Transmission slow to up-shift when engine cold?

my 18 Expedition trans has ALWAYS shifted flawlessly in my opinion. It has 40K on it now, and its starting to act funny. When the engine is cold started (60F) and the first 5 minutes you drive it easy,..... When it goes to upshift, there is a much more noticeable delay in the shift and it stops accelerating for a full second and then upshifts and then accelerates as it should. It does this on all the first 4-5 shifts getting up to speed. Once it warms up (5 minutes maybe), this BS all stops and it shifts normal again.

Is this some stupid Software Update that ford recently did, or have any of you experienced this? I hate to even waste my time at the dealer now, because that means taking it the day before and letting it and then the tech will just say its normal, so screw them at this point. Anyone else have this issue and get it resolved? I have 125K warranty if needed, so I'm not worried.

my ‘19 does this EVERY time i start it up & drive gently when it’s cold / but only seems to be between 3-5 like it’s trying to figure out whether to choose 4th or 5th.

has done this since i got it at 35k 2yrs ago - no software updates - not sure if same but sure feels like it gets stuck between the gears. 5 minutes later drives fine / only the top of the morning first shifts. if i warm it up , doesn’t do it. 2wd / 4wd acts the same

lv2drive said:

my ‘19 does this EVERY time i start it up & drive gently when it’s cold / but only seems to be between 3-5 like it’s trying to figure out whether to choose 4th or 5th.

has done this since i got it at 35k 2yrs ago - no software updates - not sure if same but sure feels like it gets stuck between the gears. 5 minutes later drives fine / only the top of the morning first shifts. if i warm it up , doesn’t do it. 2wd / 4wd acts the same

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Pretty similar to mine. It just started doing this, so I haven't paid real close attention, but its getting annoying now that it does it daily. By the time I realize/remember that its doing it, its already changed gears, so I can't look at the gear indicator to see what gears its changed. I'll TRY to look closer. Its a real hassle, because if I pull out into some traffic , I try to accelerate enough to not annoy the other cars, but it hesitates SOOOO munch in between gears now that it feels like you aren't getting up to speed in time. (obviously the engines cold, so I'm not hammering it hard)

My wifes 18 Navigator did this exact same thing, but hers was sooo much worse. Like hers literally took 3X as long in between shifts and absolutely stopped accelerating completely and they when it upshifted, it threw you back in the seat because you continued to add throttle input to get moving. It was nearly violent. I sold that POS thinking all those things were behind me.......

Deadman said:

my 18 Expedition trans has ALWAYS shifted flawlessly in my opinion. It has 40K on it now, and its starting to act funny. When the engine is cold started (60F) and the first 5 minutes you drive it easy,..... When it goes to upshift, there is a much more noticeable delay in the shift and it stops accelerating for a full second and then upshifts and then accelerates as it should. It does this on all the first 4-5 shifts getting up to speed. Once it warms up (5 minutes maybe), this BS all stops and it shifts normal again.

Is this some stupid Software Update that ford recently did, or have any of you experienced this? I hate to even waste my time at the dealer now, because that means taking it the day before and letting it and then the tech will just say its normal, so screw them at this point. Anyone else have this issue and get it resolved? I have 125K warranty if needed, so I'm not worried.

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@Deadman my 2019 is doing exactly what you are describing. Just curious if you ever got it resolved and what the fix was? Thanks!

I just dropped my 18 Max Plat off at the dealership for this exact reason. For me I would back out of my driveway like normal but when I shift to Drive, it felt like limp mode. No power, RPMs drop to idle no matter how much gas I was giving it. Other times the RPMs would increase with throttle response but felt like the torque converter was slipping and no power was getting to the wheels. This also only happens in the first 30 sec. Once I am up and moving it never happens again. We will see what the find.

HansS said:

@Deadman my 2019 is doing exactly what you are describing. Just curious if you ever got it resolved and what the fix was? Thanks!

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Some here, 2019... It is the shift from 4-5 for me and started around 40K miles. No software update, but, trans did get reset and re-learning did its thing prior to this... I no longer use eco mode, not sure if they had/has any bearing on it...

byathread said:

Some here, 2019... It is the shift from 4-5 for me and started around 40K miles. No software update, but, trans did get reset and re-learning did its thing prior to this... I no longer use eco mode, not sure if they had/has any bearing on it...

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Interesting you mentioned that this didn't start until the trans got reset and re-learning did its thing". Now that you mention that I believe the dealer did that same thing for mine when the cam phasers were replaced. Don't recall it happening until after that. Last week I used the forscan tool to reset the adaptive learning so I guess I will see how things go as it "re-learns". Not sure how long that is supposed to take. This does seem like a computer problem versus mechanical.

I also have this exact same issue... I never took it in because once it was warm it shifts great. (And I hate going to dealership)

Please post back if there is a solution to this.

From what I have observed it seems that the reason this weird shifting behavior is seen when the engine is cold is because of the slightly higher RPMs and seemingly the computer gets "confused" on which gear to shift the transmission into. As soon as the RPMs come down to normal the weird shifting pattern goes away.

Just curious if others see a similar pattern?

As @TheDoug mentioned, please post a solution if you have come across one.

I ended up getting the cam phasers replaced, which I needed, but they assumed that was going to fix the shifting problem and didn't do any additional investigation. I can say the slow shift when cold is still there. I am in chicago and park outside. Today I let the car fully warm up in the driveway while I cleared off all the snow and the RPMs were back down to low idle before I backed out. I can say high RPMs is not my root cause. I still lean more toward cold trans fluid causing slow shifts.