My 14 year old son just bought a 1991 F250 7.3 Diesel. It has the E4OD transmission and we recently just had trouble. My wife was driving it down a gravel road and it suddenly quit pulling up a small hill. We were doing about 35-40. I was in front of her and I turn around. She had shut the engine off and when I restarted it pulled fine. Since there did not seem to be a problem we drove it. We came to a stop sign and it quit pulling again. Would not pull in any gear or reverse. We check the fluid to see if it was low and it was not. We turned off the engine and restarted it and it pulled fine. We drove it several miles and pulled in our driveway which has a small hill and we stopped. It quit pulling again. We turned the engine off for 5-10 sec and restarted it and again it pulled just fine in all gears. When I say fine I mean really good. Transmission is not hot and when it is pulling it will pull fine and shifts fine. I have been told this could be due to the filter falling off or at least drooping down. Fluid is Red not brown. All transmission fluid smells burnt to me so I don't know if it is burnt or not. Any advice on this would be great. My son isn't down in the dumps yet, but it won't be long.

 

Welcome to the site..

OD light flash when the issue happens?

Being the shifts are all positive and no apparent slipping of shift timing/point problems should rule out normal wear part failures. Could be solenoid pack control, or connector corrosion issues. There's a re engineered updated harness connector for the trans connector if it's having problems. If it were a filter/fluid pickup issue doubt it would be intermittent or follow a engine restart correction. 4x4?

 

Hayapower. Thanks for the reply. I see your point. No flashing light that I saw or my wife. There is a module on the bottom of the truck on the passenger side. This module seems to plug into the transmission I think. Haven't looked that close. My son drove it on our farm yesterday and I wonder if it may have loosened this connector. I have no idea what the module does. It is about 3 x 3 square. I will say this. It has a banks turbo kit on it. Is it possible this is some sort of add on module from banks or do you know. Yes it is a 4X4.


BTW, nice line up of vehicles. My kind truck, my kinda car, and my kinda bike. I used to have a Honda 600F2. It would top out at 165 mph and would take any stock 1000 or 1100 in a drag race.

 

If it has a Banks Turbo, chances are someone added a Banks TransCommand.

Firms up the shifts, shift points, and tweaks line pressures. Could be a problem with the stock E4OD harness connector and/or the commander harness. Generally, there should be a bypass plug connector to cancel out the commander. Would have come in the kit. If a new to you truck,, it may be in the glove box or? Could be a problem with the Banks module unit and a bypass would help to eliminate and diagnose. Might check for loose or corroded pins, or any that might have pushed back..

Reason I asked if 4x4 or not, is that 4x4 has a deep trans pan, and sometimes a service will get a shorter 4x2 filter install and they can drop off, but again, intermittent doesn't really follow a filter issue..

Thanks on the rides.. A bit of an adrenaline junky, and rarely ever sell anything. Need to practice letting go

 

Ok. I think it is fixed. Dropped the pan and changed the filter. Inside the filter was a square magnet. The stock magnet was gone and I guess the last transmission shop put in two 1 inch square magnets. Seems as though one was up in the filter. I believe it made its way to the pump inlet and restricted flow. I installed a drain and put in a bottle of Lucas and new oil. Shifts much better even runs at a lower rpm at 65 mph.