeve them for just a little bit more than these servo's cost. I have a set if anyone wants them. The o-rings tore at some point and the ones at the tip were in bad shape.

To each his own, but I would tear it down and rebuild it. If you are any bit technical this really is not a hard job to do yourself with help from someone to do the machine work.

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I would question why the o-rings tore...there should be nothing sharp for them to get damaged on.

The bores were very bad in mine, i am certain that either the installation or the removal was what damaged the o-rings.

skid809 said:

The bores were very bad in mine, i am certain that either the installation or the removal was what damaged the o-rings.

Click to expand...

That would make sense. PM sent.

Update!

Update:
Well I finally found some time to tackle this project. After jacking up the rig and taking a good look I decided to not remove the cat. and decided to just remove the two heat shields around the passenger side cat. This gave me enough room to get to the servos on the passenger side of the trany and actually use the cat as a leverage point for pushing the servos in with a standard pry/crow bar.
I started with the OD servo as this was the one that was acting up and giving me the shift problems from 2nd to 3rd and a occasional OD warning light. Removal of the original servo was fairly easy, the hardest part was getting the snap ring out. The replacement O-ring servo went in nice and smooth with a nice pop as the O-rings passed the inside journal.
This is when things got hard. Getting the snap ring back in was a bear. It took me about a half hour wrestling with the snap ring to get it seated back into the slot. An extra pair of hands while doing this would have come in handy (no pun intended) but I was solo on this project.
With the OD servo complete I decided to not attempt the intermediate servo since I wanted to see how the OD servo was going to work, I was also running out of time and still had the band to tighten and filter to replace.
Tightening of the OD band fought me as well. The lock nut was seized onto the tightening bolt and needed some finesse to get it loose enough to tighten the bolt on the band. The info I had on the square tightening bolt said it was a ¼” square head, well its not exactly ¼” square as I couldn’t fit the drive side of a ¼” socket over it. I ended up using a slightly worn 10mm socket and slid it over the head. This gave me enough grip on the head to get my torque wrench in and tighten to the recommended 10ft/lbs and then back off 2 full turns. I had to remove the shift linkage bracket that is around the OD belt tighten bolt to get enough room to do this.
The filter was fairly straight forward. I pulled the center allen head drain plug from the 7/8” pan drain plug. About 3.5 quarts drained out. I decided to leave the rest of the fluid in the pan since it didn’t smell or appeared to be burnt. I carefully removed the pan bolts and lowered the pan keeping in mind there is still a lot of fluid still left in the pan. The filter was just two bolts, in and out and then carefully bolted the pan back up. Since I only removed about 3.5 quarts of fluid I only had to put back in 3.5 quarts of fresh fluid.
Something that I found out through my research on these tranys is that they have an allen head fluid fill plug on the passenger side of the trany just before the transfer case. Filling with a hand pump from this plug was way easier than the other methods I have read about.
Results:
Before the fix, under normal accel., the engine would go to about 4500 rpm between 2nd and 3rd gear. If I stomped on the throttle, it would nearly red line with a lot of noise and not much forward progress until it got into 3rd gear.
After the fix the trany shifts normally. Much like I assume it would have from the factory. It seems to stay in 1st longer and shifts from 2nd to 3rd with no long delay or hesitation. Granted I have only put on about 30 miles since I did this fix yesterday but I would have to say it has been well worth it. I don’t have to granny the throttle through 3rd gear any more.