Ed Seymour

Greetings all,
My wife has a 1998 Ford Windstar that we just took on a day trip. The car acted nicely until we pulled off the highway. Then something happened that I never experienced before. When starting from a complete stop the car would start in first gear nicely, and then slam into 2nd. Third and overdrive gear would shift smoothly. This was followed by the “Service Engine Soon” light. This would happen every time we started from a complete stop. My wife claims that this never happened before.

When we left to go home for the day, the car ran fine until we came into a traffic jam after driving highway speeds for about 30 minutes. She would shift fine thru every gear except from 1st to 2nd. When I got home I hooked up the OBDII reader that read a malfunction code of P1744 – Manufacturer Contrl-trans. When looking up this code in the disk that came with the OBDII reader, it said it was a “TCC Solenoid Circuit Range /Perf”.

Review:
1998 Ford Windstar. 3.0 engine, 4 speed O/D automatic transaxle, 75,000 miles
Shifts fine while cold. Slams from 1st to 2nd only when hot.
OBDII code P1744

Has anyone had this problem before?
How should I proceed?

Any recommendations for a good manual? I have a Haynes repair manual which is useless.