Transmission Recall

[Gavin Allan]

Is there any site or information available that shows the number of transmissions that have had warranty service on the SportTrac?



It seems that the transmission problems are severe enough to warrant a recall or some sort of class action against Ford.



Any thoughts?

 

[Frank Marano]

I thought they did recall or TSB them for that additive they are adding to the fluid?

 

[Ryan Y]

they did recall for friction modifier, but that isn't the cause of the common problems... like the 2-3 flair, early death of EPC Solenoids, etc... seems like since wayne's tunings fix the 2-3 flare and shift issues that they should recall us and flash our trucks with new "stock" tunings that would atleast fix the issues that flashing could fix. Or even better, Ford should buy us all XCal2s from Wayne!!

 

[Richard L]

The recall for the fluid additive was only for some 2004 model year Sport Trac's because they said the factory installed the wrong fluid?? Ford says that this was only causing a delay or failure to shift into gear from park or neutral.



People are having problems with all model years and Ford has not acknowledged any problem except for the recall on the 2004 models??



Gavin, I agree that Ford appears to be turning a blind eye to the obvious problems related to the 5 speed automatic trans.



...Ricn

 

[Tom Schindler]

Maybe the "blind eye" isn't blind, but the amount of problems seem so high because of the amount of trannys on the road.





Tom

 

[Mark B]

Auto trannies are increasingly complex and the hardest working component on your vehicle. I'd guess they have a relatively high failure rate in general. They won't recall unless there is a major safety issue and lots of lawyers are circling above.



I'm on a Ford Escape website now and it seems they have just as many issues with the CD4E auto tranny. This is a current thread trying to poll the extent of the failures.

 

[Richard L]

Tom,

I agree that the number of transmission on the road increase the odds of failure, however the 2-3 shift surge has been a problem all the way back to the 4 speed version of this same transmission. Ford is aware of this because the added a specific sensor to the new 5 speed version specificly to detect the speed of certain gear sets during the 2-3 shift and create a blinking O/D and error code. That proves that Ford knew about the problem and that the problem still continues.



Besides the problems reported here, a search of the web for the 5R55E transmission gives me over 100 sites related to the transmission and many of them discuss the 2-3 shift surge that everyone complains about. Ford is just rolling the dice that the problem will not show up until after the warranty has ran out since most complaints occurr at 50K miles or above, with some noted exceptions. If you consider that replacing the valvebody,and/or solenoids would cost about $450 per vehicle and over $2000 for a rebuilt transmission.



I think the recall for the additive for the 2004 models was a stop-gap measure by Ford to help reduce and delay the future warranty claims until after the standard warranties had expired.



What makes me even more suspicious is that the symptoms of vehicles that did not receive this additive or wrong fluid were forward or reverse gear would not engage or there was a delay in shifting into gear. There are very few reports of this problem here or at other websites, but plenty of the 2-3 shift surge problems which were conveniently ignored.



...Rich