O/D light issues

[jmburton1993]

Well I recently bought my 3rd explorer (6th RBV), after selling my trusty f150, its a lifted 01 explorer sport on 33's. I drove it home over two hours and it drove like a dream, no issues 1800 rpms doing 55 down the highway. Two days later my nightmares began, upon driving to the cafeteria on campus (i'm currently in college) my O/D off light began flashing and I threw a code, P0720, output shaft circuit sensor malfunction, so I quickly replace the sensor thinking all is well because the guy I bought it from claimed to have just had the transmission checked out and all was well. Long story short it didn't fix it, so I send it to my trans guy who holds on to it for a week simply to tell me the internals are good maybe I should try a new computer, so I go to the local scrapyard and pull one, making sure its the same model number, and then take it to my local dealer to get it programmed for my key. Still not fixed. Usually the trans acts right but occasionally I get some hard shifts and it seems to be throwing a lot higher rpms now than before. I can't afford to keep throwing money at this thing and i know I'll take a major hit if I sell it, luckily I have spring break next week and will have time to try to solve this problem but I could really use some advice on what may be my issue, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Today I noticed it only did it the first time I drove it, roughly twenty miles to my destination, once I cut it off there and got back in to leave it never came back on the 50 plus miles I drove after that, so no clue what the deal is.

 

[PopRichie77]

Check the connector to the output shaft sensor, make sure the contacts are not corroded, also check the wire. Also make sure the new sensor is all the way in the trans and not held up some by dirt.

 

[jmburton1993]

checked the connector and made sure the sensor was all the way in today, guess I'm going to have to cut off the conduit tomorrow and check the actual wiring, any idea on the easiest way to get to the wiring, is their some sort of access panel under the console or something?

 

[jmburton1993]

No one has any ideas? Guess I will just have to put it up for sale and cut my losses, no time to mess with it nor money to keep throwing at it as the problems continue to mount. Any advice would be greatly appreciated though.

 

[drdoom]

I think you may want to do a pin test for continuity. Do you have a manual jim?

 

[drdoom]

You should be able to pin test at the main pcm connector with the other probe at the OSS connector. Just need to find the right pins, then you can easily check the entire wire. Don't make it too complicated, its like two or three wires, and probably a hall effect sensor. Nothing mystical downstream of the PCM.

 

[JK080]

No one has any ideas? Guess I will just have to put it up for sale and cut my losses, no time to mess with it nor money to keep throwing at it as the problems continue to mount. Any advice would be greatly appreciated though.

Having a scanner that has data stream capability can help you find the bad connections. While watching the sensor data start pulling on the harness and connections until the signal drops. Obviously having a lift and a friend would make this a lot easier, I just wanted to give you a option for trouble shooting the problem.

 

[drdoom]

Am I assuming correctly you have the 5R55E trans, I believe that has a sub harness, so those connections should be checked also. IIRC they are difficult to access without a lift. I will look back into some old photos to verify this. Also I see you are running 33s, do you have a body lift?