[Anonymous]

Got in my truck and pulled out of street. Everything was fine. Then I was at the stop sign at the entrance to my street. Getting ready to pull out on a busy road when the truck just wouldn’t go. It felt like I had put it in neutral but I hadn’t. I tried shifting gears to reverse and back to drive and it just kept making a grinding noise. I thought I had accidentally hit the 4×4 button so I turned the truck off and tried again. Same thing only the grinding go worse. Had to call AAA and get it towed to the Ford dealership. I had a feeling there was a problem with the transmission. It just sounded like it. So, Ford calls me before lunch and says they’ve been driving it all over town and up and down 37. No issue. I have an axel coupling that is leaking grease which my warranty covers, so they are going to fix that How the heck does it go from making grinding noises and not moving to running fine? Not quite believing the dealership. What could be wrong.

[Car Pros]

REPLY:

This happens a lot more than you would think. I get vehicles all the time where I cannot duplicate the customer’s concern, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem. If you heard grinding and the truck wouldn’t move in gear, you definitely have a problem, which could be the transmission. Unfortunately, the tech who is working on it needs to duplicate that problem to be able to determine what exactly the issue is. You’re either going to have to leave it with the dealership until they can get it to act up, or take it back and hope it doesn’t happen again. Usually these problems only get worse with time, so it will probably start again soon.

There is an inspection cover on the bottom of the bell housing. Take it off and check the flex plate for cracks. Could be the torque converter maybe. Flex plates may be inclined on its position.

[Anonymous]

Hello mechanic. I have a 1995 Ford-150. The automatic transmission went out. It was running fine when this happened. It sat for several months but was occasionally started to keep the battery charged up with no problems. My husband recently put in a different trans and now for some reason it won’t start. He said the steering column is also a little loose. The last time he got the truck started he had to wiggle the gear shifter to get it to start crank over. He is thinking that the problem is something electrical, but I am thinking it has to do with the trans not being lined up properly so even though it says park- it is not all the way in park gear. What do you guys think? I should add that he put a new battery and now when he turns the ignition the seat belt light dings and the dash lights come on, but doesn’t do anything when you are trying to start it.

[Protech]

Assuming this has a column shifter, the fact is loose may be affecting the shift cable. If the shift cable is not moving fully into Park then the engine will not start. This could also be a problem with what is called a neutral safety switch. This switch allows engine starting only when the shifter is in part or neutral. Which brings us back to the fact that the steering column is loose. A loose column can cause the neutral safety switch to not be in the proper range. Or the neutral safety switch can just be faulty itself. Try putting the shifter in neutral, turn the key on and moving the shifter just a little bit. If it starts when doing this, the first thing you need to do is repair those column. After the car was tight, if it still is acting up then I would suspect neutral safety switch is either bad or miss adjusted.

[Guest]

Ya it was the loose steering column. After tightening up, had to do a little adjusting, but got my ford to start all the time now. Thanks.

[Tim James]

I have a 2007 F-150 with 97,346 miles on it and the transmission did the same thing.

[Author]

Posts