Hi,

I was hoping someone may have some insight into my Windstar's problem.

I have a 2000 Windstar with 91K miles. I had to have the automatic transmission replaced 3 years (15K miles) ago and it's behaved nicely until the past few months. Generally, if I'm going from stop to 55 mph, everything is smooth and perfect. Where I', having a problem is driving backstreets at 30 or 40 mph and tackling a slight grade. While maintaining 30 mph, the engine hits around 1500 rpm's and you can feel the transmission needing to move up to the next gear and it softly groans at you. If you give it a little gas, it'll shift up and stop the groaning easily enough, but then you're going too fast. If you keep the gas steady and try to maintain 30 mph through the grade, it'll keep groaning until I back off the gas slightly or manually downshift to a lower gear which solves the problem. It'll do the same thing when trying to maintain 40 mph. Once above 40, it's fine.

Any ideas what I can do to solve this problem?

Thanks.

David