2002 3.0 with 260,000 miles. this is the third time the tranny has been rebuilt. went to floor it to merge into traffic and it acted like it was in neutral. If I put the selector in first or second and build up speed I can then shift into drive and the tranny works fine. overdrive will work as well. I just cant use the "drive" position to start from a stop. Reverse is also the same way. Long story short, drive and reverse act like a manual clutch with a worn out clutch. This is the same thing that happened the other two times I had the tranny rebuilt and both times were at different Ford dealers. No warranty left on the repairs. Seems weird that if I use "1" or "2" and shift to drive from there it works like it should until the speed drops and it downshifts to first. Could this be something electrical perhaps? What makes it worse was that not a month before this happened I replaced the cylinder heads and the truck was running so friggin awesome! Any ideas?

 

It may be that you are just beating your truck to death by the way you drive. You mention "flooring it to merge into traffic" and if that is an example of how you typically drive then you probably should expect high maintenance costs. Remember, this is just a small light duty truck we're talking about.

I also have to wonder why you would continue to have a dealership rebuild your transmission and engine when this truck has almost 300K miles on it. At best you are only throwing good money after bad.

Sounds a lot like an issue of deep pockets overriding common sense.