I have a V6 4.0 1993 Ford Explorer Sport automatic trans. I started it the other day and let it warm up as usual. I went to back out and my shifter moves into reverse nothing different and im pressing on the gas I hear the engine reving but the car is not moving whatsoever. Now that I have been testing it I cant feel my shifter “clunk” into gear there is no power going to the wheels everything is running fine so I changed out my trans fluid and replaced the filter filled it back up and its still doing the same thing. Is this a common thing for 93 explorers. Thanks!
The first thing to check is the linkage to transmission .
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how many miles on this transmission?
my neighbor has one of these sitting dead in his driveway cause the transmission went kaput…
Transmissions usually go bad over a period of time, slipping more and more, or shifting badly in some way, before they completely fail. Of course, anything can happen, but it’s unlikely that a transmission will work completely well today and be completely broken tomorrow morning. Much more likely the linkage has broken somehow as @VOLVO_V70 suggests. When you shift out of Park, engine running or not, does the truck roll back and forth when you push it? Or is it still locked in position, still in Park?
Yea we can move it around it isnt locked in place everything is working fine just no power going to the wheels and not going into gear like drive and reverse I can rev as much as I want it doesnt move
How about forward gears? When you shift from N to D, does it catch immediately and start moving the car, no hesitation? When it upshifts from 1 -2-3-4 as you accelerate, does it do that smoothly, no hesitation, and no engine racing in between gears? If the forward gears are working ok, maybe it is just a problem with the reverse. that could be just a solenoid or something much less expensive to fix than a transmission rebuild.
One more piece of data: I have a 70’s Ford truck w/C4, one day at about the 120 K mile mark it started to act like yours is doing, but when shifting from N to D. I could get it to engage by waiting, trying again, etc. But over the course of a couple weeks it was getting noticeably worse. A transmission rebuild is what it took to fix it. It’s been fine since, 30 years later.
It doesnt move at all I have tried in drive reverse and towing gears nothing works. Hopefully I dont have to rebeuild the trans the car isnt worth it.
If it was running and shifting fine with no hesitations or engine surging between shifts then one day it wouldn’t engage at all, there’s a fairly good chance the problem is something simple enough a full rebuild won’t be required. If I had that problem myself I’d ask a helper to move the shift control from the driver’s seat while I was under the vehicle watching the linkage where it attaches to the transmission, looking for something that has broken or worn out or just stuck. And I’d be looking for problematic electrical connectors and vacuum hose connections on or near the transmission.
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96K miles I hope it isnt tbe tranny
I tried getting it to move today and it did I would have to floor it and then let go and it would jump forward at like 3mph it was rolling a little faster than going in nuetral and eventually stopped doing that so we had to push it back.
There’s more to transmission life than miles. Age plays a huge part in it because unless the transmission has been replaced or rebuilt at some point all of the rubber seals, etc inside the transmission over a quarter century old.
Rubber hardens, fluid pressure is lost, etc. and these problems are made worse if the fluid has never been changed. You state that you changed the fluid and filter but that brings up the question of whether or not that was the first time ever. Problems due to age or fluid condition are not proprietary to 1993 Explorers. It applies to everything.