slipping tranny????

Alright i recently aquired a 2000 GT auto with 46,000 miles (bonestock... i think)...

When put into drive it pauses for a second or two and then jerks the car (a little bit), when i pin it the shifts are slow and add a whiplash effect. Last night i noticed that when placed into drive it makes a high pitched meeeee noise before it jerks(yes i can't describe the sound so im using soundeffects).

How aggressive are the stock trannys? Could this be some sort of aftermarket thing? Is the tranny slipping? Am i low on fluid? Are there holes in the lines or something??? any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
check the fluid level. to do it make sure the car is warm, running and on a level surface. with your foot on the brake pedal slowly cycle through the gears, all the way down to 1, staying in each gear for 5 seconds. then bring it back to park. check the dipstick with the trans in park. you might have to stab it a few times to make sure the level is correct. also check the condition of the fluid. it should have been changed already. if it smells really burnt, do nto change it, if you do the trans will have a good possibility of not working. if it jsut looks worn, go ahead and change it. here is an execellent writeup from crownvic.net on how to do the fluid, they use the same trans so almost everything is the same. http://www.crownvic.net/tech/transservice.htm

also you might want to consider switching to the FRPP pan M-7195-4R or the OEM pan F8UZ-7A194-AA. both increase capacity and have a drain plug.
 
go ahead and try doing the fluid and filter. make sure you change out the filter. if you want to take it to a place to get a quicky flush done they wont do the filter. if you decided to do a flush, change out the filter first. you dont want the flushing action to push all the debris in the filter back into the trans.

also for fluid, make sure you use Mercon V ONLY. do NOT use a dexron3/Mercon with a modifier.
 
the 4r70w is an execellent trans, all that it asks in return is to be serviced. every person that ive talk to that had one blow eventually admitted to never servicing it. there were some random failures, but thats common with anything.
 
alright thanks guys, i've had the car for 2 weeks now so dont blame me for not servicing it :P, when we bought it we checked everything, oil, brake fluid and they were all changed within 250miles, i forgot to check tranny fluid, cause i've never had to do that before...

I'll definately try the filter change + flush tomorrow, if that doesn't work, ill move to mexico and change my identity, since i can barely afford this car as it is.