truck wants to go forward regardless of shifter position?

[Nomad84]

I am buying a 92 Eddie Bauer 4x4 Explorer tomorrow and I'm curious about the automatic trans. It is definitely screwy. I'm not worried about it because I'm getting it really cheap (buying it mostly for the axles, actually), but I would be curious as to what could cause it to do what it does. I drove it a short distance. With the shifter in 1, the truck accelerated reasonably well. When I put the throttle to the floor with the brakes locked it revved to around 3000 relatively easily and appeared to be slowly creeping up from there (I didn't hold it to see what would happen). In any other gear besides 1, the slipping seemed a little more pronounced. I more or less expected the trans to be junk when I went to look at the truck. The seller had said it wouldn't go into reverse. I figured it just wouldn't do much of anything when you tried to put it in reverse, but in fact I discovered that with the shifter in any position except park, the truck wanted to drive forward. Reverse was forward. Neutral? Nope...forward. Park worked as expected so I assume that means it isn't a linkage adjustment issue, right? I checked the ATF and it was low. There was barely any at all on the dipstick. It definitely had a little bit of a burnt smell to it. The tranny pan and crossmember had fluid on them, so it may be pumping it out at a pretty good rate. As I said before, I don't plan on trying to save this trans, but my curiosity is getting the better of me. I really would like to know what causes the weird behavior. Any ideas?

 

[BrooklynBay]

Welcome to this forum! It sounds like either a valve body issue with the manual slide valve or possibly a broken one way sprag.

 

[99SportX]

I had this happen once when my trans was real cold (5r55e). I backed up, then put it in drive and it still started going backwards. I assume a valve was sticking or something from the cold weather. I cycled the shifter again and everything worked. I almost pulled a looking forward but car is in reverse move. lol Some kid did that back in high school. Had it in drive, but was looking backward since he thought it was in reverse. Hit the gas, and slammed into another parked car. It was a super cold day and the headlight shattered like glass.

A valve or spring probably got stuck or broken in the ValveBody. I don't know much about transmissions to pinpoint the problem though. As I remember, there are tons of those things in the valve body from when I put in my shift kit.

 

[Nomad84]

I wondered if somebody tried to work on the transmission and didn't get all the little balls and springs back where they go or something. Since it goes into park correctly (as far as I can tell...the pawl engages and keeps the truck still), I figured it wasn't the linkage (seller's suggestion ) and wondered if it was a valve body issue. Of course, I know nothing about automatic transmissions except what I've seen on TV : I don't really care too much though. It slips, so I just counted it as worthless as far as figuring out how much the truck was worth to me. Well, the truck is mine now. I just got through parking it in my driveway where it will probably sit until I get ready to put the axles under my BII