Allison,
Yes, the trannies on the Explorer vehicles, all years, are have a higher incident rate of early mileage failure/issue than one would expect from a quality product.
The 1st gen trannies, all years, had flare issues starting at very early mileage (30k to 70k). The 2nd gen tranny especially with the V8 has had some harshness issues that with reprogramming Ford has been able to address for some, but not all. The '08 seemed better in that regard than the '07, but only time will tell.
Are all the trannies on all the years bad? Nope. '01 and '04s seemed to have a righer rate of incident than any other year. Reports showed that as many as 1 in 10 '04 Explorer-based trucks (Explorer, ST, Mountaineer) had tranny issues at less than 70k miles.
Hearing about STs that have had tranny work between 60k and 100k is not uncommon and backs up reports I have read. Expecting to have major transmission work on an Explorer based product at any miles above that is a safe bet, IMHO. Again, not all STs will fail. Many, possibly even most will have transmissions that go 100k, even 200k without fail.
However, let's be honest, unless someone is beating the crap out of their transmission shouldn't we EXPECT 100k without incident and 200k without failure...and EXPECT THAT ALL THE TIME?
Lot's of people here sing the praises of FoMoCo extended warranties on their STs that they keep for high miles, and they claim and expected tranny issue as the reason.
TJR
