I overhauled sooo many E4ODs back in this era that (no kidding), I knew by heart the part number of EVERY part in them including the various part #s for the different torque converters. That is just an indicator of how poorly (cheap) engineered they were at the time. Failure forced Ford to get serious and come up with a more durable setup. GM and Chrysler decided to give up and no longer make heavy duty autos…hahah. Well, the E4OD has evolved into a reliable 4 and 5 speed trans…took 6 years just to get started but hey, we’re only 23 years since E9TA 7000 ABA ( 1st year part number). Interestingly, I think the planetary auto is on its way to the exit as regular manual transmissions can now be made to behave as autos…or perhaps electric drive or the like. Autos are still pretty inflexible when it comes to changing gear ratios…takes a design change.
The E4OD wont likely burn from hunting as it has all braking elements and no synchronous apply /release such as a band releasing for a direct clutch ( that is something that will burn up pretty readily). So long as it doesn’t get hot you can turn the O/D on and off as much as you can stomach. What’s more likely to break is the O/D planet overrunning clutch. The clutch pack for O/D will last forever or until something else breaks and gets caught up in it.
Depending on how bad the hunting is. It will still catch excessive heat from a converter clutch which isn’t allowed to lock. Seen it more times than I can count.
I remember all the changes Ford went through back then. I still get some of those old units from time to time. I think us builders are safe for a little while. Lol.
transman
Or one that is 3 times too small and often deffective from the get go…as the converter clutches in those were…really a sorry piece of engineering. I’ve seen that blue ring of fire too. I don’t know why Ford would have decided to use a 1 " piece of “toilet paper” for such an important job…it was a very underengineered in the early days. You didn’t really need to worry at all about maintenance because you’d unlikely even make it to the 1st interval before having an overhaul (no kidding at al). Changing the fluid was pretty much a waste of $$$.
You are not kidding…
transman