I have a 1997 F150 4x4 5.4 111,000 miles. Vehicles has been well maintained and not abused. Recently, the IAC valve started making a whistling sound. I am changing this saturday. Two weeks ago while driving around 60mph, the OD light started flashing. I pulled over and checked everything and restarted the truck. Light went out but started again. Stopped and this time the light went out. Drove approximatley 100 miles and the light did not come on. Problem is now the OD off button won't come on... Truack runs fine...Any clues

 

Take it to a dealer or a tranny shop that has a code reader that can read out Ford transmission codes.

 

I had a 98 explorer that did the same thing. Torque converter wouldnt go into lock up, so it needed to be replaced. Hope this isnt it for you. Good luck.

 

There are several dozen things that can go wrong with the tranny that will cause the light to come on.

Until the fault code is read, it is pointless to guess or to relate one specific failure on a different vehicle.

Steve

 

I would doubt that you have serious transmission problems at that mileage as long as the truck has been treated well. As said before though, the code should be able to give you a pretty good idea of what might be wrong.

 

Same thing happened to me with an Explorer at 100k miles.


Like others are saying, get the code pulled, or get a scanner and pull it yourself. can you tell if your torque converter is locking up? I could tell mine wasn't, but the code confirmed it. There are a lot of things that could cause the light, there are a lot of shift solenoids in there that can go bad.

Does it shift hard once the light is on?

 

A regular OBD2 scanner like Autozone uses can't pull tranny codes.

 

Advanced pulled mine back then without a problem.

 

There are different levels of capability among low- and mid-range readers and scan tools.

The most basic will read only "generic" codes, those P1000 and under uncluding the "basic" transmission fault codes. These typically sell for under $150.

The next level of performance are tools that support "manufacturer-specific" codes. This is your keyword for selecting a scan tool that will read all of the transmission fault codes.

You have to ask the parts counter drone what level of capability is available with the scanner for their "free" service. Different stores have different units. You have to ask and find out in order to avoid getting a false "no code" read.

Steve

 

Apparently the Advance I went to at the time had a good scanner then, it was a very specific code(s).

 

In the real world, all vehicles that have been treated well would be around still.

Otherwise, that's just a possibly very expensive guess.