As I get older, I'm not quite as sharp as I used to be. I have seen the same thing happen to my mother. I used to be sharp as a tack. I've looked at the transmission of my 96 from below while it's on the lift a dozen or more times. After draining the TC through that tiny little hole, I slowly pulled down the pan and actually spilled very little. The pan was fairly clean and there was a bit more smut on the magnet than I first thought, maybe a 1/16 of an inch. I could push the 1-2 accumulator up with my finger. I took out the snap ring and the cap came off followed by the piston and a bunch of fluid that I wasn't expecting that got all over my pants and shoes. Great.
The accumulator had NO SPRINGS on the top! Also, there was a mangled purple spring on the bottom. The lower O-ring on the old-style piston was broken. I'm thinking to myself, surely this will work great when I put it all back together as it's supposed to be, except I don't have ANY springs to put on top of the piston. Luck for me I just removed the 97 transmission and it was on the jack just a few feet away. I pulled it down, removed the piston that came out quite forcefully because it had TWO springs on top (none on the bottom). There was an orange and a dark spring on top. I thought I saw traces of purple on the inside spring. After washing the color was still inconclusive. If I had to call it a color, I'd say it was brown, which I know Ford made a brown one. It wouldn't take much convincing to make me think it was purple.
In any case, I had to put a spring in and I guessed that the mangled purple one out of the 96 would have been about the same diameter and length as the "brown" one out of the 97 so I used it on top of the updated accumulator piston. I cleaned up the pan from the 96, removed the stuck seal from the filter that "wasn't there" and installed the new filter. I cleaned up the pan, not really seeing that it didn't have the small, square sump on the bottom like 96-97 are supposed to have. I didn't notice until I went to put it one. Like I said, I'm not nearly as sharp as I used to be.
Well, I then took the filthy, greasy pan from the 97 to the solvent tank and cleaned it up since it was the proper pan. I reinstalled it using the reusable rubber gasket. Brought it down on the ground and reused the fluid that came out of it even though Grog told me not to. It was the proper color red and I know at least a gallon of it was new since I put it in a few weeks ago.
I didn't bother to check the fluid level at that time. I slowly pulled out of the shop in reverse and put it in drive. It almost stalled but recovered, which it has been doing since the first time I drove it. This tranny has some issues, I know. So I drive down my long driveway in D and it seemed like it was acting normally. I pulled on to the street and the shift from first to second seemed like a normal shift. I drove out of my subdivision on to the main road and nailed it. No slipping, good shift from 1-2 and a squawk from the single tire (open differential) and proceeded to go through the gears normally. I cruised about 80 for a mile or so (country county road) and turned around in a church driveway. I slowed to a stop before pulling out, then proceeded forward like a granny. Disappointingly, the shift was almost the same as before the piston change, with a bit of engagement in first, a little slip, then first again before shifting to second with the same rocking motion forward and back like when you shift a manual while idling and the car lurches forward, jerks back the lurches forward again. The duration of the rocking was maybe a third of a second then normal progression to 2-3, then 3-4.
I get it home and park and check the fluid while the car is level and in running in park. It doesn't even show on the dipstick. I'm pretty sure it isn't much more than a quart low. The nearest part store is 25 miles away and while I think I could drive it there with no issues, I'm just going to use one of my other vehicles to go in to town for the Mercon V.
I'm a bit bummed, but I'd say it has to be better for the tranny using the deep pan with a filter that also acts as a pickup tube. What MORON would ever run a transmission without a filter (if so equipped).
One thing this tranny is doing that has me puzzled. If you shift from drive to 2, it stalls. If you shift from D to 1, all is fine. Shift from 1 to 2 and it stalls. I am not experienced enough with transmissions to even guess what might cause this but it seems as if a clutch is engaging when it shouldn't? Any guesses?
Yeah; I don't browse the yards around nashville either. Sorry; just trying to be helpful.
