Thanks for the advice, I'm happy is not something obviously very wrong, do you think this could also be due to very old burn out fluid ? I bought this car a few months back and it was in bad shape due to missed services and all of that, didn't occur to me to check trans fluid until yesterday and the dipstick came out almost brown

No. Worn out fluid by itself can not cause a vehicle to stop moving altogether. However, lack of service can cause the transmission components to wear out prematurely. Missed services should have been a red flag. A transmission replacement costs around $3,500.

Thanks for the advice, I'll reach out to my mechanic, something weird to mention, this morning I tried again and it seems like sometimes it will engage reverse or drive, although they are very weak and almost need a push to start working but the car does move on it own power, very slowly but it does, I used Forscan to check the car and it still wont throw any codes

Most inexpensive scan tools will not read transmission codes or data. Unfortuantely if the transmission has not been properly serviced over the last 16 years it may be shot, but a transmission specialist would need to make that determination. You may be lucky and it's just bad solenoids or other fixable issue.

Yeah, it's just weird to me, I used to own an 01 with a faulty transmission and the OD light will come on, this time however nothing shows up that's why I was confused, hopefully is nothing major otherwise fixing it will be more than what the truck is worth and that point I'll just scrap it

Sorry for reviving an old thread but I went ahead and changed the trans fluid today, figured it was a last ditch effort, when I removed the trans drain plug I noticed it had a lot of sludge on the magnet, not too much but enough to be noticeable, the fluid was very very dark and smelt like burnt fluid, I bought 4 quarts of fluid and put them on the truck, turned it on and shifted through the gears, a couple of times, after than was done I realized the transmission had much more power than before, still wasn't perfect but it was better than it was last time to the point that I was able to drive it up and down the incline in my building parking lot, is there any chance another fluid change after it mixes up a bit more be worth it ? Any other ideas worth exploring ? Transmission technicians in my area are not the very best and my mechanic is out of town for a while so I figured I could do some diagnostic on the meantime

well if the fluid was really sludgy, then maybe the filter was completely clogged, starving the tranny of fluid. Did you you replace that?
It doesn't really matter. If there's a lot of sludge in the pan, then the damage is already done, and the transmission has had it.
If it's not working 100% right, then continuing to drive it this way will finish it off completely.

CD4E trans has one of those bs "permanent" filters so it's not user replaceable without taking the transmission off entirely unfortunately, you cant access the pan either since it's mounted at a 90 degree angle on the Ford escape/Mercury mariner platform, so I'm only going by what the magnet had

It's so weird that it would suddenly had such a catastrophic failure, transmission was engaging fine before that even the same day

it may seem sudden, but the breakdown could have started long ago. The control module is able to compensate for some of the wear. It's not uncommon to lose gears suddenly with automatic transmissions.

I see, it's the first time something like this happens to me, my other transmission on the 01 started shifting hard before giving up, do you think there's a chance it's pressure related like a pump failure or it is more likely a total failure ?

it doesn't matter. The transmission has to come out and get torn to pieces. At that point you just replace it. You don't replace just a pump. But this is all speculation. You need to have it diagnosed by a professional.

Scotty's right. I missed the fact that it's 4WD, which adds more cost to service. Now you're looking at $4,500 and up.

Just saw this, can't believe Scotty replied to my dumb post hahaha, you guys were right on the money, the transmission was done for, I took it to a couple of places and they ended up rebuilding the whole thing, found actual pieces of metal floating around, I decided to rebuild since labor is a lot cheaper here in Mexico and all in I paid 2000 (would've been 1.5k if it was the 2WD) including a mount replacement since they were old and the tech advised me to change them given the fact that the whole thing went out, I just got it back this week and it is shifting a lot smoother now way better than before, it is very rarely throwing a hard shift here and there but the tech scanned it and assure me it is just the re learning process since the TCM had to be reset but overall happy with the rebuild, price for this car in Mexico is around 7 to 8k and I paid 3k for it originally so that's why I took a gamble on fixing it, probably selling soon anyways since I am ready to move onto a newer vehicle

Yes it does, I was able to push it to a parking spot no problem, I can't feel any additional resistance