So I purchased a 2005 Fx4 supercrew about 3 weeks ago. It has 31,000 miles on it. Yesterday was the first time I took it on the highway. I put on the cruise control and started hearing a pretty serious grinding type noise coming from the tranny. I had the radio on, so I dont know when the sound started. When the song was over and it was quiet in the car, I heard the noise....so it was no more than about 5 minutes. I immediately got off the highway. The sound stayed constant until I came to a complete stop....then it just went away and was perfectly silent, like it should be.

Nothing seemed wrong, so I continued on my 3 hour trip. No more problems what-so-ever...however, I did not use the cruise control anymore. I am not sure if that caused the problem, but it is looking like that might be true. After I started driving again, I noticed that my truck was registering 70mph and my gps was registering 67mph. Unfortunately, I did not notice if they were the same before I noticed the grinding noise, but, when I had the gps in my girlfriends car, the mph on the car and gps were exactly the same.

Any ideas? I would appreciate any input. I am away from my house (and Ford dealership) for the next 10 weeks, so I will be taking the truck there when I return home. Just trying to see what everyone thought. Thanks.

 

I have done a lot of searching and have found the IWE solenoid problem threads. This sounds exactly like what I am experiencing.

I have not found anything talking about the speedometer issue though. As I previously mentioned, my truck is registering 3mph faster than my GPS. Unfortunately, I didn't see if they were dead on before I had the grinding problem. However, I did test the GPS in my girlfriends car and it was exactly on with the speedometer. Any ideas on if the GPS was just off or if the IWE issue could of somehow affected my speedometer?

 

Its your IWE solenoid, I change them every week at the dealer. The location is the problem, they are right under the cowl edge and the water that runs down the cowl drips onto the solenod causing a failure. The updated part has a plastic box around it to act like a roof. The solenoid leaks vacuum and tries to apply the hub locks while the driveshaft isnt turning so syncronization just aint gonna happen for the shift on the fly. As for the speedo being inaccurate, its normal.

 

Thanks for the help. I ended up finding the IWE problem and the speedo problem with it being about 3mph off. I should have searched harder before I started another thread on these topics!

As for both issues:

1) I am getting the IWE replaced in a week, under warranty still.

2) I am upgrading to 20's in the spring from my current 275/65/18. A 275/60/20 tire will cause the speedo to be about 3mph slower than the truck is actually going. So theoretically, the speedo will be dead on due to it reading 3mph faster now...and 3mph slower when upgrading to 20's.

 

Just wanted to update this thread to help others in the future:

I made an appointment with Ford to have them check it out. They ended up replacing the IWE solenoid and also the 4x4 Motor Assembly.

Luckily for me, it was all still under warranty.