auto trans not wanting to shift

[englishman11]

My wife recently purchased her '97 explorer and it has been running fine until about a month ago. The rig started having problems shifting from first to second and is now shifting very hard in all gears. Just yesterday, her check engine light came on.

I'm not very familiar with her vehicle so I drove it today to experience the shifting issues myself. It doesn't seem TOO severe, but I'd like to nip it before it gets really bad. I'm also not very familiar with automatic transmissions since I've only owned manual vehicles. I'm not sure where to begin.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

[imp]

Need to know better what is meant by "shifting very hard"-- taking a long time to shift, such as shift points delayed until too high vehicle speed, or,

shifting roughly, but at the correct time.

First determination must be whether all shifts are affected equally. If shifting roughly, all gears, but at correct time, there is likely an issue with operating pressures being too high, and not being modulated appropriately by the computer, which bases the pressure on how hard the engine is being worked: i.e., fast acceleration of vehicle calls for higher pressures to ensure shift occurs without excessive slippage between driving members (clutches, bands). imp

 

[Tackle]

Englishman11, the best place you can start if you think there is a problem is to check the transmission fluid level. When the level is off, you can start experiencing weird things. Also, make sure to get the engine code read. Then either have who ever scanned it check what the code is, or post it on here and someone will be able to help point you in the right direction.

 

[englishman11]

Sorry for taking so long to reply, we were on vacation for a while. My wife took her rig in to get a code read today. P1762, P0733, P0734, P0735, P0741, P1783. The mechanic told her that the transmission was blown and would have to be rebuilt.

 

[CGordon]

Hey Englishman11

I have the exact same problem...

What ended up fixing this in the end? Did the tech rebuild the tranny?