Transmission Shift Delay Below 32 Degrees

Torn o-ring? Where? Sounds bogus to me.

Manual or auto transmission?

Need more information.

How would water get in the transmission?

Automatic

The ORing is in the hydraulics used to shift the gears.

I suspect water because the slow shift only occurs below 32 degrees.

Norm

OK,

I'd think that if you had water in the transmission, when everything warmed up, the fluid would look like cream when the water is mixed with the fluid by the transmission.

Oil gets thicker, or more sluggish when cold, so maybe he's right.

I had a 1989 Ford Taurus that did the same thing in the winter right from the day I got it with 100K miles on it even with regular fluid changes.

My trick was to put it in drive and hold the brakes firmly while I worked the engine against the torque converter for 15 to 30 seconds or so with a moderate amount of throttle applied.

It just needed a little extra heat in the fluid to free up the sticky reverse valve but it worked every time and I drove it to over 250K miles before the car was just flat out too worn out to be worth the up keep.

Not real familiar with the 03, 4L60E tranny but back in the day I would have diagnosed a worn reverse band or reverse clutch pack.

I do not believe the issue is with water in the trannny fluid.

How is it shifting from park to drive?

No problem shifting from park to drive.

It seems almost too coincidental that the delay always occurs at less than 32 degrees almost like a switch.

Would something like tranny cleaner work for a sticky ORing?

I know if it is a torn ORing it won't.

Norm

Water appears to be the best option, have you drained and replaced the fluid yet?

Transmission need to warm up like engine. At low temp tran fluid is thicker and harder to pump through the valves. If there is water in your transmission below 32F, it'll become ice and won't pump pass anything and probably cause damage. It could also get a valve frozen and now working at all.

Not like engine oil which could warm up by idling, tran fluid/oil need to be driven to get warm.

You could keep engine idle for a long time to get auto tran fluid to warm up. Most auto tran has cooler connected to rad. So if you idle long enough to get rad hot you can warm up tran fluid also.

Solution: drive the vehicle gently instead of idling to warm up engine and tran.

Good synthetic tran fluid will help a bit also. Like engine oil they flow better ay low temp.

There two things that I think could be happening here. 1) the fine clearances in the valve body between aluminum and steel parts causes the valve to not move when cold. 2) the sealing rings on the clutch pack used for reverse needs to swell some before it will seal well enough to allow the piston to force the clutch to lock. Fresh fluid, and especially synthetic fluid should help both issues. Slight increase in engine speed may help raise the pressure and volume of the fluid being sent to the clutch pack, thus allowing a sealing ring to seal quicker. BUT, just a slight increase in engine speed. One to two hundred is all I would venture to try. You might also try increasing the engine speed in park for a fer seconds, then let it return to idle, before shifting into reverse.

One additional thought, If the cold weather is causing a unusually low idle speed, the cure could be a resetting of the cold speed setting. (should be controlled by the computer, but still a thought). Good luck.

More than likely the problem will be found in the check balls in the valve body area they are located between the separator plate and the transmission case the separator plate is probably worn so that the ball is not getting a good enough seal and is allowing the fluid to drain down and not be able to pressurize fluid to the reverse drum solenoid and therefore causing the delay as it would require a lot less fluid just to load the drum area and it would not leak down as easily as the reverse band servo. You could verify this by checking the transmission pressures when cold although if you don't work on automatic transmissions regularly then pressure testing would be better left to a shop that could set it up one evening and test it the next morning.