I have an '04 Explorer, purchased in April. Up until now everything's been just fine. However, cold weather is upon us and the transmission is beginning to do something weird.
When I leave for work in the morning, I immediately hop on a strech of road with a 55 mph speed limit for about 5 miles or so. Lately, the morning temperature has been in the upper 20s. I notice that the transmission doesnt "torque lock" anymore until I'm pretty near the end of that stretch of road, even though I'm going 55 mph. During the summer, the transmission would lock right away when I turned onto that road.
it seems to me that as the temperature is dropping, it's taking longer and longer for the transmission to "lock". It's almost as if the engine has to get up to operating temperature before it lets the transmission lock, and because of the cold weather, the engine is taking longer to heat up.
Do I have a problem here, or is the transmission designed to do this? I figure it could be a government mandated emissions reduction kind of thing. You know, keep the engine revolutions up until engine reaches operating temperature to minimize pollution.
So it this normal, or should I be taking it in for service? Any advice is appreciated
dickm