How to: - 5R55E Valve Body Rebuild Diary | Page 14 | Ford Explorer Forums - Serious Explorations

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How to: 5R55E Valve Body Rebuild Diary

Prefix for threads which are instructional.
Welcome to this forum! It's very hard to find a shop around here which will only do a valve body rebuild. Everybody wants to rebuild the entire transmission. I would suggest that you follow the guidelines in this diary, and try it on your own. Many people have been intimidated at first, but have succeeded in the end.
 



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Thanks for the encouragement. I feel I could probably do the VB kit but I think I would have trouble with the Servos. I saw in the thread that ffeable said he loosened the pressure on the Bands and then was able to push in the servo cover and get the clip out . Could you elaborate on that a little.

I have a pretty liberal junk yard near me where I can probably get access to an old transmission and play around with the servos.Thanks
 






Servos on an installed tranny are not something I recommend you try first time out. MAJOR pita with limited clearance.
 


















Servo covers are resistant to inward motion by a large spring under the cover. I doubt loosening the bands would give much if any assist in overcoming the spring resistance. Ingenious folks have come up with many ways of removing them, but I have the luxury of the FORD tool with the tranny easily accessible on a bench when I remove tjhem, and they can STILL be a PITA.

I rarely pay anyone to do something I can do myself. This might be one of those I would happily pay some fool to do for me, in vehicle.
 






Servo covers are resistant to inward motion by a large spring under the cover. I doubt loosening the bands would give much if any assist in overcoming the spring resistance. Ingenious folks have come up with many ways of removing them, but I have the luxury of the FORD tool with the tranny easily accessible on a bench when I remove tjhem, and they can STILL be a PITA.

I rarely pay anyone to do something I can do myself. This might be one of those I would happily pay some fool to do for me, in vehicle.

Hmmm...I thought I would get around to installing that excellent valve body you built for me, and I figured I would change the servos also. I have a Rotunda tool kit which has the tool...maybe not?
 






If you have the C-3 tool set by rotunda you have that tool. It bolts onto the pan rail and has a U shaped piece that loops up onto the middle of the servo cover... by tightening a bolt it pushes the cap inward. The A4LD Rebuild Diary has pictures of it in use.
 






If you have the C-3 tool set by rotunda you have that tool. It bolts onto the pan rail and has a U shaped piece that loops up onto the middle of the servo cover... by tightening a bolt it pushes the cap inward. The A4LD Rebuild Diary has pictures of it in use.

Thank you. Did I see on a thread that you are from Montana?
 












Ok. I've read this thread over and over. I have a Transgo kit with gaskets and a new EPC solenoid on the way to me. Is there anything I am missing? Should I include anything else? And of course I'll get the fluid and filter.

My trans issue: My wife drives the car so I don't have a lot of experience driving it but this is what I notice. On real cold mornings there is a very slight delay when I put it in reverse to back up. When I put it in D I have to wait for several seconds before I get engagement. Once warmed up the problem dissapears.
 












You could get the Viton "D" ring kit for the low/reverse servo. I think the gaskets are your problem. Make sure that you use an In/Lb torque wrench on the valve body bolts.

Thanks for the input. I have an in-lb torque wrench and I forgot to mention that I also got the new revised solenoid bracket. I will take a look at the Viton "D" ring kit.
 






What about the FORD mod and the new separator plate discussed on page 1 ?
 






What about the FORD mod and the new separator plate discussed on page 1 ?


The way I understand it is that if you use the Transgo kit, the Ford mod was not needed. I asked my local Ford dealer about the new seperator plate with bonded gaskets and he couldn't find it listed.*? Hopefully you can enlighten me. Thanks.
 






the first page lists the plate you need. The earlier models did not get bonded gaskets unfortunately. I understand that Transgo claims their kit eliminates the need for the FORD mod and frankly, being the quality outfit they are I am sure they are right. If you choose that route, I'm sure you will do fine. Just get NEW gaskets !

I cannot tell you why, but in this situation I was more comfortable with the Superior kit and the FORD mods... but i will also tell you straight up that Transgo is a quality company with smart guys. Do their kit and let us know how it goes! (In other trannies I sometimes prefer the transgo kit over the superior, so I have no favoritism - I like both companies)
 






Chris, I don't recall if I posted my review of my TransGo kit result. My reality though is that my truck was untested and undriven before doing any work. I bought it wrecked.

I don't have any symptoms or complaints about my results, it may be identical as before the valve body kit. My issue is likely the same as for any Explorer V6 transmission, they have soft shifts. These in my 5R55E feel similar to my 93 A4LD. I prefer positive shifts, somewhat firm, but not harsh at all. I like shifting to become firmer with more throttle pressure, not hard at all throttle settings.

The V8 AOD's all receive excellent positive shifts from the TransGo system correction kits. I was actually hoping for that same feel, thus I'm disappointed. What are the chances of finding significant improvements by buying a flasher and altering the shifting with those? Regards,
 






Don... I have little, well virtually no, experience with altering the PCM programming insofar as transmission shifts go. I understand it could be possible to up EPC commanded pressures, and shift timing and effect the shift feel or result as a consequence.

Remember too that in 2001 (maybe even earlier) FORD started programming some slip into shift lockups to "soften" the "experience" - they called it "Shift Adaptive Pressure Control Stategy". Getting rid of that alone would probably firm up shifts, if you had a vehicle that utilized that.

But my direct answer, I dunno.
 






Thanks Chris, I figured that it will be an opinion question for those who have the flashers on a SOHC. I think that the adaptive stuff started with the new type of PCM, the next generation past OBDII. I think that it started with the new body style, and possibly the 2002 Sport Trac and Sport as well. The 5R55E main case changed in the 2002 4door models, and I'm not sure that the change happened on Sports and Sport Tracs also then. Regards,
 



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Hey all, last week or the week before I was driving to work and my OD light started flashing and then the transmission started shifting horribly. Since I've been referring to explorerforum.com for quite some time now, I thought maybe I'd check out if anyone else was experiencing this flashing OD light problem. And sure enough, tons of people had, and to my discouragement, many said that this means that your transmission is a pile of crap and you have to shell out $1000's to have the tranny shop rebuild it or drop in a pre-rebuilt one. So I checked the other symptoms of a "pile of crap" transmission, and I didn't have any (flakes of metal in the fluid, burnt smelling fluid, no fluid...etc). My transmission was working great (well except for the 2-3 flare which I never really realized was a problem) until something fairly instantaneous happened. So I dug deeper, and finally figured out what transmission I had, and then found this rebuild diary (I have a 2000 XLT, 4.0L SOHC). Upon reading all of the stuff in this diary, it seemed like diving into the transmission before going to the shop could be worth a savings of tons of $. I'm a big fan of DIY as I try to avoid the mechanic as much as possible since I seem to get screwed every time I go to one.

Anyways, I followed this guide, ordered the EPC solenoid, the Ford blowoff valve kit, the revised solenoid bracket, and the Ford separator plate (I did not get the Superior or the Transgo shift kit). A day later the parts I needed were @ the dealer (I also got the intake manifold gasket set as I'm having the rough idle cold start problem as well). That day I took the guts out of the transmission. Surprisingly, everything looked really nice inside. There wasn't any gunky buildup of crap in the bottom of the pan, just a light covering of metal dust (the magnet had a bit more on it, but nothing compared to what I was expecting, a pile of crap tranny). After that I took the valve body out of the transmission, I brought it inside and looked at it for a while before attempting to do anything with it. I was super careful not to disturb the thing at all. I took the solenoid bracket off and the EPC solenoid popped out and one of the shift solenoids fell out too. The old EPC solenoid looked nice and clean and there wasn't any gunk on it or anything, which was a disappointment. However, once I looked @ the shift solenoid that fell out, I was kinda happy cause I found that one of the O rings wasn't an O ring anymore, it was shaped more like an S curve. Somehow the O ring broke. The other O ring on the solenoid was out of it's...O ring "track" as well. So then I looked at the solenoid plate, and sure enough, for that solenoid, the little clippy-thing that holds the solenoid in place was bent back allowing the solenoid to come part way out of its bore. So I'm guessing that after a while the somewhat sharp edges of the valve body bore sliced the outermost O ring and....somehow the other O ring came out of it's "track". Lastly, I removed the separator plate and it looks like someone already did the Ford blowoff valve and separator plate. However, the plate I removed was bowed (maybe from mounting bolt stresses???), and the blowoff valve wasn't the revised Ford one. In the kit I got from Ford, it said to make sure the blowoff valve had a dimple in it's face. The one in my valve body did not have this dimple. Otherwise it was identical (at least as far as I could tell) to the valve I bought. So needless to say, I slapped on the new separator plate and put in the new valve. Oh yeah, the EPC screen and the silver valve/spring were not present in my valve body, again probably confirming that someone already did the Ford fix.

I replaced the shift solenoid as it didn't seem like it was going to be possible to go to Ford and get some dumb O ring for the solenoid. I got some $20 from transmissionpartsusa.com, but when I got the thing, I was rather disappointed with the quality of the 3rd party shift solenoid. It just seemed cheesy compared to the Bosch one I took out. The dealer did want $60 for the solenoid though. Oh well, so I put the cheese solenoid in. Now comes the fun part, putting back in a crap load of valve body bolts. Since I tried to use the diagram Robrike posted a while back for keeping track of which bolts went where, I had a bit of a problem: The bolts I was taking out were not matching up to the lengths that the diagram showed. So I looked at Glacier's post about figuring out which bolts went where, but I didn't exactly want to do that either. I looked on my service manual dvd I snagged off fordcds.com and I found what is in my opinion a much better set of diagrams that showed exactly where each length of bolt went. I have not compared the Ford diagrams w/ the one Robrike posted, but I'm thinking that diagram is incorrect (but then again in most cases I can never trust a mechanic to do anything right so maybe someone else just put the wrong bolts in the wrong holes in the valve body). I do know that the Ford diagrams are correct as the length bolts I was placing into the valve body corresponded to the height of the bolt hole's boss.

So finally I got the whole thing back together w/ a new shift solenoid (the one closest to the TCC), a new blowoff valve, a new separator plate, a new EPC solenoid, a new filter, and a new pan gasket. Oh also of note, I removed around 8 quarts of fluid during this entire process, not counting the amount that soaked into my shirt sleeve, my pants, old rags, and not counting any left over in my collection pan. So I put a bunch of fluid back in (about 6 quarts), started it up, added a 7th, and drove around. Everything now works great! There's no shift flare, no flashing OD light, and no other shift problems.

Basically this whole post is here thanking all you guys (or girls) on here who have posted all this information (along w/ awesome photos), and have willingly given help to those that needed it. You all have instilled courage in me to try and do this job as to me this is a risky task. It's definitely a bit trickier to do than changing brake pads and rotors or even wheel bearings and upper ball joints. So...thank you all again!!

ps-if you want Glacier, I could post a pdf of the thing from the Ford service manual dvd (unless that's against the rules of the forum). If nothing else, it gives a nice list w/ diagrams on how to put the valve body and whatnot back into the transmission. Plus it gives torque amounts for all the bolts except the gold bolts that hold the solenoid brackets on.

Andy
 






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