Ford transmission troubles?

Hey guys,

I saw something in the July Trailer Life magazine which caught my eye because it pertained to my tow vehicle. A gentleman was having trouble with his transmission. He claimed that every once in a while he would stop his truck and when he took off again it would not be in first gear. He would have to mash the accelerator whereby it would downshift and spin the wheels. He said it was sporadic in nature but added that someone that he met at a campsite had the same truck and the same problem. He has a 2008 F350 with the 6.4 diesel. I have never had any issues with my tranny. But I was wondering if any of you are familiar with this. Have you had similar issues with similar trucks? If so, what was the resolution?

Thanks,

Pete

I have the same truck and have not had that problem or any other problem.
Don

I too have same year of tranny/engine. No issues on mine either, I'm stock (no tuner). I am aware of solenoids going bad, and some aftermarket tuners affecting tranny shifting (for the bad).

For prevention, anytime the truck goes to the dealer, I recommend asking the dealer to ensure engine/tranny have latest flash installed. If towing, I have my dealer tranny flush/new fluid every 30k miles.

Me too . . . almost. I have a 2009 F350, 6.4 but no problems seen yet

brianharrison said:

I too have same year of tranny/engine. No issues on mine either, I'm stock (no tuner). I am aware of solenoids going bad, and some aftermarket tuners affecting tranny shifting (for the bad).

For prevention, anytime the truck goes to the dealer, I recommend asking the dealer to ensure engine/tranny have latest flash installed. If towing, I have my dealer tranny flush/new fluid every 30k miles.

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Yeah, I had not thought about whether both of these guys might have added an aftermarket tuner. By design they change the shift pattern although I have never heard of this particular problem. Almost seems as if it doesn't know the vehicle has stopped and then tries to take off in second or third. Pretty weird.

I added the Spartan Tuner, and it made the shifts "crisper". Not bad, just different. I understand not letting the tranny slip into gear like the factory setting is actually better for the long term life of the tranny.

I've never had the problems described in the origianl post.

My 2007 6.0L transmission just went out Sunday. My and my DW are on vacation across the country and my stepson calls and says the transmission is shifting all over the place....up shifting way too early, not shifting into high gear 7out of 10 times and throwing codes.

We called our dealer to schedule an appointment to drop off the truck. On the way there my stepson calls back and says that he can't even get up to highway speeds because the truck is almost up to 3,000 rpm at 65-70mph so he pulls over, turns the truck off and waits and tries again, same thing. So we call to have it towed which Ford paid for.

We get a call 3 days ago, Tuesday I believe and our tech says he has it torn down and ready to order parts but Ford has an engineer in the area and wants to send him out to look at it.
Got a call back yesterday and our tech told us Ford gave them the go ahead to just replace the entire transmission rather than replacing parts.

I'll know more once I get home but right now the new tranny should be there Friday to go in and it cost me $50.

It has been a while since I checked the odometer since I haven't been driving it but I'm wanting to say the truck has 74,000 miles ??!! on it.

I would be interested in hearing more when you get back home - the Edge CTS was one of the tuners I was looking at for my 2008.

On another topic, you must have a great dealer relationship if they replaced tranny on a chipped truck....

Brian

My stepson sent me a pic of the report and it states, " after tear down inspection, found torq converter failure, all clutch packs burned, heavy friction and metal contamination throughout unit. Replaced with new trans, new cooler and filter. Filled fluids, road test EEC pass, trans operating normal"

they just replaced the head gaskets around this time last year along with oil cooler, egr and radiator. So far I've had nothing but exceptional service with them.

previous dealer replaced the degas bottle twice and only refilled the coolant. Said the head gaskets were fine. I also noted with them that the transmission felt like it was slipping on 3 or more occasions. They never did a thing. Could not duplicate transmission problems or that it was drinking coolant at the time. My current dealer diagnosed bad head gaskets the first day I brought it to them and had them changed within the week which was 3 days after picking it up from the old dealer and this time they tore into the transmission the first day to investigate it.

The first call I received from dealer was they were going to replace the bad internal parts, the engineer Ford sent out said to replace the entire transmission under warranty.

I won't be taking either of my trucks anywhere else, the extra 20min drive is worth it.

on a separate note, when I get around to programming the new truck it will be with a different programmer. The Edge forces you to use their transmission tuning and their tow tune runs too hot. Out of all 4 programs the tow tune causes the coolant and transmission temps to run higher.
I tried it on 1 trip 2 summers ago and I put it back to stock tune for the rest of the trip and the truck ran 10-15 deg cooler the next 800 miles in a hotter ambient temp.

Haven't towed anything larger than 16' lawn maintenance type trailer with that truck since buying the 2011 F350 last June.

Any newer tuners will be one that I can run a custom tune for my application and choose to leave stock trans tuning for towing or custom trans for everyday driving. The new truck shifts perfectly the way it is.

mmomega said:

My 2007 6.0L transmission just went out Sunday. My and my DW are on vacation across the country and my stepson calls and says the transmission is shifting all over the place....up shifting way too early, not shifting into high gear 7out of 10 times and throwing codes.

We called our dealer to schedule an appointment to drop off the truck. On the way there my stepson calls back and says that he can't even get up to highway speeds because the truck is almost up to 3,000 rpm at 65-70mph so he pulls over, turns the truck off and waits and tries again, same thing. So we call to have it towed which Ford paid for.

We get a call 3 days ago, Tuesday I believe and our tech says he has it torn down and ready to order parts but Ford has an engineer in the area and wants to send him out to look at it.
Got a call back yesterday and our tech told us Ford gave them the go ahead to just replace the entire transmission rather than replacing parts.

I'll know more once I get home but right now the new tranny should be there Friday to go in and it cost me $50.

It has been a while since I checked the odometer since I haven't been driving it but I'm wanting to say the truck has 74,000 miles ??!! on it.

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Not surprised. From my experience 9 times out of 10 Ford replaces the whole tranny if it's warranty. We change quite a few and most would have lived longer if the filters and oil had been changed more often but the Ford people say to follow their schedule sooo...well we change quite a few Ford tyrannies that could have lived a lot longer had the filter and oil been changed more often. So change the filters more often (Ford won't reject warranty for an over maintained vehicle) and then when it's off warranty you will still have lots of good miles left. For heavy towing you may want to change oil and filter as often as 30,000 miles but 50,000 for a truck that is only used to tow occasionally is fine. There are other problems in the Ford tyrannies but they are not preventable with any maintenance so you just have to hope they don't happen to you. Just to be clear every manufacturer has their issues and Ford is no more or less likely to leave you stranded than any other truck.