All are entitled to their opinions, so i wont knock yours, but i for one am not the type of person to let things go when its just plain wrong. The clunk is not normal and if Ford were to really care about its customers, they would grow a pair or a vagina (whichever is tougher, lol), and take the initiative to really figure out WHY the clunk happens, and EXPLAIN it to me. Tell me the root cause, what can be done to mitigate or resolve the issue, or at least tell me why my particular year truck cant be modified to resolve the clunk. Tell me SOMETHING other than its a normal, or its a characteristic, or its a normal characteristic. I'm not stupid, i can reason things out and i know when something's not working right. Ford said at the arbitration hearing that the truck is working as designed. Thats just dumb. What engineer said "Hey, lets design a really cool 10 speed tranny, get GM to help us, but we're going to give it a clunk at engine start!" No, the transmission wasnt designed to clunk. I have no doubt the engineers wanted to make the best transmission they could and tried to design it correctly. What i call the transmission in my truck is "working as implemented". It has a problem because something is wrong with one or more portions of it, most likely caused by a deviation in a vendor part, or how it was assembled. If it was desgned improperly, EVERY truck would have the exact same problems, every truck would clunk or sound like it has 1 inch ball bearings rolling around loose inside of it. This is not the case, we dont all have the same problems with our trucks, its how the design was implemented by vendors, deviation from the design is the fault. Ford wants to do what is called "Normalization of Deviance". Mike Mullane penned this term first in his book "Riding Rockets" (great book!) He was an astronaut at NASA and he tells how NASA found problems during testing of the shuttle, but the problems became normal and the problems were allowed to get worse and eventually a shuttle blew up and 7 people died. While i doubt we will die from a clunk issue, i dont want a company like Ford to allow Nomalization of Deviance to be ok to them and no one calls them out on it. I fully intend to start a class action lawsuit, i have the time and the drive to make Ford at least think about doing the right thing for everyone. At some point, someone is going to root cause why this clunk happens. Sorry for the rant.

 

another thing i found out on Wednesday night is that in the videos that folks have posted, when the clunk happens, if the driveshaft moves, it rotates backwards. i say backwards because when you stand in front of the truck and look at the engine running, it spins CLOCKWISE (Mr. Bashir, in case you read this, in the arbitration hearing you said the engine turns clockwise looking at the engine from the rear of the truck. wrong! Master ASE certified. uh yeah, sure.) So too, when the truck moves forward, the driveshaft also spins clockwise (as seen standing in front of the truck). So, when the clunk happens, the driveshaft moves counter-clockwise as viewed standing in front of the truck looking towards the rear of the truck, or like I called it,backwards.
truck moving, driveshaft rotating driveshaft moving at engine start and another driveshaft moving at engine start I mentioned this in the arbitration hearing, and the Ford tech replied that its because of the one way clutch gear that happens to be in the right position to allow movement in that direction.

 

It's simple: Tolerances not tight enough. Or in other words: lack of sophistication. I understand your frustration, and this coming from a person probably more **** than you. But you need to understand there's nothing inherently wrong with the transmission, so what exactly are you trying to achieve? A new transmission? It'd most likely have the same issue, and your truck wouldn't be the same, because typically techs are not that good either (lack of training) for something major like that. Or a new truck? Same thing: it'd have the same issue. I'm coming from German cars, where the level of refinement compared to most American cars is obviously better. But ALL of them are having a ton of issues as of late, for the same reasons our transmission wasn't made using better tolerances: COST. ALL car manufacturers are public companies unfortunately, which means their #1 priority is PROFITS. And that means not only make things as cheap as possible, but also do stupid things, like 'dieselgate', and the millions of recalls a year for skimping on parts. They think doing things right the first time costs more money, so no more proper R&D, replaced with using customers as beta-testers. That's why you'd be miserable the rest of your life if you want to fight every little thing you find. In this case, that clunk is not going to affect the longevity of the transmission, so that's why I said to save your energy for something that is truly wrong with a vehicle, and pick that fight. But it's up to you man. You also need to think which other truck you'd get. Believe me, I owned my last truck 20 years ago, and knowing I'm used to expensive cars mostly German or Japanese (except the 3 POS Corvettes I bought -never again), did a lot of research on trucks, and was dismayed by the awful quality of what I thought would be the #1: The Toyota Tundra. Had to quickly drop it out of consideration. That left me with the big 3. GM never again, plus it's a genuine POS inside, so not even tempted to consider it. That left the new Ram and the Ford. Ram has a ton more potential problems, but most importantly, when I drove one, expecting to be impressed with its air suspension, it drove like **** man. Suspension awfully soft, feeling like an old Buick. Engine is archaic as well, and every one of them will leak due to iron block and aluminum heads (dissimilar metals), and are much more fuel thirsty. They lack a lot of features too. And my wife immediately complained of awful seats. Nice leather, but not comfortable at all. At the end, the results weren't even close. The Platinum was miles better than its closest competitor. I knew coming in it wouldn't be as refined as my previous cars, and that attitude adjustment served me well. I was actually impressed by it, since my expectations weren't that high. If I was to get rid of it, what the hell would I replace it with? Nothing. So just like you wouldn't give away your problem child, be a bit more tolerant ... unless you have something you think is better. By the way, on all the videos I could open, I didn't hear anything. If it's really bad, then a new transmission might not have the same issue, since sometimes all the tolerances are stacked the wrong way (more common the looser they are). That's exactly what happened to all my Corvettes: freaking piston slap. With my luck, I got the worst engines. Anyway, **** people like us seem to always get the worst luck. Ha ha. That's why I learned to let the annoying but not problematic things go. Best of luck buddy.

 

I've got this random "thunk" noise also. 2018 XTL 2wd SCAB, 5.0, 3.55 electronic gearset. I notice it on remote startup from 30-40 feet away. 3600 mi on truck, its been doing it a while now. I had the PCM reflash TSB done the 2nd day I had the truck. This noise seems to have started, or at least noticed by me, in the last 2 months or so. I set the parking brake every time I park as I have not had the recall performed yet. I will ask the dealer about it when I take it in. My trans mostly shifts well without issues. I am having a problem with a lot of "small" misfire from the engine(all cylinders affected) on the mostly short trips I make. Torque app will show one or possibly 2 misfires in a couple different cylinders almost every trip.

 

Motomike, whats the torque app and where did you get it?

 

elptxjc, you didnt hear the clunk in the second and third videos i posted last night? The first video was just to show the driveshaft direction of travel when the truck moves forward and backwards.

 

For some reason, can't open the '.MOV' ones. On the others, couldn't hear anything with tne surrounding noises. I wasn't implying the clunk wasn't there, but simply that I couldn't hear it over the other noises, therefore it shouldn't be that bad. I'd be annoyed as well, by the way, since I'm very **** myself, and HATE when things are not done right, but the unfortunate reality is we're going to continue having issues due to cost-cutting, so I draw the line on issues that are detrimental to the vehicle, not annoying or cosmetic ones. Many times it ends up being a fix for those, so I just wait until it gets resolved. Or if it gets worse to the point no dealer can ignore it. Another such example is my truck whines at idle from what I think is the transfer case, but I also know it's 'normal' for that to happen, so I'm just ignoring it. It annoys me too, but unless it gets worse, doesn't let that bother me. And since it's a truck, it's kind of expected. Can't hear it inside, which is the most important aspect. And same with the clunk. It only makes it at start-up, so it has no effect on the way the truck drives or drivetrain longevity, hence I'd also live with it. One also has to think of the repercussions if Ford was to accept there was something wrong with the tranny: It'd have the potential to replace them all. Does anybody think it'd happen? I think not. But to each his own.

 

Available at Google playstore, its an Android app where you can see a lot of engine data real time and check monitor statuses. Use in conjunction with a OBD2 bluetooth adapter you can get from Amazon. I have an ELM 327 type that works ok.

 

Interesting thing happened today. The wife and I were at Lowes, we had purchased some bags of dirt. We had been in the store about 30-40 mins, and when I started the truck, it did a pretty decent clunk, and I moved it forward about 2 feet to have more room to open the tailgate and start loading bags of dirt into it (I had backed into the parking space and a car was now behind the truck. I didnt set the parking brake. We loaded all the small items into the back seat area via the rear passenger door, and then the truck clunked again after it had been on a good minute at least! I thought someone hit the truck with a basket or something, so I went to look at the front and there was nothing and no one. I asked the wife if she heard the noise, and she said "yes, its the clunk it does, it does that sometimes". I was shocked. I asked, " it clunks after its been started too?" She said yes, not often, but it happens.
WOW. Anyone else heard the clunk after the engine has been running for a couple of mins? It was NOT the AC compressor, and the truck had been sitting long enough to have rested on the parking pawl.

 

We did lots of short trips today, (the wife likes estatesales.net), so we go from house to house, spend 15 to ~45 minutes at each house. We went to 5 houses, various distances, but in each case, the truck sat for 15-40 mins. There was a clunk all 5 times, but the smallest clunk was when it sat for 40 mins. The big clunks were between 15 and 25 minutes of the truck sitting after we had arrived at a house. I dont know enough about the clutch packs (yet), so i dont know which are hydraulically activated and which are not. If fluid is staying in them and slowly bleeding off, it may be why the clunks lessen in severity over time (it seems).