98 Contour, 2.5L CD4E. 130K miles.
Wife called last night while she was on the way to Kansas City from St Louis. Reported harsh shifting started about 75 miles into the 200 mile trip. She was 197 miles into the trip when she called.....go figure....
I had her use 2nd for all low speed driving and told her to manually shift into D when she got up to speed (she was in stop-n-go construction at the time).
Recent history: Car has been exhibiting intermittent shifting problems that began, coincidentally, with a PCM replacement in early Feb at a Ford dealer for an emissions system fault. First day I picked it up, I drove it about 1/2 hour and noticed harsh shifting, a CEl, and a P1744 code. Cyled ignition, shifting returned to normal, and cleared code the next day. Transmission appeared pretty normal until last week when the wife indicated the sypmtom was re-appearing.
I had just flushed the tranny about 2-3 weeks ago. After doing some research here, I bought and installed the new Ford design TSS on Wednesday. Drove car about 100 miles that day, drove perfectly. Wife drve it to work the following day (80 mile RT), but didn't mention that it had started shifting harshly again after driving a distance. For some reason, she decided to take it to KC anyway instead of the 94 SHO...
I suspect that it's lost control of EPC pressures whether due to mechanical failure in the tranny (VB, probably), or that the computer is operating the tranny in "failsafe" mode.
My immediate question is:
What driving advice can I give her that will maximize her chances of getting the car back home that do not involve either AAA or a tow dolly?
She'll be heading back sometime on Sunday, but I'm scheduled to work both this afternoon and tomorrow, so I can't easily drop everthing and run across the state to retrieve her and the car.
Once I get it home, I can do some diagnostics on it and make the necessary repairs, but I need to get bot the car and the wife home first...
Thanks,
Steve
