Last year I was driving home form the Fire Academy after a day of teaching. I noticed that my engine/transmission seemed to be lugging and the power band felt like I had lost a few cylinders. I checked my Edge CTS and I was not throwing any codes. During my 90 mile drive home things were not getting any better and I decide to call my Ford Service Manager (a buddy of mine) to see if I could get the truck in the next day for a lookey-loo, told him what was going on and got booked for the next morning.

The following morning I was driving to the dealer and it was very obvious that the transmission was acting up - stall shifts, extra hard in put, slipping. As I drove into the dealers lot the engine diagnostic screen threw a check transmission message and then BOOM...transmission was done. I coasted up to the service trailer.

Three days later and $3K, I have a rebuilt and guaranteed Ford transmission installed. The transmission tech said that the inside was hosed and he had no reason as to why this happened - something about a main planetary dropping. He stated that he had seen this on numerous occasions with the pre-2004's, but this was the first one he had encountered on the 2004.

This is what the bottom of the pan looked like:

 

Ya, that's never a good sign inside a transmission. I've seen a few with chunks.

 

Yeah, definitely not good.

 

It's a little chunky in the debris pile. From what I heard what was left inside the case was horrific!

 

A little bit like this?

 

That's semi-chunky!

 

Seems like I read about more and more horror stories with the 04-08 trannys, hope I don't find out the way you did. Almost seems like it's just a time bomb waiting to go off!

 

X2. I really don't feel like throwing down 3 grand ATM lol

 

Yea, these threads make me paranoid and want to go get mine flushed asap. I don't have the 3-4000 to put down on a new one since this stupid tooth issue.

Sean

 

change the fluid regularly and you will be fine. i beat the crap out of mine and it did awesome. for the 35k miles i had it for.