I have a 2011 FX4 screw with the ecoboost engine that I bought about 2 years ago from my local Ford dealer. Overall, I love the truck but I do have one issue. At times, usually when cold, it will shift very hard going from first to second gear. It occurs on a very irregular basis and feels like the truck is coming out of gear for a split second. The service dept. at the dealership has really done a lot to try and help with this issue. Even though this truck has the one piece drive shaft, they work on it as well as the rear end but it didn't help. Here is the thing: the most recent thing tried was they downloaded another program. This did not fix the shifting issue but did have a negative impact on my gas mileage (lost about 2 mpg). Apparently, we cannot go back to the original program. Now I'm considering buying a programmer/tuner. Hopefully, this could help with gas mileage and could help with the shifting issue. Do I have another option? Does anyone have a similar experience?

 

How many miles are on? When you say they downloaded another program, you mean they flashed the PCM to update it?

 

Has the transmission been serviced? Also, you could try a KAM reset but if it is random I really don't know if that will correct anything.

 

The truck has 60k currently. It had 32k when I bought the truck. I'm ignorant about such things, but they hooked a laptop to something under the driver's side dash and ran a program or something.

 

You could do a transmission fluid change. I'd do some research on it though. Everyone has their preferences.

I prefer to drop the pan and change the filter and just replace the 6 to 7 ish quarts (about half the fluid.) Others like the flush machine because it removes all the fluid. You're a bit before the cusp where you could still do a flush that won't result in issues, but as you get more mileage it becomes more risky and then the pan drop is most ideal.

Not saying it will solve your problem, I have rough shifts and have done the pan drop, and Kam reset and in the fall will get the pcm flashed. I haven't concluded if my shifts are better or not. Though I feel they might be.

 

They just tried to see if a new oem tune would help. but that new tune is less aggressive than what you had and hurts performance and mpg. Had the same thing happen to me... Only a tune will help now...and will return your mpg and give even more performance. Lots of opinions on tunes here (some are good opinions - others are poor bc they speak out of their azz and are keyboard warriors). All tunes are around the same cost give or take. Make sure to get the canned sct tunes as well so you have those in addition to the custom ones.


This just in - some tuners have memorial day sales - so consider this weekend maybe.