An update to my post from June

Truck has spent 4 months of 9 in the shop.

catalytic converters twice, one complete set of coils, numerous individual coils, plugs many times ext. ext.

Problem is engine miss under load, that starts out as barely noticeable and gets worse as you work the truck, towing a trailer accelerates the spark plug failure with kills the coils then unburned fuel kills the cats. I tow nearly every weekend.

Anyway ford replaced the truck with a new 05 Lariat, which is now starting the same problem. Luckily the paper work hadn't been completed on the new truck.

I have been reading the posts on the vibration issue and some people have described it as coming when the truck is either under load such as on an incline or pulling a trailer.

Ford says there are other trucks with the same problem. They don't know what the problem is.

The test is accelerate your truck to the speed at which it first shifts into overdrive and the torque converter locks (thats approximately 75 KMPH in Canada), then on a slight incline push the accelerator slightly but not enough for the transmission to shift out of overdrive. If you feel a surging or vibration at this point the vibration may actually be your engine missing. If you continue to duplicate this the problem will actually worsen.

The service manager at the dealership knows how to hit the sweet spot and was able to make two new trucks off the lot do it.

Curious to know how may others can duplicate the miss.

 

i put it in the other post, but if it may cause a problem why do it?

Mac.

 

My truck drops into overdrive every time I let off the throttle and I'm rolling at 30 mph or faster. Once it does, it's impossible to accellerate lightly. A little throttle will have absolutely no reaction and heavier throttle will cause the hesitation while the truck tries to come out of overdrive, engine revs, tranny downshifts more, then the truck lunges forward. The only way for me to keep my sanity is to lock out the overdrive every time I get in my truck. It drives beautifully with the overdrive locked out.

 

The soonest I can get my truck in overdrive is about 42 or so and when I hit the gas a little it stays in OD and if I hit it hard it downshifts, no problem. I would have it check out if it lunging because it’s supposes to be smooth.

 

We experienced the same problem last night.

We were accelerating from a stop, the truck shifted through all the gears and right when it shifted into overdrive we started up a long hill. I gave it a little more gas and it started hesitating BAD. Didn't make good noises at all. We never had any problems with it the rest of the night.

This really worries me as we bought the truck for towing our Mazda Miata (5000 lb load). What are people/dealers doing to fix this problem? Would the SuperChips programmer box help this or make things worse?

I'm definatly going to put a transmission temperture gague in before I tow now that we've been having this problem.

Thanks for any advice!
--
Mitch (new member)
'05 SuperCrew FX4

 

yep. mine does it. it is very slight. not annoying enough to have to take it in for service when they can't fix it anyway.

 

Why would I be going up an incline with a load in high gear?

 

You are NOT supposed to tow with Overdrive in the first place. That is why the OFF button is supplied on your shifter.

Why in the world would you buy a F-150 to haul big loads with in the first place??? Yes, you can haul loads with them, but come on. The Turbo Diesels are built to handle this stuff. The F-150s are built for lighter duty. Get a PowerStroke, and quit wasting your time with the 5.4 Triton.

Why would you purposefully try to have engine failure? I mean, really, if you try hard enough, of course you can fail a motor.

Before you list the things you think it should do, and would do, come back to reality.

Quote:

"The test is accelerate your truck to the speed at which it first shifts into overdrive and the torque converter locks (thats approximately 75 KMPH in Canada), then on a slight incline push the accelerator slightly but not enough for the transmission to shift out of overdrive. If you feel a surging or vibration at this point the vibration may actually be your engine missing. If you continue to duplicate this the problem will actually worsen."

Were you driving along one day and thinking to yourself, "Hmmm, I think I'll try to bog the motor down, abuse the tranny, and see how much damage results?".

To the rest of you who would actually think about doing crap like this, ask yourself this question. Why?

It's not that I don't think that Ford shouldn't address this problem if it really is a problem, but sheesh people, let's retain some common sense. Don't go looking for the problems, and attempt to cause them just to show the defect. That's just insane. If it turns out that the computer just needs a small tweek, then why beat the crap out of the rest of the motor and have that much more downtime.

Just ask Dr. Stupid.

 

Just to maintain speed going up an incline, you'd have to force a downshift anyways, which brings the question up again, why are you trying to go up an incline with a load in a gear not suited for it?

 

Hey Quintin,

I just wanted to make sure that you know my comments weren't directed towards you. They were aimed at REDROZ.

Nevermind, you know that. I just read the post again.

 

I know, I'm just as curious as you are, that's all.

 

I just wanted to point out that we weren't pulling any kind of a load when the "problem" occured.

I'm not complaining about the truck, it's great! I'm just worried that when we do start towing it will happen more frequently. With my '98 STX 2WD I almost always take the truck out of over drive when I approch a hill, but once and a while I forget. My '98 doesn't have any problems, it just shifts down which normally makes me realize what I've done, so I take it out of overdrive for the remainer of the hill. No big deal.
--
Mitch (new member)
'05 SuperCrew FX4

 

My transmission shifts out of overdrive automatically when I’m towing my boat and begin to go up a hill. These aren’t even steep hills I’m talking about, they’re causeway I cross to hop from one river to another.

 

Mitch, the load thing wasn't intended towards you, I didn't mean it to come off like that. You'd have to just barely maintain accelerator pressure to keep the trans from kicking down while keeping engine speed up on an incline, and I couldn't see how that'd happen without losing a lot of speed. One of those problems in search for a solution, I guess.

 

Redroz we may have experienced what you describe while towing our pop up trailer (3300#). Feels like the slightest miss when under loading you describe, maintaining speed up a very gradual incline, one that doesn't require downshifting out of overdrive. The feeling is so slight I thought it may have been road but I have felt it several times.
Yes I do disengage OD manually as necessary while towing and wish I could further lock out Drive (3rd) and use second for steep slow speed climbs with the trailer. Frustrating to have to force downshift to 2nd with throttle only to have it return to 3rd when lifting for a sharp turn. (selecting 2nd gear manually has such reduced power I only use it for downhill braking)
I will be towing alot this summer and will pay attention to the engine.
Also.. I have already added a trans temp gauge and "missing " occured when temps were normal 140-165 ish.