AUIII Fairmont Auto

[BrewAUIII]

Hi all, new to forum. Picked my new ride up yesterday and went for a good run today. I purchased a 4 year warranty so the following problem will be sorted asap. The car is jumping down a gear when it warms up when travelling at about 60kph. Also when you come to stop at the lights there is a clunk which i assume is the auto dropping back to 1st but once again it only does this after its warmed up. Even at 110kp/h with the cruise on it seems to be dropping in and out of o/d. Last but not least when taking off the car almost seems to want to stall before it gets going and in fact when going around a corner today at 25kph it did stall.
Car is immaculate condition with 119k and has done no towing.
Are the AU's plagued with Auto problems?
Any ideas on what it could be.
None of these symptoms were evident when i took it for a spin. Purchased from a large dealer.
Thanks Brew

[Falcon Coupe]

Welcome to AFF, thread has been moved to the appropriate sub-forum.

[b2tf]

Gday and welcome to the forums.

From the sounds of it, the car might be low on trans fluid. Mine at the moment is low and it will occasionally slip out of gear completely - revs its nuts off but you dont go anywhere (quite embarrassing at the lights!). If its dropping back for no reason I would be looking at this first. Your warranty will cover it - get them to flush the fluid and replace it with new fluid, it should be done yearly anyway.

The auto boxes in AU's arent plagued with problems but they're not bulletproof either. For a bit of extra prevention I would look at fitting a transmission cooler (less then $200 from any good auto store and you can fit it yourself) and as mentioned above regular services will keep it in check.

While they're at it, do the diff oil. The stalling may be related to the trans - fix this one and first and if its still doing it, look from there.

[BrewAUIII]

Originally Posted by b2tf

Gday and welcome to the forums.

From the sounds of it, the car might be low on trans fluid. Mine at the moment is low and it will occasionally slip out of gear completely - revs its nuts off but you dont go anywhere (quite embarrassing at the lights!). If its dropping back for no reason I would be looking at this first. Your warranty will cover it - get them to flush the fluid and replace it with new fluid, it should be done yearly anyway.

The auto boxes in AU's arent plagued with problems but they're not bulletproof either. For a bit of extra prevention I would look at fitting a transmission cooler (less then $200 from any good auto store and you can fit it yourself) and as mentioned above regular services will keep it in check.

While they're at it, do the diff oil. The stalling may be related to the trans - fix this one and first and if its still doing it, look from there.

Thanks for the tip on the trans cooler. Will definitely do this.
All fixed now and running like a dream. All they did was clean the throttle mechanism?? Amamzing as it seems that was the fix :

[BrewAUIII]

Fix lasted a week and then returned. Took it back and they changed leads and plugs. Lasted another week.
Going back on monday. Seems worse after sitting on a higher speed for a while eg. 80 k's and even worse when using cruise.

I will take all the suggestions from this post to ford on monday. We are supposed to be going to QLD next month but at the moment i dont have the confidence to go to the local shop lol.

[BrewAUIII]

Car spent 4 days back at Ford. Had there top man on the job they told me. Reset the base idle, played with the throttle control sensor. 100 % confident they fixed it.



Lasted 50kms tonight....................Going back to them again tomorrow. This is driving me farking mad. Maybe the computer is kaput???

[5.0 ED]

Give it a service, its good for it anyway, but if that doesn't fix it, could be your throttle position sensor, or the gear position identifier on the auto, neither of which are expensive. But should be covered under your warranty.

[teabags2]

On a decent hill you will get changing from 4 to 3 and back again due to 4th being overdrive. They do sometimes get annoying when they do this. The other problems should be looked into quickly as the box may be damaged iof not corrected.

Bob

[kcej]

By law, you should be covered by Statutory Warranty (from the dealer) for a short period, depending on what state you're in.
Don't rely too much on the 4 years "warranty" you bought........
A few years back I broke the bolt that holds the timing gear on the end of the cam.
Purchased Warranty covered if the cam broke and if the head broke, but guess what?
It didn't cover the bolt breaking, so I had to fork out the 2 grand to get my head rebuilt etc.
But like I said, statutory warranty should cover it for now, regardless of the cause, as long as its not abuse on your part that caused it.