Hard shift 1st to 2nd in 2000 E350 15 Passenger Van

[DJTex2010]

I picked up a 7.3 15 Passenger Van for our family traveling rig. It's a one owner van with around 90,000 miles - auto, XLT.

It runs good, drives nice and has cleaned up pretty well after being used pretty hard as far as lots of children in it, but it has not pulled and has basically been a run around town and travel rig. It doesn't have any blow by, and acts like it wants to get closer to 20mpg than 15mpg if we are nice to it.

I knew when I bought it that it had a hard shift from first to second. From my research, I think it's a broken spring in the valve body, but I'd like the opinions of the learned members of the forum on it.

It is an Oct. 99 manufacture, with a Nov. 99 build date on the tranny. Accordingly, it should not have the dreaded mechanical diode unless there's some special application for the vans of which I'm unaware.

I'm thinking a valve body from BTS will both solve the hard shift and improve the tranny's performance and longevity.

If that shores up the tranny, I'll probably go with some tunes from Jody and some kind of gauges or monitor that will tell me what's going on. That and a BT Muffler or something similar and I'll probably call it good.

Am I on the right track?

Thanks for your input.

DJ