O/D (overdrive) light flickering 2002 XLS

[EdPrymak]

Hello everyone, my girlfriend has a 2002 Explorer XLS and the other day after a heavy storm she says she went through a puddle of water after which the OD light started flickering, its not on or flashing it just flickers. That would not be a big deal since i figured the thing would dry up however now her car has a hard time starting to go after a complete stop, it seems as though it kind of gets stuck at about 2000 rpm and then very slowly goes up from there, after that point it drives fine, just struggles when taking off. Any idea if there may be a sensor or something that got ruined when she drove through the puddle or do you guys think its more serious than that and may be a tranny issue and her driving through a puddle is just a coincidence??
Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
ps. this forum is great I got her starter fixed with your guys' help once already, thank you so much!

 

[BigRondo]

Welcome aboard!!

Best bet is to get the codes read. Recently my O/D light started flashing/flickering and it turned out to be a bad solenoid pack.

You need to take it to a place that can read the Ford transmission codes.

Good luck with the fix. :biggthump

 

[EdPrymak]

would only a dealer have such a code reader? or do you think some shops will too because autozone said they dont..

 

[JoshMcMadMac]

would only a dealer have such a code reader? or do you think some shops will too because autozone said they dont..

AutoZone should be able to pull the code for you. Do a quick visual as well and check for any loose connections.

 

[jad2411]

Az doesn't pull tranny codes afaik...

 

[JoshMcMadMac]

Az doesn't pull tranny codes afaik...

Most of the typical transmission codes go through the ECM and are read by any standard OBDII scanner, especially the solenoid pack codes.

 

[EdPrymak]

hi guys, thanks for all of your replies..
ended up taking the car to a tranny shop and they found some melted wires that look like touched the exhaust manifold or something and got fried..one wire is split in 2 the rest in the harness are melted but not split. i spliced that one wire that was disconnected and connected it back up and the car still drives the same, only now the speedo and the tach dont work....
whats going on? is it harness related (harness that melted)??? should i replace the whole thing? the guy at the trans shop said hed do it for 300$ does this sound reasonable????
thanks again guys i <3 this forum, it really has saved my ass a few times already

 

[bizzs]

ed, you need to get someone that has a scanner to read the computer to obtain the codes.. These transmission are notorious for the servo's, or solonoids to go bad, but it is important to retreive those codes first before you do anything. If the servos are bad, you can either go with the fix that cost around 200.00, or do a full rebuild which could cost in the thousands. I did the fix and it works great..

Good luck-
Bizzs