I have a 97 F-150 with a 4.6L, 4 spd AT w/OD, with 138k miles on the clock. This truck starts and runs very well given the number of miles.

In the last year or so I have noticed that it is taking almost five seconds to shift into drive. It doesn't matter if I'm shifting from park or reverse, warm or cold weather, warm or cold operating temp, it just takes its time dropping into drive. The tranny drops into reverse nearly immediately.

I had this happen with an older ford years ago with the C-4 tranny. I never fixed it, I swapped it out with another tranny. That fixed the symptom, but I never had to deal with the problem itself.

With that old tranny, I believe it was a problem in the valve body (vacuum operated, isn't it???) being sticky. With this newer tranny isn't the valve body electronically controlled? There are no stored codes.

I just had the tranny serviced 6 months ago with no improvement noted. The Ford service dept. performed a routine service and flushed the fluid only. I didn't discuss this problem with them at the time.

Are there any ideas out there? Is it something I could fix, or should I once again consider a swap from a doner vehicle???

Thanks for reading my rant.

Rodney

 

Nah, why jump to changing a transmission when is could be a simpler problem.
The pressure is not coming up as fast when the valve body is operated.
A good shop should be honest in evaluating the operation without jumping to replacement or rebuilding right away, before you know what the deal is.
The replacement may not be so good after all the work and expense unless you have a shop do it and must be right when you get it back.
This trans is not at all like the old C4s'. It is fully electrically operated by the computer.
I'm not trying to ofend you but this is a new day and no longer very simple.
I think you need to at least look at the possibility of diagnosis for a simpler repair first.
Take care.