Transmission kicks out of gear when trying to accelerate
 

Hey guys I'm new to this forum stuff so please bear with me. I'm in desperate need of help trying to figure out what the heck is going on with my tranny. My truck has the 4.6L v8 w/the 4R70W tranny. It all started with it kicking going into 2nd gear one day and then slowly started kicking more frequently over a couple of weeks. After a while I just got used to babying it getting to speed. That or I had to shift it manually to prevent it from happening.

Well a couple of months ago I was driving down the road and I went to pass someone, so I got into the gas and my truck made a subtle jerk and redlined. I got out of the gas and the tranny immediately slammed back into gear. Freaked the hell out of me. So as I gather myself I figured we'll just take it easy and get back home. Well once again another odd issue popped up. I came to a red light backed up in 5 o'clock traffic and I'm on a hill... next thing I know my truck starts rolling backwards as if I was in neutral. But I hadn't messed with anything. It took a couple of minutes for me to get it to go back into drive after running it through all the gears (1st, 2nd, Drive, Neutral, then Reverse) and reverse was the only thing to make it catch again. after that it just kicked into 2nd here and there but that was it.

But here I am about a month after that incident and now my tranny will kick down into 1st after a second or two of going into 2nd and will ride the gear until I shift the gear shifter into 2nd and force it. It also has now decided that when driving down the road that if I have overdrive OFF that it will make this ungodly sound like a semi trucks fan working over time and has maybe a metallic sound to it. But tonight it has forced me to keep overdrive off cause if I leave it on and try to pick up my speed, the RPMs just climb to redline and the truck goes nowhere....

ive been told this is clearly a tranny issue and I tried some Lucas oil stop slip and it fixed the kicking into second gear but EVERYTHING ELSE is still not working right.

PLEASE HELP

Sounds like time for a rebuild. What year is the truck?

You could scan the OBD2 for codes, you need a scanner that can read Ford transmission codes.

It's a 97 with a little over 200 thousand miles under its belt. And I had scanned the system completely and ran a system check on everything I could and nothing came up accept that I have an Idle Air Control problem and Insufficient EGR flow which were both there years ago. I mean she burns oil like it was apart of her diet. Lol. But all jokes aside I'm young, low on money, and have a baby due next march. So I'm counting pennies and trying to fix the source unless my tranny is a total loss.

Any idea on on how much this kind of stuff cost and time it takes to fix, drop the tranny, rebuild it, or the likelihood of a somewhat knowledgeable guy like me doing it myself would take?

or how to diagnose the cause myself?