A4LD slow to engage in first gear

[ox13]

Ok I just pick up a 93 explorer sport with the a4ld the person who I got this off of said the tranny is wasted but I'm not sure here is what it is doing, put it in drive and it takes a little bit of rpms in order to get it to engage and than it is if drives and shifts fine thru all of the gears, it is the same way hot or cold and reverse is the same way it takes a litle more rpms inorder to get it to engage but it is fine after it engages it moves fine.
I have checked the fuild level and it is fine smells brunt though, I was thinking of just doing a fuild and filter change on it and see what happens from there.

Any suggestions are welcome.

thanks

 

[Glacier991]

I'm going to make a guess that your low/reverse servo may have a broken 0-Ring seal on it. At any rate that would provide the symptoms you describe - but then so would low line pressure (I'd actually like to know what your pressures are.) But for cheap DIY try at fixing it, I'd suggest you change the fluid and filter, change out the O rings on the servo, and let us know what you find. There is a "Diary" in the Useful Threads Forum all about rebuilding the A4LD and it shows the replacement of those O rings in detail.

 

[Longjohn119]

Once you have the pan off for a fluid/filter change would only take you an extra 15 minutes to remove the low/reverse servo, clean it up, install new O-rings and re-install

In fact you'll probably spend more time getting the O-rings than installing them

It's definitely worth the effort

 

[Glacier991]

Which reminds me, I owe someone O rings... geeze! And yes they are hard to obtain alone.... FORD sells 'em in bags of 3's.... maybe I should buy some and make a standing offer.... altho I wish I could find single purchase double lips seals for the big one.

 

[ox13]

Thanks for the input and I will try and get the Line pressure's before I get into the tranny, I was plaining on doing some work to the VB while I had the pan off so I will do the o-rings on the low and reverse servo too, and I will get some picture of what I find, I most likely will not get into this tranny untill I get one of the other projects out of the garage first which should be in a couple of weeks.



I have rebuilt c-4/5's before and have done 1 a4ld in a Bronco II about 4 years ago and it is still working fine for me I just have to find my books on the a4ld before I even think about a tranny rebuild, plus I need to save up for the parts to rebuild it I know what I put into the Bronco II tranny and I figure it is going to be about the same for the explorer tranny if not a little more.


Thanks for the help.