Ford technician and YouTuber Brian Makuloco of the channel FordTechMakuloco has churned out his fair share of informative Blue Oval-related content over the years, including quite a few videos dedicated to the Ford F-150. Recently, that includes showing us an easy fix for smoking problems with the Ford 2.7L V6 EcoBoost engine, as well as how to fix rattles in the Ford 3.5L V6 EcoBoost and explore carbon buildup in that particular powerplant. Now, Makuloco is back with a new Ford F-150 video, this time explaining what most perceive to be an issue with gear skipping with the 10-speed automatic transmission.
Makuloco gets a lot of questions about the 10R80 and the fact that many of these transmissions seem to skip gears while shifting, but as he points out, this is totally normal and by design. The idea here is that it isn’t necessary to go through every single gear when a vehicle is accelerating to a certain speed like 55 miles-per-hour, for example, and since the gear ratios are so close together, it’s fairly easy to just skip some of them on the way up.
Makuloco notes that there’s no drivability or noise/vibration/harshness (NVH) issues that result from this practice, though the operation does vary based on the engine the transmission is mated to. Under light acceleration, the gearboxes tend to skip second and fourth gears, and this is certainly nothing new – in fact, Ford has done this in the past with some of its five-speed transmissions as well.
Makuloco demonstrates this phenomenon while accelerating at different rates in this customer’s pickup, and it’s pretty interesting to see how the transmission reacts based on those different scenarios. Since this isn’t common in the automotive world in general, however, we certainly can’t blame people for thinking that something is wrong when their Ford F-150 skips a gear or two while accelerating.
We’ll have more videos like this to share soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for the latest Ford F-Series news, Ford F-150 news, and continuous Ford news coverage.
Comments
Transmissions in ‘big rig’ trucks have been doing this for many years based on load, gradient, throttle and mode parameters to optimise fuel consumption and driveability.
Not surprising to see Ford doing this on light duty trucks.
Educating customers is key. Well done Ford.
I have a ford f150 raptor since 2020 and since 2022 the gearbox began kicking my back on shifts 3rd and 5th. I sent it to a ford approved shop and they said this is normal. I completely disagree. What should I do? Are there any more cases like this?
My 2020 F150 also shifts harshly into 5th gear on some occasions – but not always. It appears to shift smoothly into 5th gear under normal/strong acceleration, such as when when a traffic signal turns green. Into doesn’t shift smoothly when accelerating if going down a hill (and we have lots of hills where I live in North Carolina). Interestingly, the 10 sp in my 2022 Explorer shifts much smoother. Did Ford change something??
I have a 2019 F150 XLT Sport, 4×4 with the 3.5L Turbo V6. For the first couple years the 10 speed transmission rode like a dream with smooth shift through the gears whether it was normal traffic flow or acceleration from 0 to 75mph for one of the many short highway entrance ramps here around NC/SC.
About 32k miles on it when it start ‘slipping’ and ‘hanging’ between 2 & 4 and again between 6 & 8 or sometimes 7 & 9. The shifting started to get worse and quickly developed into a high rpm rev with hard slamming into the next gear. The dealership where I bought the truck, which has one of the better more trustworthy service shops for our area, (that’s a whole other story), was backed up 7 weeks for their lone transmission tech on staff to even look at it. So I had to continue driving it for a few weeks, careful not to try accelerating until after 4th gear.
The results was explained toe a collar on the shaft on the transmission will come loose and slide its way up the shaft, blocking a crucial fluid port at some point, causing the disruption in smooth shifting. $3k plus repair bill when not covered under warranty. This is apparently also a ‘known’ issue with Ford and they still hadn’t found a solution to it by the time the 2019’s were released.
Highly recommend to all, get an extended warranty for the drive train at a minimum! I also had the Cam Phasers go out on it about 20k miles later and that was another large repair bill thankfully covered under my warranty.
I love the truck still, rides good, tows good, does what I need it to, just wish Ford could fix these things before letting them continue to be costly issues for their customers.