Three problems related to transmission shudder have been reported for the 1999 Ford Windstar. The most recently reported issues are listed below.
My wife was driving our 1999 Ford Windstar and without any prior events, the transmission started to "slip" when taking off from a start. She promptly drive home 1. 5miles and by the time she got home the van could not be driven because the transmission shuddered so bad when you stepped on the accelerator. We had the van towed the next day and were given news of a transmission failure and a $1900 repair bill. The car only had 57,000 miles.
Constant transmission shudder during upshift. Unlike the TSB dealing with shudder while cornering, this problem occurs all the time. Mechanic indicates that likely cause is failure of the piston in the foward clutch. A very common problem in Windstars. Consequently, it causes insufficient acceleration form a stop making crossing intersections unsafe.
Leaving a filling station and returning to the street attempting to stop because of traffic the transmission made a grinding noise, the car kept moving, the engine was not reving up but the van kept moving, I steered to the right as much as I could I was almost side siped by a 18 wheeler. After reaching the street I let up on the brake pedal and the van coasted to a stop. I took it to the garage today and they check the abs brakes but found nothing wrong. It appeared to me that when I stepped on the brake the transmission styed engaged , because when the car came to a stop the grinding noise stopped. The garage did not check the transmission, they felt it couldn't happen. I'm 74 years old in excellent health. The motor was not reving up so I did not have one foot on the gas peddle, as they assumed I did. I tried sat with 1 foot on the gas and the other on the brake and the car would not move. So in my opinon it had to be in the transmisson. If that 18 wheeler would have hit me they would have said the driver failed to stop, and my wife and I would have been dead .