AUII slow/slugish acceleration from a stanstill

[dc33]

Hi all,

During the past few weeks our AUII which gets used primarily for school drop-offs and pick-ups has been playing up intermittently.

The issue with it is that (mostly as of late) when accelerating from a standstill the car is VERY sluggish and the engine labours to get up to speed but once at 40+ km/h it's ok.

The other day I drove it on the freeway and noticed the revs were a bit high for a speed of 90-100 so I started playing with the overdrive button/ gear selector by going down a gear and noticed there was no change i.e. the revs remained the same and no gear change happened. So I concluded that my 4th gear (overdrive) was not kicking in hence the high revs. Funny enough, on the return trip, the car took off rather fast and had overdrive..??? - go figure !!!

I played around with it on another occasion when it was behaving the same way, and what I did was to remove/replace the spark plug/ ignition leafs whilst the car was running - and to my surprise when I drove off the engine responded just as it should.

I have so far concluded that 1st and 4th gear are not being selected by whatever it is that tells the gearbox to select the required gear.

The problem is obviously electrical but I have no idea what it could be.

Does anyone had any similar problems and if so how was it rectified?

Cheers

[TheInterceptor]

Firstly, does it change gear or does it sit in the one gear? Could be in limp home mode (LHM). Its a safeguard for the g'box, stays in 3rd gear to protect itself.

Secondly, wrong section mate!

There are two sections where you can post this and get some answers:

Contemporary section: http://www.fordforums.com.au/forumdisplay.php?f=30
And..
Aufalcon.com(.au) section: http://www.fordforums.com.au/forumdisplay.php?f=241

You'd probobly get more informed answers from the aufalcon.com guys.

Unless a mod moves this, you're welcome to repost in those areas.

Cheers

[frd906]

Could be the lock up converter or the solinoids, When was the last service?, Or s7 solinoid which controls the lock up is playing up, which is a bastarted to replace as its a gear box out job

[03 GHIA]

I'd be looking at getting the gearbox checked out as soon as you have the time. When the gearbox in my EA went the symptoms were the same, however i also had no reverse. It had been messing up for a while beforehand on occasion but i left it too late, resulting in a rebuild (that'll teach me for having a few hundred kg in the boot on a day over 40c).
How many K's has your car done? Might be worth checking the gearbox oil level and seeing if it smells burnt or looks brownish.

But yeah, if you don't have 1st at all, and 4th is being picky get the gearbox checked.

[SSD-85]

If it stays like this and doesnt change back to normal ever, Time for a transmission rebuild.

If it does temporarily rectify itself (like you said with your return journey), id be looking more towards your inhibitor switch. Hopefully its this as its a cheap problem to rectify.

Either way, having it plugged into a diagnostic system will bring up the error codes.

[dc33]

Originally Posted by TheInterceptor

Firstly, does it change gear or does it sit in the one gear? Could be in limp home mode (LHM). Its a safeguard for the g'box, stays in 3rd gear to protect itself.

It's on second gear and then up to third only. Does not go up to 4th not does it go down to 1st.
Cheers.

[dc33]

Originally Posted by Scotty85

If it stays like this and doesnt change back to normal ever, Time for a transmission rebuild.

If it does temporarily rectify itself (like you said with your return journey), id be looking more towards your inhibitor switch. Hopefully its this as its a cheap problem to rectify.

Funny enough, after posting this query, the car has been behaving ok as far as starting off in first and moving all the way up to 4th gear. I don't know if it has anything to do with it but I disconnected the battery for an hour or so to see if the ECU would reset or something and it seems to have done something, but then again it could be just coincidence.
Cheers.

[frd906]

Take it to a gear box place and get them to hook it up to a machine to check the operation of the gear box out

[dc33]

For those who may be interested, I took the car to a local transmission place where the car's computer was looked into for any possible codes which could shed some light into the problem.

As it turns out, the ECU provided error codes for one of the solenoids (B I think it was). The mechanic replaced it and now the car is back to normal.

Hope this may be able to help someone else sometime.

Thanks @frd906 for your suggestion.