avarusbrightfyre

It's a 2013 Fusion SE, I believe with the 2.5L. I'm just about at 90k miles. Definitely not within any warranty period. I did have the transmission fluid changed about a year ago as it started getting to the point that I was beginning to worry about damage from those super hard shifts, but it didn't seem to make any difference.

For quite a long time, I've felt like my transmission is slowly dying. Late shifts, really hard shifts, and sometimes violent, car jerking shifts are the norm from second to third and sometimes other gears. Sometimes it feels like the transmission just slams really hard into gear. I've always thought this was a computer problem, because when I've disconnected the battery and hooked it back up, it usually drives better for a while and then starts getting bad again. My understanding is that there is an "adaptive learning" thing that changes how the car shifts based on your driving habits. Still, the way the transmission shifts sometimes is really violent, so I haven't been totally sure. Lately, however, I've started driving in Sport mode at low speed, and I haven't had any issues at all. I may not have been driving that way long enough to know for sure, but it seems to shift far more smoothly in all gears. I'm guessing the more aggressive shift profile is either overriding some fault with the default Drive programming, or it's causing the transmission to shift at a different RPM and avoiding a possible mechanical problem that it runs into during normal operation. Is anyone knowledgeable about the transmission on these cars and whether I should be worried about an actual mechanical problem? I'm fine with driving in Sport mode if it's just a programming problem, but I don't want to just band aid it if it is really just covering up an underlying physical problem.

That's a little surprising. When I first started having issues, I brought it to a local Ford dealer (back when it was still under the 50K milewarranty), and they simply reset the trans adaptive because they "couldn't reproduce the symptom". That seemed to fix the problem for a while until the adaptive transmission started changing the shifting again back to being more harsh. At this point, I'll probably have to pay for a visit since I'm over the warranty mileage, so is there a way to get the latest firmware update without having to visit the dealer? I know that's a long shot, but I thought I'd ask anyway.

It's not a computer reset. It just returns the "adaptive transmission" to it's factory setting. It seems to work sometimes for a bit.

Hello! I have a 2013 Ford Fusion SE 2.5L and I've been experiencing rough and delayed shifting in gears 1-3. Usually it's just a harsher shift than I would expect in an automatic, which I understand is common to the Fusion. However, sometimes the RPM will rise upwards of 3500 and then sit there for a second or so before slamming into the next gear. Occasionally, when I'm in stop and go traffic and the transmission is having to shift back and forth between gears frequently, I'll get an extremely hard downshift into a gear that will literally shake the car, which I can't imagine is normal. I will note that these symptoms happen most often at moderate throttle. When I'm using only 10% or so throttle, the effects seem to be reduced (though still somewhat present), and when I'm at half or more throttle, I tend to get better shifts, though obviously more rough than regular acceleration. I have reset the adaptive transmission several times (turn car off, set key to on, hold accelerator down for 30 seconds, turn key to off, release accelerator pedal and wait five minutes with the key in the ignition). I also just had the transmission flushed at 60K miles hoping maybe it was dirty transmission fluid, but no change. I could speculate about shift programming and such, but I'll let someone with more knowledge than me propose possible problems or solutions. I'm hoping it's not a physical problem....