Help!
I just replaced my valve body in my 99 Explorer hoping it would bring it back to life. Unfortunately it did not. I found the rebuild diary here and have been learning quite a bit from that thread but now I am lost and figure that maybe I should tell my whole story and pray for input from the more experienced members on this site. So without further ado...
I purchased my 99 Explorer 4 door, 4.0L with the 5R55E transmission. She's got 180k on her now and had about 170k when I got her, about 8 months ago for $1000. The body is straight and clean and so is the interior. At the time I bought her the transmission was already on its way out. It slipped big time between 2nd and 3rd gear when in (D). I found that if I manually shifted gears that I could avoid the high rev's by maxing out 2nd, letting off the gas shifting into 3rd letting it catch and then I could continue accelerating. So that's what I did. I would start off in 2nd from a stop and shift into 3rd when appropriate. As far as downshifting went, I didn't bother. If I did come to a stop again I would put her back in 2nd and so on... This allowed me to get around and do what I needed and since I've been unemployed for longer than I care to mention I had to make do with what I had (I already borrowed money to buy the truck in the first place). So about three months ago it started having trouble when I would first get in and go no matter if it had warmed up or not. It would take a couple of minutes for her to engage in any forward moving gear. Once she grabbed though it was business as usual. That lasted for two maybe three weeks until finally I lost the ability to engage any forward moving gear. All I had was reverse. So she sat for a month until my girlfriends father gave me $400 to try and get her going. So I tried the valve body replacement as I had read about the gaskets causing shifting problems and just got done with putting it back together. She still refuses to engage any forward gear and to boot reverse is questionable at best. On top of that it seems as though my master brake cylinder has committed suicide because my pedal goes to the floor and will not build pressure with repeated pumping...
So now I'm $1400 into the hole with girlfriends dad. I Have a car that is not going anywhere and looks as if she will require a full transmission rebuild and brake overhaul. Unless anyone has some magic potion I can administer to fix the above. I guess what I'm getting at is what do you guys think is going on with the transmission? Is it the torque converter, bands, does it matter? Should I rebuild it myself (I have never been inside a transmission at all prior to this vb attempt), should I get a used transmission from a junk yard, look for a remanned one (mind you I have no money to do this with but I gotta come up with at least an intelligent plan for my girlfriends fathers sake). The brakes should be no big deal. I priced a MC for about $60 and that kinda work comes much easier to me. I am lost on this transmission thing though...
Any input is appreciated (even if you want to tell me how stupid I am to keep throwing money into her).
Thank you in advance,