Driver error or transmission slipping ?

[davem]

Yesterday, my wife was driving our 2001 Ford Explorer XLT 4.0 V-6 (auto trans) with 180K miles and experienced the following:

She said she put in in DRIVE, but it would not shift out of 1st gear. According to her, it did not feel like it was trying to shift nor was it slipping/hunting for a gear. She stopped, shifted back into DRIVE and it worked fine the rest of the way home (approx 5 miles).

Today, on its 10-mile drive to work, it drove/shifted fine.


She later thought that yesterday maybe she had positioned the shift lever between N and DRIVE, instead of securely into DRIVE. Could that have caused it to remain in 1st gear ?

Or was this the first sign of the tranny giving out ? It had never given us any tranny trouble before.

 

[aryork]

Yesterday, my wife was driving ...She later thought...

LOL. The number of times that my wife has told me the car did something funny/strange must outnumber the real problems 50:1. Keep driving it and would love to see a report back!

 

[koda2000]

I suggest you just keep an eye on it to see if it reoccurs. The V6 auto transmissions are known for having problems, which can mess with shifting (valve body gaskets and shift solenoid issues) but as it's only happened once to-date, it's impossible to say what you wife might have done (my wife once had me leave work to come and help her at the grocery store because she said her van won't start. When I arrived I told her to put in in PARK to start it - Brain fart!).

 

[aryork]

... it's impossible to say what you wife might have done (my wife once had me leave work to come and help her at the grocery store because she said her van won't start. When I arrived I told her to put in in PARK to start it - Brain fart!).

We could have a whole category on wife stories and I bet it would be quite entertaining. (Disclaimer: I know there are plenty of women that work on cars too and are more qualified than I am, but I am guessing there are a lot more wives with funny stories.)

 

[davem]

............ I do seem to recall people posting about situations where they kinda had the shift lever part way between N and DRIVE, and then the transmission behaved strangely ............ anyone else recall such reports ? (I did some searching, but gave up after awhile)

 

[drdoom]

Yes I have twice failed to position the column lever properly. The TCIL flashed and returned a "shift error" code when I hooked up the scanner. And also one time the shift cable popped out of the bracket at the transmission, not related to previous errors. Being a single man, I just went ahead and caused these problems all by myself ;-)