NHTSA Complaint #11689469 — 2020 FORD F-150

I was driving eastbound on city streets at 30 mph with my three young children when the vehicle exhibited abnormal shifting behavior, searching for a gear. Despite being in 9th gear, traveling the speed limit, and lightly pressing the pedal, the vehicle experienced a rough downshift and lost power while going up a small incline over a freeway overpass. I turned on my hazards and attempted to move over to avoid an accident, which I successfully did. The vehicle regained power after restarting with rough shifts in the lower gears. I put the vehicle in manual mode to better control the shifting, though it remained incredibly rough. The kids were shaken and refuse to drive in the vehicle. Since then, I’ve only driven it to have it serviced at our local Ford dealer. They stated everything was fine after the transmission fluid exchange and battery replacement. However, the vehicle still exhibited rough shifting behavior on the short drive home. A friend pulled codes from the TCM/ECU and found P0734-00, P07F7-00, and P2535-00. He assisted, backed up the ECU/TCM, re-flashed the onboard ECU/TCM with the latest mappings, and reset the adaptive learning. He then drove the vehicle with diagnostics equipment connected and recorded the driving data, finding that the transmission was losing pressure and the shift behavior was slightly better but still rough shifts between 2-4 and 7-8 gear. Once the drive/test was completed, codes P0761 and P2702 appeared on the reader. He explained that the issues pointed to a CDF drum defect, which has several TSB’s published. He advised me to stop driving it and reach out to the dealer or local qualified shop. I was quoted between $7,677-$8,978 to replace trans with reman unit. Vehicle has been maintained with all records on file and is in nearly perfect condition with exception of the transmission due to the CDF defect. I would love to see action taken to prevent injury/death as I could see that occurring at some point.