In my slow but ongoing quest to put my 90LX alive, last weekend I bought an AOD tranny. I mentioned some people about my acquisition and everyone told me the AOD is the worst thing that ever came out of Ford. Why is it so maligned?
What's the deal about the AOD transmission?
Mar 08, 2005
9 Replies
I don't know why. It's not the best, but it's not the worst.
This transmission often fails due to driver misuse. Doinks who leave the thing in OD all the time wear it out prematurely due to the fact it will shift up and down, up and down 1000s of times unnecessarily from
3rd to 4th between 35-50.If used properly, and OD is only selected for a continuous 50-55+ (assuming factory gears), it will live a long, happy life.
Then why didn't ford put this information in large print in the manual.
Howard (a Doink whose AOD failed at 60K)
89 LX 5.0 vert
Fair question, and two answers are CAFE standards, and parts resale. You're one of the many innocent victims, and not just of Ford's.
Because people are idiots. Try here:
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I agree that the Ford OD is OK. We did have problems with the first one in our family - a '88 Grand Marquis - strarted to shift rough and the dealer just put some majic friction reducer addition in it and told Mom to keep it out of OD in town. Never another problem.
Have had 3 others since then - no prob.
BUT the tranys in the new 'Stangs are made in Italy, France and other places - wonder if there's a difference?
Hard to say. I only blew the 4th gear out of 5 of them.
-Rich
No it isn't... read my previous posts on that.
The guy I use for rebuilding transmissions thoughts on the subject is that they are overbuilt. I only know that before I stopped using the od in rural and/or town areas they generally would fail between 60,000 and 100,000 miles. These transmissions were from 92'?, 95', 98', and
02' year Ford Vans having from 4.9l L6 to 5.4l V-8's. All of the above had a disable switch on the shifter handle. My newest Van, a E-350 Super Duty w/ a 6.8l V-10 has a 4 speed auto /od but no overdrive off switch, instead it has a Tow/Haul switch which uses the gearing to assist slowing down or will keep the trans in gear longer on acceleration. In case anyone wants to know how it feels when you hit the go pedal, well I didn't expect 8,000 plus pounds to move as well as it does. 420 lb/ft of torque is nice....Ron
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