Lost my E400-OD automatic at 160K

[jtomasik]

I was on vacation in California (doing some AWESOME dirt bike riding), and I went to pick up my mother-in-law's new couch at the local furniture store. When I came outside to drive to the pick up bay, I fired up my truck, backed her out of the parking space, stuck her in drive...and NOTHING! The truck wouldn't move. I shifted down to 2nd, and it slipped a little but moved. I tried to drive the truck back to my out-law's house, but eventually I lost 2nd, then 1st...resulting in no forward drive at all.

There was no sign of the impending failure. My trans fluid smelled fine. There were no leaks. There were no error codes logged by the ECM. Shifting seemed perfect until the forward clutch packs disappeared.

The Ford dealer was stacked, but the service writer gave me a phone number of a local tranny shop. They rebuilt the trans, put in a heavy duty torque convertor, removed my Banks tranny control module (saying that puts unnecessary pump load on my trans to keep system pressures high), put stiffer springs in the accumulator (to get more positive shifts), gave me an 18 month, 18,000 mile warranty, and had me on the road in two days. Oh, the cost, including towing, was $2000. Ford would've been $3500, but that would've also got me a 60K mile warranty. Anyways, the trans shop is in Hesperia, California, and their name is A-Tech. I gotta drop a kudo to them. The truck runs great, and they did exactly what they said they would.