Limited-Edition Transmission Is Prime Suspect
Question: The transmission on my 1991 Mercury Sable failed at 61,000 miles. Ford replaced it under an extended warranty, but after only 19,000 more miles, the new transmission failed. I cannot persuade Ford to share in the $2,300 repair bill and now am in small claims court. A fatal flaw is that the turbine shaft seal was machined directly into the aluminum casting. Could you look into these problems? --B.M.
Answer: I wrote six months ago that the Taurus and Sable transmissions (identical units) do not have an overall reputation for being defective and I will stick by that original assessment.
But there are some problematic Taurus and Sable transmissions out on the road, including your AXOD-E model, and quite a few owners of these lemons have inundated me with their tales of woe.
Ford issued an extended warranty on these transmissions (under a program designated 94M84) and has put out numerous service bulletins to alert mechanics to the transmissions’ various problems.
In response to heavy demand for new transmissions, Ford also set up an exchange program with dealers that provided special pricing, according to Mitchell International, a publisher of auto service information.
A Ford spokeswoman in Detroit said that although there was no single problem with the transmissions, the company decided to extend the warranty to six years or 60,000 miles.
The issue of B.M.’s turbine shaft may point up a unique problem, but it is one that every consumer needs to be aware of.
B.M. might have gotten a limited-edition transmission, according to Dennis Madden, technical director of the Automatic Transmission Rebuilders Assn., a trade group based in Ventura. Madden said he has never seen an AXOD-E transmission with a shaft seal machined directly into the aluminum casting, as B.M. described.
Auto makers sometimes will produce small batches of cars with a particular mechanical detail and then track whether those cars have serious problems in actual usage. In some cases, these runs are as small as 500 cars.
How do you avoid becoming a guinea pig for the auto engineers in Detroit, Japan and Europe? One way is to follow the old adage of never buying a car immediately after a model changeover.
Madden is among those experts who do not believe Taurus transmissions are particularly bad. “It is a decent unit,” he said. “One of my technical reps has one with more than 200,000 miles on it.”
So why do so many people report problems with Taurus transmissions? Sheer numbers. The Taurus ranked as the best-selling car in America for many years.
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* Vartabedian cannot answer mail personally but will attempt to respond in this column to automotive questions of general interest. Do not telephone. Write to Your Wheels, 1875 I St. N.W. #1100, Washington, DC 20006, or e-mail to Ralph.Vartabedian@latimes.com.
