[J-Willie]

Greetings all,

Been searching every resource I can but I cannot find an answer to my problem!

1998 3.0L Windstar 142,XXX miles, production date of 4/97

Replaced the transmission ourselves with a reman unit and after a lot of cursing and rusty parts breaking, etc, everything was back in place except for one problem. The speed sensor is a different type.

The old transmission had the typical speed sensor gear/shaft that is driven off of the final drive unit, big bulky sensor which I assume to have an analog output.

The new transmission has the output shaft sensor, sort of in the middle of the case, and I also assume a digital signal.

The new transmission has a block-off plate installed where the older style sensor should be installed. Well the crappy part is the plastic helical gear on the final drive unit isn’t installed so I can’t even install the old sensor on the new trans.

Clearly this should have been caught before the transmission was installed but the lack of missing a family vehicle and how crappy the job was, well we messed up. So we called the company and were told that as of recently they are now putting both sensors on the transmissions to avoid this exact problem and our only option was have the old one sent back, install the plastic gear for the old sensor, and re-install it. The thought of having to do the job again is aggravating and I really can’t justify the labor expense of a shop R&R’ing the trans.

First thing I did was hook the new sensor up to the car, just to see what happens. Well going about 15 miles down the road reads out to about 140 on the speedo, no dice because the transmission freaks out thinking we just accelerated from 0-60 in .2 seconds.

So after seeing the the sensor was sending far more information that it needed to I tried a variable resistor in line with the sensor to the ECM which helped a ton but the speedo still doesn’t work right. With the right amount of resistance the transmission shifts up perfectly but doesn’t have good downshift quality since it still doesn’t know how fast it is going.

Now if you haven’t figured it out I am trying everything I can think of to avoid having to replace the transmission, again. I then tried to figure out when ford did the sensor switch from the VSS to the OSS but couldn’t find a clear cut answer. The best I could do was 98-99 was when they switched over. Maybe mine being an early production is why I had the VSS.

I was able to attain an ECM from a 99 3.0 Windstar for very cheap and was hoping there were VERY few changes if any (the speed sensor being one of them) that happened over the year. I couldn’t find any documentation as to what may have changed or even anything about this speed sensor nonsense! Well the ECM failed to start the vehicle. A 99 3.0L Windstar ECM failed to start a 98 3.0L Windstar. What the heck?

So I need help from those who know this vehicle, or ford for that matter, my expertise lies in imports so I am totally lost.

To sum things up again;

1)Speed sensor difference, VSS to OSS, when?

2)Changes between years, specifically 98-99-00, for instance ignition tables, anything that wouldn’t allow it to start

3)I can’t be the first one to ever come across this discrepancy!! Is there any way to solve this without replacing the transmission or is there anyone I can talk to? I’ve avoided the Ford dealers with this one for obvious reasons.

Help?