2016 - 2nd Torque Converter Failure?

[stratigary]

A little background:

In late 2020 I noticed some shifting issues in my 2016 2.3L Explorer and took it in for service. To no surprise it was the torque converter that had failed quite spectacularly at 55k miles. They tore it down and replaced the converter along with a transmission rebuild as they reported finding contaminants in the transmission. All of this was under warranty.

Everything was fine until a few days ago after an oil change when I noticed some driveline vibrations. I took it in again (now 78,000 mi) and they want to drop the transmission to inspect at a cost of $1,600 as they're pretty sure the converter failed again.

Can anyone tell me how likely it is that the converter failed again after less than 25k miles? Is there anything that they could have done or missed that would lead to an early failure? I'm contemplating taking it to an independent shop to have them inspect it as I have a hard time accepting that this kind of failure is normal.

Thank you for any help/advice/feedback you can provide.

 

[Rick]

I am moving your thread to our transmission forum.

 

[JK080]

I have seen converters fail at the 50/60k mark in these vehicles, when we do them we always replace the pump and valve body from the dealer because this is where most of the converter problems come from in this transmission and many others in this 6 and 8 speed family for that matter.

Maybe during the first rebuild they just cleaned out the debris from the converter failure and just replaced the soft parts like the seals and gaskets installed a new filter and reinstalled it. Not saying that's a bad thing since they are fitting the bill and these converters can just fail on their own without any help from the valve body or pump. Usually in a spectacular way as you mentioned.

Now you are experiencing a torque converter shudder/vibration that is caused by the failure of the converter clutch. The clutch can fail due to the loss of pressures inside the transmission that is controlled by the valve body and supplied from the pump. When these components wear out pressures drop things start happening.. So you have had two converter failures in this vehicle but they have failed in a different way and for different reasons.

Make sure they replace these items during the next rebuild or see that converter shudder return in a short amount of time.