Stuck In 3rd Gear - Auto

[mancini602]

Damn car. Again it's broken. I must've spent 6k on this car for repairs!!

 

Anyway...a couple of weeks ago whilst on the motorway, the car suddenly dropped from 'drive' to 3rd gear. It would not change up or down. When I got home, I turned everything off, restarted the car and it then was ok.

 

Yesterday, the same thing only this time I stopped on the hard shoulder on the motorway as I still had 30 miles to travel on the M25. I turned off the engine put the car in 'park' restarted and then all was ok again. The car went in to drive and changed up, down etc. 2 minutes later, the car did it again. It suddenly changed down on its on to 3rd gear and then got stuck in this gear but before I could pull over to stop/restart etc, the engine management warning light came on (orange engine shaped light). I pulled over, restarted etc but the car from stationary jumps straight into 3rd and will not change (can go backwards though).

 

The car has been dropped into Ford for review/repair.

 

Anyone please got any idea what this could be? Engine Management or Gearbox? Cost?????

[chromedome]

I had the same problem on an auto that I owned. Basically the gearbox is going into limp home mode for some reason. Mine was a faulty gearbox ECU however the wiring loom between the ECU and the gearbox has also been known to wear through and short out.

[mancini602]

Well...the report is in. Ford say the wiring loom is corroded, but that the gearbox may also be shot. They will let me know tomorrow if I need one or the other or both. The cost for the loom is

[MrT]

Oddly enough mine did this years ago when I put a new dodgy MAF in. I was going quite quick up the A1 and I thought I had hit something when this happened, the engine serously over-revved. I had my laptop with me (and the old MAF). When I read the fault codes, they came up with MAF-Inplausible reading and gearbox-overtorque. I cleared the faults but this happened again at lower speeds after a few miles and I stopped at the next services and put the old MAF back in. I have absolutely no idea how a faulty MAF could do this to a gearbox but it was something simple and totally unrelated so you may not have as serious an issue as first appears. It has never happened since.