Hey Everyone,

Its me again, the new guy with all the questions, with yet another question!

My 2000 S-Type (3.0) is not my daily driver, but something I like to drive every now and then. I know it has its problems, i.e. AC not quite cool and a slight coolant leak. I believe I have the crappy coolant container that they know is prone to leaking.

On hot days, the car has a hard time getting into 2nd gear I believe, and the transmission slips and then catches again in 1st. So, for example, I'm driving down a city street and as soon as I get up to 20 mph or so, the RPMs start climbing and I have to let the car slow down and catch itself. Also, the car is not in sport mode when this is happening.

I don't receive any fault codes or error lights on the dash when this happens, and it's not like the car was thrown into limp mode. I've taken it in to the shop and they've scanned the car, ran it through its tests, and they can't find any reason why it's doing it. They suggest though that I might have to rebuild the transmission.

The last time this happened, the tech took a look at the car and noticed that the transmission fluid was low. They replaced the transmission fluid and the car ran well for a while. Fast forward to yesterday and on a hot day I ran into the same problem.

I was wondering if anyone has run into something similar. It seems odd though that the car is having transmission problems but not throughing any error codes or indicator lights.

 

I have the same problem. I'll drive normally then all the sudden I will feel a pop from the car trying to shift gears or something. It also pops on me when I throw it from park to reverse and to drive.

 

OK, here's my 2 cents, for what it's worth. Luckily you have the Ford 5 speed trans. I say luckily because a service is relatively cheap. The Ford trans takes a conventional fluid where the newer ZF uses "liquid gold". Take it to a trans shop and have them change out the fluid and filter, plus check for any leaks. It may be loosing fluid only when driving (trans fluid under pressure) so you may not see a spot when it's parked. Hopefully there hasn't been any permanent damage. How many miles are on your car? My experience with automatics has been if you service them every 40k, they will last.

 

I have about 74k miles on my car. I will take it back to the shop and have them do what you talked about. Shouldn't be too bad.

Thanks!