Transmission Slip Out Of Gear problems of the 2008 Ford Taurus

On 1/23/2018, my 2008 Ford Taurus experienced, for the first (and so far, only) time, the same powertrain symptoms described at Ford TSB numbers 07-21-11 and 08-26-13 (found at. . Read more...

On two separate occassions, my 2008 Ford Taurus sel automatic transmission dropped out of gear while I was accelerating slowly away from a stop and then slammed into gear. The first time it occurred I was leaving my driveway. It dropped out of gear at about 5 mph and made a growling noise. I stopped the car, thinking somehow the shift lever wasn't in the right position, I put it in gear and the transmission slammed into first. I had my foot on the brake, so I just shifted it into neutral and turned the engine off. When I started it again everything worked fine. About a year and a half later I had a similar incident. I was leaving a parking lot and I had reached a speed of 5-15 mph when there was no longer any gear, then it slammed into gear for a moment, went a few feet, then dropped out again, then slammed into gear again. I was able to coast to the curb in a residential area and turn the engine off. Fortunately no traffic was coming. I started the engine again and had no further trouble, but this time I took it into the Ford dealer where I had bought it new. They checked it out keeping it two days but said they could find nothing wrong with either the transmission or the software controlling it. I was told that there was no memory access to the transmission so that they couldn't find out or verify that there was a problem. I was checking out recalls and service bulletins on it today and I found that other owners reported similar problems. If I had been pulling out into traffic and my transmission failed the way it did, there could easily have been an accident.