I have problems, but no idea what to do.

[1996BLKBauer]

Everything has been going great with my Explorer until lately. I have 3 problems currently and I have no idea where to start.

1. when I get on my truck to go up a hill, or to pass somebody, it hesitates, and badly. it waits almost 5 seconds to actually get up and go. what would cause this horrible lag between me hitting the gas, and the engine responding?

2. I believe my transmission slips, or fails to go into 2nd, or 3rd, not sure which one it is exactly, but the engine will keep climbing in RPMs and then bam is slams into the gear. I noticed this whenever I go from a stop, and need to getup ahead of somebody when a lane merges, there is a lot of those situations in my town. Would changing the fluid help me? some people said it may not move with 161,000 miles on it. It still shifts great with normal driving, when I get on maybe 3/4 throttle it does this problem. I hope this was not too confusing.

3. when I have the wheels turns far, but not to full lock, and try to brake, it seems like the brakes are not grabbing that hard, and I have to push down the brakes harder to get the same amount of force as I would in a strait line.


Any info would be great, I just hope they are not huge problems, even a small amount of help would be awesome, because I am stumped with these.

 

[my98nnj]

1 and 2 are probably related.
3 Check your wheel bearing for play.

 

[1996BLKBauer]

1 and 2 are probably related.
3 Check your wheel bearing for play.

Thanks for the reply. I have been reading up on similar sort of situations. The delay, or hesitation may be related to the engine or the computer. I am going to clean the throttle body, and do the throttle cable mod, to see if that helps me at all.The transmission is obviously the problem in the other situation, I am still wondering if changing the fluid would make a difference, when I pull the dipstick it does not smell burnt, and it is still red on color. The wheel bearings seem to be just fine, I did the old shake the tire in different directions, and it did not move, which is good. so I am assuming that the wheel bearing, and ball joins for that matter are OK, at least for now anyway.