Good evening crew.

Since i have had my car back on the road there has been the issue of the transmission not upchanging gears on WOT. I can take off from a stand-still, open the throttle right up and the engine flys all the way up to about 5800rpm and will hit fuel cut.

The only way to make the transmission upchange gears is to let off the throttle a little, but this becomes a challenging task to get the accellerator pedal 'just right' so as not to change into third, then get back on the gas only to have the car bog down and have to think about changing back down into second again.

The current driveline setup consists of a BA 97LE with an EL extension housing incorporating an output shaft speed sender with a light green (21 tooth) gear. The differential is an open 3.08 ratio.

Now, the first thing i think of as being strange is that the gear is green, which i thought was reserved for the higher 3.23 diff ratio. To my knowlege this gear has not been changed since i have owned the car.

Do you think changing the number of teeth on the gear either higher or lower, will bring the shift maps back into range and make the transmission change gear before redline? Or could it possibly be an ECU tuning thing? Can the BA ECU be re-programmed to accept a different diff ratio?

My guess is the BA gets the tach from the ABS, you are getting it from the speed sender, you would need to match the frequency of the pulses with the BA model by changing the gear or doing it electronically. As you are quite close I would think a gear change is feasible but will also change your speedo.

It might be worth getting a speedo transducer from a non abs ute .will be getting one for my wagon as the speedo is all over the place and the gearbox shifts when it feels like it.

I would try a different sender...u need one that makes the computer think u are going faster than what u really are this would mean putting in a lower ratio sender...

u think u have a higher ratio sender....

the BAs had 3.08 diffs I think...so try a 3.08 sender or even a 2.92 or 2.77 just to exagerate the situation..this will work if BAs use the VSS for shifting like the E series do....but as has been suggested the BA may use something else like ABS sensors

That's correct, BA's use the ABS module to get speed readings. My ECU has been reprogrammed to utilise the hall type speed sender on the output shaft. I havn't had a good poke around the car to check out all the things BPT have done yet, but from memory, a frequency divider has been used. But wheather that has been used for the tachometer or the speedometer i can't remember . I'll have to find out. The speedo seems to be very close to spot on, so who knows how far out it will be if i cahnge something



I'd hate to imagine what a new item from Ford would cost haha. If that fixes your problem, it might be something to look into.

who knows what the frig those guys have been doing....and i love how they wouldnt tell u as well !!! remember when we were asking for the schematics and they said no...

frequency divider WTF!!!....

back to BPT u go from looks of it

I was surprised that i had the green gear on the sender, shouldn't it have had a brown gear? Being the car has a 3.08 diff?

Automatic BA XT's have 3.23 diff ratios and manual XT's got 3.45's from memory.

Speedo calc doc says light green 21 tooth is for 3.23.
However if the speedo is right, it probably isn't the problem unless there is a corrector in there somewhere.
Get it tuned, they can change the shift properties within the BA ECU.

Yeah, when i picked up the car from them, they ran through alot of the stuff that they did, Barry made mention of a frequency divider. Just going through the basic report sheets made up by BPT, i think this 'divider' is in reference to the tacho. So...who the feck knows

I think you'll be right though, the only people who know whats in the car is BPT, so might have to go back for fine tuning.

You will find your car has a 3.23 - ef fairmonts got a 3.23 over the 3.08 so I assume the EL did aswell.

check on the drivers side axle if the sticker is still there. I always thought auto's got 3.08's but seems the fairmont's were special.

can you change the shift points? don't think your able are you? my guess is it might not be able to change quick enough before hitting the redline?

Pretty sure they can.

Actually, if your car does have a 3.23 diff, and the BA ECU came out of a car with a 3.08, that would explain it straight away.
eg. ECU wanting to shift into 2nd at 85km/h, but due to 3.23 diff car is hitting limiter at 75km/h. Just an example, not real figures.

As a note, mates BA XT did the same thing going from 3.08 to 3.9s.
Speedo still read spot on due to ABS sensor based VSS, but would slam the limiter on WOT, he had to manually shift it.
So obviously they still shift off of roadspeed as opposed to revs, just like an E-Series.

I would get it fixed with a tune personally, rather then d**k around with different cogs trying to trick it.

Are you sure it's a 97LE from a BA? 97LE is a V8 box, I6s and I6Ts have 93LEs.
The box probably has different line pressures to what the ecu is expecting.

BAs have 3.23 as standard. I don't know of any that had a 3.08.

The manual box i have in the shed has the out put sensor for non abs units on it, i'm not sure if it's removable.. but my car read from the ABS sensor. The auto I have in the shed doesn't have the out put sensor.

Your easiest option is getting the ecu tuned, do you have a flash box? If not, take it into ford, they'll be able to adjust the shift points on the BA ecu.

I went and saw a local performance workshop today, they can sort the problem, it just involves me having to purchase a flash tuner box lol. I might go and see Ford tomorrow and see what they can do.



Now that i think about it, i'm not sure now. I started off thinking that the transmission was a 93LE, the someone mentioned to me that it was a 97LE...so now i'm really confused.

I know there are several BTR/Ion transmissions, so what do they suit?

89LE:
91LE:
93LE:
95LE:
97LE:

93LE is the ED-BA 6 and 97LE is the ED-BA V8.
91LE is EB 6 and 95LE is EB V8

Last edited by twase on Wed Nov 19, 2008 10:18 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Thanks for clearing that up for me dude