Ford recalls 539,000 minivans, SUVs worldwide | Reuters

better late than never i guess. hopefully they'll refund those that had to pay for the repair.

 

Here's my dilema on the re-call issue...

With 111,000 miles on my Freestar and it still shifting and operating just as smooth now as it did the day it was driven home new off the lot, I'm kind of hesitant about having a good working unit opened up and worked on by who knows who at a Dealership.

Guess I'll have to see how the recall plays out. Like, is Ford going to provide a 12/12 warranty for the repair and include any additional components that their Technician messed up during the removal, repair and reinstall of the tranny. Or is it going to be a tail light warranty?

 

re: Use Common Sense,
My feelings also. I wonder if it is going to apply to all engine /transmission combinations or only specific ones. I do recall reading something about the 4.2L engine having a different transmission. A lot of people are going to be sitting on the edge of their seats for 3 months.

 

As far as I'm aware, the same transmission is used for the 3.9L and the 4.2L engines. The transmission is a 4F50N. The 4F50N is the same transmission as the AX4N. It was just renamed to the 4F50N from AX4N in 2001.

 

I read on the Edmunds website that Ford had said the supplier who provided the torque converter hadn't properly heat treated all the input shafts during manufacturing. So the splines on the shafts would shear on some of them.
I bet if you've made it this far then it's safe to say yours was properly manufactured, hence no problems. Interestingly, it seems to have nothing to do with whether you changed the fluids regularly or not.
My theory is that the "slop" in the transmission when you engage park, reverse, or drive is what allows the input shaft to "slam" into the facing gears and put extra stress on them eventually causing them to shear. All along I figured it was just luck of the draw if you had a good one or not.

 

Dirty and old fluid also contributes to the problem. Dirty and old fluid that has depleated it's additive package will increase wear faster on a set of non-heat treated splines faster that it would on heat treated splines. Old fluid also looses it ability to remove heat as efficient as new fluid will. This also adds to the wear/stress factor between heat trated and non-heat treated components.

Regardless of ones maintenance rituals, it'll be interesting to see if Ford recalls ALL 2004-2005's of if they actually know which units got the inferior part(s).

 

Yep, its true that oil wears out. The fact that Ford recommends that only this particular tranny out of all the ones they make requires changes every 30k suggests that it's known of problems. If you change the fluid regularly on a well designed transmission then it will maintain it in proper working order as designed for a long time.

That said, there's just no way on earth that changing your oil would make a hill of beans difference in a lot of the stories I've heard. The input shaft splines sheared off on some of them before 30,000 miles!!! Before the first change was even required! The oil doesn't change the fact that some of these parts were defective and bound to fail.

Fact is, if you had a bad transmission, you would have already needed replacement. As I stated, changing the oil doesn't seem to have changed the odds on whether this occurred to you or not. I and you both got lucky in the manufacturing lottery.

 

I may be wrong, but I believe the entire production run of 2004-2005 freestars and Montereys was 200,000 or so. If they are indeed recalling 200 some thousand vans then it sounds like they are going to recall the entire run, not specific VIN's only. That's expensive! 200,000 vans x $2,000 roughly per van = $400,000,000!!!!!!!
I question if the later model years should have been included also. My brother has an 06 and he's worried his tranny is going to go out on him.

 

Is your Brother's 06 having tranny problems, or is he just worried?

I read 2 articles on the internet in regards to the recall. Can't remember where, but...

The 1st article stated that "The recall affects only those units that had the improperly heat treated shafts installed".

The 2nd article stated that "The units were not built in a VIN sequencial order".

Hopefully Ford knows which VIN got which shaft...Unless we all got the same shaft...

 

HA HA!! I think we all got the same "shaft" on this one! (good one!)
As for the specific ones being recalled, I guess there's the possibility of them not recalling them all. I wonder how they would know which ones were heat treated properly and which ones weren't?
The real question is when did they know about this from their research of the suppliers work. They really should have done a voluntary extended warranty on the transmission after finding out of the defect. It seems to have bit them in the hind end because now they're forced to recall a huge number of them instead of just doing the right thing in the first place and standing behind their product. It would've been a good customer relations move if they had extended the warranty when they discovered the defect like Honda did with their Odyssey transmissions.
As for my brother he's just a little concerned about it. Not having any problems at all though. For peace of mind I think he would have been happy if it included his but I'm confident they had if figured out by the time they built his.