Hi there, I hope somebody can help me here. I just bought a Ford Fiesta 1.3 LX Auto 1996 N reg. The car was a 100 miles away from my house, I drove it back to home, everything was fine no problems at all, but only 2 miles away from home on a huge and very busy round about the car just stopped and did not want to move. I was forcing it but I can smell a funny smell which later one I found out is the Automatic Transmission Fluid (ATF).
The car starts from first time no problem but there seems to be a problem with the automatic transmission, as the car can start to move in the beginning just for one minute and then no matter what you do, the car just doesn’t want to know, and sometimes I can hear some kind of buzzing noise. The ATF was very dark and I’ve change it with Castrol TQ Dexron III which I thinking was the problem but not, it happen again. I am thinking of taking the oil pan and check for some metal bits inside, then clean it and put a new ATF inside.
I just don’t know what to do….

Can somebody help me here?

Many thanks!

The auto gearboxes on these models were very unreliable which is why Ford dropped them in the end.
Unfortunateley the gearbox is shot mate and your gunna have to get a new/re-conditioned one.
Dark, smelly fluid is a sign that the box has burnt out I'm afraid.
Sorry to be the bringer of bad news mate, let us know how you get on.
BTW these gearboxes are very very rare so your only hope may be to get the one you've got reconditioned.

Is this the famous Ford/Fiat CVT tranny? If so, as Dave says, they have a reputation to be quite fragile. My folks still have a 1.1 Fiesta LX with this tranny and they recently found a second-hand box in a junkyard which came from a crashed car but they were very lucky as it's true they are very hard to come by.

What I think eventually broke in my folks car is the torque converter which resulted in the car not moving when you selected any "driving" gear and emitting a horrble "grinding noise" especially when cold.

With regards to removing the pan I'm not sure this will make a difference as the oil is separate from the engine oil. Not sure it the box has a pan of it's own.

Nick, you may be right.
But if it is a CVT then I thought they didn't use ATF as they use belts don't they??
I think it's the very poor normal auto that they stuck in the MKIV Fiesta at launch??
I know they had alot of trouble with these.
You may be right though, I can't remember!!

If it is a CVT then it might just be the torque converter that's shot??

Are you sure it's a 1.3 and not a 1.25??

Ah well my folks' car is an Mk.3 so it in fact you are probably right in thinking it's the standard auto box in later models. But by what you are saying they replaced a crappy auto box (the CVT in the Mk 3) with another crappy one... (the standard auto in the Mk IV) .

The CVT did have the belt thingy but it still used ATF as it was fitted with the silly torque converter. It's an odd technical choice as the whole odvantage of using CVT was to be able to keep a continuous drive so fitting a converter just ruined it IMO.