I have a 2013 FX4 EcoBoost, and today my tranny started doing the whole down-shift into 1st thing. It did it four times over two hours, locking up the rear tires three of those times. Fortunately I wasn't going that fast and was able to put it in neutral without wrecking. I went to manual shifting for the last 30 miles home and it was OK.

So reading up on this I see that Ford did set up a program under Customer Satisfaction to repair trucks with this issue for 2011 and 2012 models up to Sep 2012, but not 2013 models. My VIN decal says the build date was Sep 2012, so I would think it would qualify.

I also saw a report from a year ago that said they might expand the program to 2013 vehicles. Does anyone know what the current state of this issue is?

Oh - and if this is covered somewhere that I should have been able to find, feel free to delete or close.

 

Sounds like you need a new lead frame in the transmission. Programming will not fix the downshift to 1st.

 

Current state is they haven't expanded it to 2013 trucks, yet. When I had this problem, they only replaced the connector, not the lead frame. It's working after 9000 miles, but that isn't very long.

 

Quickest way to see if your truck falls under the warranty is to call the dealership and give them your VIN.

 

what was the part number replaced? Ford calls the molded lead frame a connector

 

the extended coverage depending on build plant ends

9/8/12 or 6/13/12

 

Interesting point. I'll look it up later.

 

Thanks all for the help, I guess I'm just going to bite the bullet and replace the lead frame myself. It's so bad now that I can't drive it more than 20 minutes without it happening.

Any suggestions on a good source for the lead frame?

 

Before signing off this thread, I'll add a couple of other details with this behavior for reference. First is that the sudden downshift is preceded by the speedo suddenly dropping to zero (including on the MPH display on my ScanTool). This is actually good because I have enough time to shift it into neutral before the downshift hits. What is not good is sitting on the side of the road waiting for it to recover.

The second thing is that the weird behavior doesn't start until the tranny warms up to around 190F. I don't think the tranny should even get close to that warm, driving gently on a cool day, and I also noticed that shutting the engine off for ten seconds and then restarting would briefly drop the temp from 197 to 170, for a few seconds. That may be the fluid level, I'll check tomorrow. I had the filter and fluid replaced about 10K ago, so it should be fine unless it developed a leak.

 

190-210 seem to be normal operating temps, depending on the weather.

While I don't think this is the reason for your issue, I believe there is a seal around the filter and making sure you remove the old seal before the new filter was installed is important.

What type of fluid and how much was used to refill it once you changed the filter?