VEHICLE: 1994 Ford TempoMILEAGE: 198,349 milesDRIVETRAIN: 2.3L engine, ATX automatic transaxle COMPLAINT: Transmission makes noise in reverse.
Teaching automotive technology can be interesting, to say the least. Some students enroll in my program to learn, while others come in hopes that they can use the facilities to work on their own cars. Some students want the instructor to be their private technician. The old adage that says, “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat today; teach him to fish and he’ll eat tomorrow” has taken on a new meaning for me.
1. These balls from the final drive bearing had migrated from their proper domain, into the transmission oil pan. One ball had worked its way to a point under the park pawl wheel, and when the Tempo was driven in reverse the ball would ‘oil can’ the pan, producing the alarming noise the car was making in that gear. The ball made itself a nice little dimple in the pan and stayed there.
2. When the transaxle was operated in reverse, the park pawl wheel moved across the ball. Moving the park pawl in the opposite direction quietly rolled the ball to the back of its self-made dimple.
2. When the transaxle was operated in reverse, the park pawl wheel moved across the ball. Moving the park pawl in the opposite direction quietly rolled the ball to the back of its self-made dimple.
The balls came from this final drive bearing. What was incredible was that she had driven the Tempo this way for quite a long time; it’s amazing how some of the machines that engineers put together keep operating, even when they’re falling apart.
The bearing on the opposite side of the final drive had jettisoned some plastic, but otherwise it was okay.For instance, a little more than a year ago, one of my students replaced the engine in his 20-year-old high-mileage car. He did all the work himself, spent a large chunk of money in the process (all the parts have to be purchased through the college), and then blamed it on me when his in-tank fuel pump went sour a few days later. The work he did on his car in my department had nothing to do with the failure of the pump. But because he had paid the school so much money for the parts, he thought I should have jumped through hoops to handle his problem. Well, we had a heart-to-heart talk, and I didn’t jump through any hoops. I thought he was learning from the experience he gained by replacing his engine. But he was still thinking like many of the nastier consumers I dealt with when I was in the field, and he dropped out of my program. What it all boiled down to was that he didn’t want to learn how to fix cars. He just wanted his car fixed. I’m trying to teach people to “fish” in hopes that they’ll produce fruitful labor in the workplace. Fixing cars is a serious business that is exponentially becoming more complicated and expensive – a fact that some consumers may never understand.Cheap shop?
A student came a few days ago with a power window problem, but when I explained how much a replacement part would cost, she lost interest. However, some people know full well how much they’re saving because we aren’t allowed to charge labor, and they appreciate what we do. For instance, last month we did an engine swap in an ’88 Honda CRX. The car had a good engine, but it had been flipped. The replacement vehicle the owner had purchased was another ’88 CRX, but it had a bad engine. The crashed CRX was a 1.6L SI, while the replacement vehicle was a 1.5L DX, with a different type of fuel injection. We made it happen with $425 worth of parts. It’s amazing how rapidly the little things can add up on a repair order, and even I was surprised at how high the parts bill was, but he never even blinked when I presented it to him.The blue Tempo
One of the first big jobs I allowed the students to tackle was a ragged 1994 Ford Tempo with a noise in reverse. The girl who owned the car was enrolled in one of the other programs at the college, which qualified her to have the work done in my department.When I sat down in the car and started it, there were noises coming from everywhere. The car was a tow-truck ride away from the boneyard; there was more wrong with it than there was right. Although it did start and it could be driven down the highway, the front and rear engine mounts were both separated, and the powertrain was try-ing to jump out of the car every time we put it in either forward or reverse. The engine seemed noisy, too, but our initial focus was on the transmission noise she was complaining about.There was a very peculiar popping sound that came from the transmission in reverse. It had the frequency of something dragging against the park pawl wheel, so I fruitlessly adjusted the gear selector linkage just in case the park pawl lever was somehow dragging. It was time to snatch the transmission oil pan for a look.The bouncing ball
What we found in the pan was extremely interesting: The four large balls from one of the final drive bearings were rolling around in the pan, and one of them had managed to get trapped under the park pawl wheel, which whirls near the oil pan on this transmission. The valve body is on top of the unit under another pan. The ball had machined itself a nice dimple in the metal of the oil pan. When the differential was turning in the reverse direction, the ball would bounce against the park pawl wheel teeth and ‘oil can’ the transmission pan, which turned out to be the source of our noise. In the forward direction, the pawl would simply move the ball to the back of its dimple and it produced no noise in that direction. Rather than attempting an overhaul with a group of students who had no prior transmission experience, my choice was to sell the student on a good salvage yard transmission, a rear main engine oil seal and some new engine mounts. She agreed, and we found a good one for $400. Making the swapJUNKYARD WARSLet the Buyer BewareMy students and I haven’t always been so lucky with salvage yard units. A couple of weeks ago, a student found a 700R4 transmission for her Firebird, to replace one that had practically exploded internally. We obtained the unit for $350, only to find metal in the pan, a broken accumulator spring and a lot of torn seals and parts missing on the inside of the transmission. Bolting that one in and trying to drive away would have been a joke. What I’ll never understand is how the salvage yard that originally sold that junk transmission thought they could get away with such shenanigans. That deal could have been a disaster, but the yard came down from its original price and sold it to us as a core for $100. We built one good transmission out of her original unit and the junk unit we bought.
I always liked these ATX transmissions. When I worked at the Ford dealership, the ATX Ford that was used in Tempos and Escorts seemed to be a lot more cooperative than some of the other units I was building. In those days, we were doing a lot of A4LD work, and I never liked that particular unit. There were zillions of valves in the valve body, and they were all aluminum. We didn’t throw a lot of replacement valve bodies around in those days and diligently cleaning a really nasty A4LD valve body could take a whole day.All in all, swapping this Tempo ATX went fairly well, even though the transmission was four years older than the car. One problem we ran into as a result of the model year difference was that the ’90 model inboard CV joints were a different spline size on both ends. The ’94 halfshafts wouldn’t fit into the ’90 model transaxle, so I had to call the wrecking yard to send us the axle shafts to go with the ’90 model unit.Smooth shifting, knocking engine
The replacement transaxle worked flawlessly, but with all the other noises out of the way, we were hearing an engine knock. The student’s bill was already climbing to an alarming figure, but we couldn’t let that engine knock pass. Checking the oil pressure, we found that it was a bit low, but not to the point that it should have been causing the engine knock. It was more likely that the knock was the cause of the slightly low pressure.A couple of the students yanked the engine oil pan, and we did an inspection. The main bearings looked fine, but rods number one and two had hammered their bearings out a little thin. Finding the specs and applying the micrometer to the surprisingly smooth crankshaft journals, we found a crankshaft that was actually within specifications.We installed a new set of rod bearings, plasti-gauged them to find nice healthy numbers. When we reinstalled the oil pan and fired it up, the oil pressure was a nice pleasing 50 psi at hot idle. We had repaired her engine knock for a mere $65. The car ran and drove very well when we were finished, and her bill had climbed to just over $700.Photo finish
She paid her bill at the front office and drove away on a quiet, smooth-running little machine that must have felt like a totally different car. I was satisfied that we had done her a good job that would last her through college and into her new career. A few days later, one of my guys saw her climbing in her car at the student center and asked her how she liked the job we did on it.“I liked it better the way it was before,” she told him. She fired up the smooth-running car and drove away.
To put it mildly, this was a confusing remark on her part, because we had seen her driving the car a few times and from the sound of it, everything was still as it should have been.“What’ll it take to satisfy her?” he wanted to know. I had no idea, but there’s one thing I’ve known for years. No matter what we do or how well we do it, we simply can’t control what a person likes or dislikes. That’s just one of the breaks.
A student came a few days ago with a power window problem, but when I explained how much a replacement part would cost, she lost interest. However, some people know full well how much they’re saving because we aren’t allowed to charge labor, and they appreciate what we do. For instance, last month we did an engine swap in an ’88 Honda CRX. The car had a good engine, but it had been flipped. The replacement vehicle the owner had purchased was another ’88 CRX, but it had a bad engine. The crashed CRX was a 1.6L SI, while the replacement vehicle was a 1.5L DX, with a different type of fuel injection. We made it happen with $425 worth of parts. It’s amazing how rapidly the little things can add up on a repair order, and even I was surprised at how high the parts bill was, but he never even blinked when I presented it to him.The blue Tempo
One of the first big jobs I allowed the students to tackle was a ragged 1994 Ford Tempo with a noise in reverse. The girl who owned the car was enrolled in one of the other programs at the college, which qualified her to have the work done in my department.When I sat down in the car and started it, there were noises coming from everywhere. The car was a tow-truck ride away from the boneyard; there was more wrong with it than there was right. Although it did start and it could be driven down the highway, the front and rear engine mounts were both separated, and the powertrain was try-ing to jump out of the car every time we put it in either forward or reverse. The engine seemed noisy, too, but our initial focus was on the transmission noise she was complaining about.There was a very peculiar popping sound that came from the transmission in reverse. It had the frequency of something dragging against the park pawl wheel, so I fruitlessly adjusted the gear selector linkage just in case the park pawl lever was somehow dragging. It was time to snatch the transmission oil pan for a look.The bouncing ball
What we found in the pan was extremely interesting: The four large balls from one of the final drive bearings were rolling around in the pan, and one of them had managed to get trapped under the park pawl wheel, which whirls near the oil pan on this transmission. The valve body is on top of the unit under another pan. The ball had machined itself a nice dimple in the metal of the oil pan. When the differential was turning in the reverse direction, the ball would bounce against the park pawl wheel teeth and ‘oil can’ the transmission pan, which turned out to be the source of our noise. In the forward direction, the pawl would simply move the ball to the back of its dimple and it produced no noise in that direction. Rather than attempting an overhaul with a group of students who had no prior transmission experience, my choice was to sell the student on a good salvage yard transmission, a rear main engine oil seal and some new engine mounts. She agreed, and we found a good one for $400. Making the swapJUNKYARD WARSLet the Buyer BewareMy students and I haven’t always been so lucky with salvage yard units. A couple of weeks ago, a student found a 700R4 transmission for her Firebird, to replace one that had practically exploded internally. We obtained the unit for $350, only to find metal in the pan, a broken accumulator spring and a lot of torn seals and parts missing on the inside of the transmission. Bolting that one in and trying to drive away would have been a joke. What I’ll never understand is how the salvage yard that originally sold that junk transmission thought they could get away with such shenanigans. That deal could have been a disaster, but the yard came down from its original price and sold it to us as a core for $100. We built one good transmission out of her original unit and the junk unit we bought.
I always liked these ATX transmissions. When I worked at the Ford dealership, the ATX Ford that was used in Tempos and Escorts seemed to be a lot more cooperative than some of the other units I was building. In those days, we were doing a lot of A4LD work, and I never liked that particular unit. There were zillions of valves in the valve body, and they were all aluminum. We didn’t throw a lot of replacement valve bodies around in those days and diligently cleaning a really nasty A4LD valve body could take a whole day.All in all, swapping this Tempo ATX went fairly well, even though the transmission was four years older than the car. One problem we ran into as a result of the model year difference was that the ’90 model inboard CV joints were a different spline size on both ends. The ’94 halfshafts wouldn’t fit into the ’90 model transaxle, so I had to call the wrecking yard to send us the axle shafts to go with the ’90 model unit.Smooth shifting, knocking engine
The replacement transaxle worked flawlessly, but with all the other noises out of the way, we were hearing an engine knock. The student’s bill was already climbing to an alarming figure, but we couldn’t let that engine knock pass. Checking the oil pressure, we found that it was a bit low, but not to the point that it should have been causing the engine knock. It was more likely that the knock was the cause of the slightly low pressure.A couple of the students yanked the engine oil pan, and we did an inspection. The main bearings looked fine, but rods number one and two had hammered their bearings out a little thin. Finding the specs and applying the micrometer to the surprisingly smooth crankshaft journals, we found a crankshaft that was actually within specifications.We installed a new set of rod bearings, plasti-gauged them to find nice healthy numbers. When we reinstalled the oil pan and fired it up, the oil pressure was a nice pleasing 50 psi at hot idle. We had repaired her engine knock for a mere $65. The car ran and drove very well when we were finished, and her bill had climbed to just over $700.Photo finish
She paid her bill at the front office and drove away on a quiet, smooth-running little machine that must have felt like a totally different car. I was satisfied that we had done her a good job that would last her through college and into her new career. A few days later, one of my guys saw her climbing in her car at the student center and asked her how she liked the job we did on it.“I liked it better the way it was before,” she told him. She fired up the smooth-running car and drove away.
To put it mildly, this was a confusing remark on her part, because we had seen her driving the car a few times and from the sound of it, everything was still as it should have been.“What’ll it take to satisfy her?” he wanted to know. I had no idea, but there’s one thing I’ve known for years. No matter what we do or how well we do it, we simply can’t control what a person likes or dislikes. That’s just one of the breaks.
