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Mercon V or Mercon LV confused

30K views 6 replies 6 participants last post by  amc49 
#1 ·
2004 focus 2.3 auto. Went to dealer to pick up trans fluid and solenoid A, filter and gasket. Parts guy looks up parts by vin, gives me LV fluid, i didnt think anything of it. Get home and verify because i have ocd and manual says mercon V. Called the dealer and talked to same parts guy who says that LV is what his system shows. Now i look at the carfax report and this car has had the trans fluid changed every 30,000 miles since new and we haven’t done it so the last change was 60,000 miles ago and in 2014. Would they have used the LV or the V? I am under the impression that they cannot be mixed so now im concerned. By the way, the car is throwing the P0960 code so i want to change the A and B solenoids.
 
#4 ·
The only difference in V and LV is a small amount of viscosity that lowered on the LV to help mileage. I'm running both mixed in my Nissan to lower trans fluid cost vs. OEM and it runs great.
 
#5 ·
My wife's Grand Marquis had torque converter shudder. In fourth gear, under slight acceleration, you could feel it.

On the advice of crownvic.net folks, I dropped the pan, replaced the filter and filled it with Mercon LV. Shudder gone. I understand Ford issued a service bulletin to this effect for the Crown Vic & Grand Marquis cars. My wife's car would have run Mercon V originally.

I do not know about fluid compatibility - in my case, I emptied the pan and drained the torque converter, which luckily had a plug.

What I'm saying is that LV could be the right stuff, even though older manuals might call out V.
 
#6 ·
#7 ·
It could just be the new fluid, not the type, New fluid is free of the abrasives that old fluid has and that can make a whopping difference in low load torque transfer like you describe there.

On the LV going into even the early cars that previously used V, Ford has simply done what they did before with Mercon V as compared to older Mercon. Meaning after enough time has passed they drop the correct fluid for that year to go to a later fluid that is commonly carried in house to be available all the time. It certainly didn't hurt that the newer fluid was quite a bit more expensive than the older one too.

In the case of the V switch from lowly Mercon though Ford bit itself on the -ss, the new fluid was supposedly compatible but upon switching to it some hundreds of cars tore up that Ford itself subbed the fluid on, it turned out they were not as compatible as first thought and the Mercon V fluid had to be reformulated to where it would interchange with no damage.
 
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