Ford Falcon Gearbox & Transmission Problems

There's no reason to believe adding a cooler would increase the performance. I wouldn't bother wasting your money on a test.

The police change the gearbox fluid regularly because the cars are subject to heavy use, rapid accelerations and high speed etc. I would suggest you take it to an auto trans specialist and have it serviced, that’s good policy in any case, and have them investigate the shifting issue.

It’s clearly an imbalance problem; the challenge is to track down the cause. It could be a problem with the torque converters but, as they’re both long wheelbase cars I would be focusing on the tailshaft.

There were a lot of diff problems with the BA/BF Falcon and Ford was replacing them with monotonous regularity. On cars with higher kays they would sometimes fit a diff they’d removed from another car and had checked, so don’t be surprised that it happened with your car. If the warranty period is not yet up you might get some help from Ford, although I very much doubt they would refund your money or even offer financial compensation. Have a diff specialist assess your car and advise on what they can do to fix it.

The FG automatic is rated to tow up to 2300 kg when fitted with the Ford-approved heavy-duty tow bar and load leveling kit. That should be sufficient to handle your pop-top caravan.

There have been quite a few software issues with the auto trans you’ve got, and the problem is probably associated with that. You need to have a transmission specialist check it for fault codes to try and fins out what is wrong.

You should drive according to the conditions. If the going is flat it's ok to leave it in Drive, but pull it back into a lower gear in hilly terrain. If in doubt consult the owner's manual.

I would get another opinion, as I doubt it is the clutch. I reckon it's wear in the gearbox itself.

We haven’t had any other reports like yours, perhaps that’s because yours is an unusual situation and not everyone has to back up an incline on a regular basis. You might have been better off with an auto trans in your situation.

There's no system available to do what you want, and with the plastic fittings Ford uses on the heat exchanger it's not an easy thing to develop. And a note of caution from AW Automatics, who have looked at making an aftermarket exchanger, the six-speed auto tends to run a little hot anyway and replacing the factory exchanger that uses water with an aftermarket one that uses air has the potential to cause the transmission to overheat if the replacement exchanger doesn't have sufficient capacity to do the job.