I've noticed this twice since I bought the Ranger at 50K miles. It's more a nuissance right now as I won't be doing any serious pulling till next year when I move furniture from this house with a utility trailer. The O.D. gear seems to be reluctant to shift. Each time it happened I slowed down when the engine reved a bit higher than I thought was healthy. I would back off on the peddle and somehow it would go in gear on it's own eventually. This it did mostly unnoticeably. Next year when I do my move and it still is not too serious I may turn OD off, and not use it, but gas mileage would suffer that day.

I have no transmission problem 98% of the time and with all the other gears, shifts fine.

I heard that this may be caused by the O.D. valve allowing blow-by of the oil past the plunger body, thus having inadequate pressure. One author suggests that a kit can be used that includes reaming out the casing for brass sleeves, and another author suggested to simply use 400 emery sand down the the orifices. The direct cause I am told is the factory drilled out aluminum wears out too fast. On the use of the kit itself I wonder if that brass/aluminum fix idea would cause corrosion problems down the road due to dissimilar metals in contact.

My question is since this is happening pretty early in the truck's life, if changing the transmission oil with new oil and thicker viscosity fix the problem for a while longer. I don't think it's been changed yet, and the oil is a nice red still. I would change the filter while I've got the pan off and fill with the best I can get. Another question, is there a way to do a real repair without dropping the trans. Getting a long reamer straight and past a chassis frame member may be a problem.

Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks for the help.

There are a lot of other inputs that schedule shift strategies. MAF, TPS, ABS and engine coolant temp to name a few. I have never sanded a bore let alone a valve. New one to me. There are fixtures and reamers to properly bore for a over sized valve in prone wear areas. Mercon V fluid is what is recommended. As far as brass in the aluminum, we bore and resize servo bores with brass sleeves with no problems. Have never seen brass used in a valve body.
Brad

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Brad
Morgantown WV
Like us on Facebook @"Otto Matics"

Update: I did a filter change and 3-4 liters of new regular merc 5. I no longer feel the hard shift and the trans is noticeably quieter. The OD problem is gone.

Hard headed as I am, I did it without jack stands. Not a good idea as I could have saved some cussing and added some wrenching room and saved the scrapped knuckles. But yet once again another thing became evident in my relation with this ford, the excellent great ground clearance over the other compacts.

I find it impossible to believe that dropping the pan, changing the filter screen and replacing 4-5 qts of the ATF solved anything. That makes no sense at all.

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