bluemountain

Hi. I just registered for this forum. I have owned three Fords so far. I have a 1999 Ford Taurus with 106,000 miles. The car has been running beautifully. The "Service Engine Soon" light has come on and the shop said the Diagnostic was P1744 which is the Torque Converter Clutch Solenoid Circuit performance. The Transmission shop said that the TCC was failing and they needed to do a tear down to see if the TCC had damaged anything else. My undestanding was that Ford would pay half the cost of replacing the transmission on 1998 Tauruses or newer if the transmission had to be replaced. There is also a TSB #03123 "Torque Converter Clutch not engaging when commanded and/ or Diagnostic Trouble Codes P0741 or P1744 stored in memory on Taurus models 1996 to 2003." I called Ford today to find out about Ford paying for half of the transmission cost if the transmission cost. I was greatly surprised to hear that Ford had no such program and that there was no such TSB report. In fact, I was stupified to hear this since I had seen where Ford had paid for one-half of someone's Taurus Transmission rebuild fora car the age of mine. I also had the Transmission rebuilt on my 1993 Sable and in the result of researching the Transmission issue with Sables and Tauruses I saw in the literature that Ford would pay half of the transmission rebuild cost for Tauruses 1998 and later. That is why I felt comfortable about buying the 1999 Taurus as a used car. Does anyone know anything about the transmission problems with the Tauruses and why Ford is denying it has the program to help pay for the cost of replacing the transmission? I love my Taurus, but I feel very uneasy because the transmission is going out. Also, the heater never worked on this car when I bought it. I found in my research with the TSBs that there is a TSB for non-working heaters on these cars. We also rebuilt the head gasket last December. That is a known probelm with these cars, too.