dust180
New Member
- Joined
- February 6, 2015
- Messages
- 3
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- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 2003 Ford Explorer XLT
First part is a little background on the vehicle, if you want trouble codes and straight forward what the issue is, goto part 2 but I suggest taking the time to read part 1 aswell.
PART: 1
It has the 4.0L SOHC V6, vehicle has around 270,000+ miles on it. (so most likely the trans are rebuilt around the 150-160k mark like most of these have been. Transmission has been shifting a little rough when changing gears. Been doing this in every gear when you were light on the gas pedal. Im right familiar with this vehicles drivetrain and I figured solenoid pack but never got around to swapping it, besides this is my parents car and their thought process is along the lines of "if its not completely broke, dont fix it". Meaning small issues they ignore... Until they become large issues then they get angry about it... When we bought it about a year ago for $1,000 It had no issues when we test drove it. We never tested the heat, go figure it didnt work. Swapped out the blend door actuator and that fixed that. Mostly. Some vents would never open, and we only got heat out of the dash vents (never checked the back) but no defrost, upon inspection it looks like someone tried to remove the entire heater box and broke tons of stuff... All the little vaccum actuators had their rods broken. Shortly after we started getting bad timing chain noise. Or atleast it sounded like timing chain. So we replaced the tensioners. That was a mess of constantly exchanging parts because new parts were bad over and over again. Eventually we gave up. So the rear tensioners is still collapsed but the front one is fine. So upon startup we got some noise now but after a few minutes it goes away.
PART 2:
Ive got Intermediate Failure (thats the code name, vehicle isnt here its sitting on the side of the road so dont have the code number) The other was Incorrect 4th Gear Ratio. The issue is it will not go into any gear. Putting it manually into 1st, 2nd, or 3rd does absolutely nothing. Reverse does not work. Drive does nothing. Acts as if its in neutral, never goes into the gear selected. I know its not the linkage as it goes in park and park works (parking prowl engages and stops vehicle from rolling). Now heres the odd part. Cutting the car off and cranking it back on causes it to work and shift fine (as in manually selecting works and if you go to drive down the road in Drive that works and it shifts fine) for a couple minutes, then goes back to acting like its in neutral while your driving. Turning off OD still does the same thing. So if anyone knows what could cause this that would be good! I dont have any way to check the fluid level or what the fluid looks like (dont want to drop the pan because I wont be able to put the fluid back in)
So looking to see if anyone else has had this same issue and what needs to be done to correct it? Keep in mind that it works fine for the first few minutes but then shoots to neutral in every gear and will not engage any gear again unless the car is restarted.
PART: 1
It has the 4.0L SOHC V6, vehicle has around 270,000+ miles on it. (so most likely the trans are rebuilt around the 150-160k mark like most of these have been. Transmission has been shifting a little rough when changing gears. Been doing this in every gear when you were light on the gas pedal. Im right familiar with this vehicles drivetrain and I figured solenoid pack but never got around to swapping it, besides this is my parents car and their thought process is along the lines of "if its not completely broke, dont fix it". Meaning small issues they ignore... Until they become large issues then they get angry about it... When we bought it about a year ago for $1,000 It had no issues when we test drove it. We never tested the heat, go figure it didnt work. Swapped out the blend door actuator and that fixed that. Mostly. Some vents would never open, and we only got heat out of the dash vents (never checked the back) but no defrost, upon inspection it looks like someone tried to remove the entire heater box and broke tons of stuff... All the little vaccum actuators had their rods broken. Shortly after we started getting bad timing chain noise. Or atleast it sounded like timing chain. So we replaced the tensioners. That was a mess of constantly exchanging parts because new parts were bad over and over again. Eventually we gave up. So the rear tensioners is still collapsed but the front one is fine. So upon startup we got some noise now but after a few minutes it goes away.
PART 2:
Ive got Intermediate Failure (thats the code name, vehicle isnt here its sitting on the side of the road so dont have the code number) The other was Incorrect 4th Gear Ratio. The issue is it will not go into any gear. Putting it manually into 1st, 2nd, or 3rd does absolutely nothing. Reverse does not work. Drive does nothing. Acts as if its in neutral, never goes into the gear selected. I know its not the linkage as it goes in park and park works (parking prowl engages and stops vehicle from rolling). Now heres the odd part. Cutting the car off and cranking it back on causes it to work and shift fine (as in manually selecting works and if you go to drive down the road in Drive that works and it shifts fine) for a couple minutes, then goes back to acting like its in neutral while your driving. Turning off OD still does the same thing. So if anyone knows what could cause this that would be good! I dont have any way to check the fluid level or what the fluid looks like (dont want to drop the pan because I wont be able to put the fluid back in)
So looking to see if anyone else has had this same issue and what needs to be done to correct it? Keep in mind that it works fine for the first few minutes but then shoots to neutral in every gear and will not engage any gear again unless the car is restarted.
