Also known as: 5r55e, 5r55n, 5r55s, 5r55w, 5r55, ford 5-speed rear-drive
Ford's rear-drive five-speed — in the Explorer, Sport Trac, Ranger, Mountaineer and Aviator, and in the Jaguar S-Type.
A Jaguar with a Ford truck transmission is the sort of thing nothing on the car tells its owner, and it changes where the useful information is: the S-Type's 5R55N and 5R55S have a very large American service literature filed under Explorer and Ranger.
Its recurring failure is the servo bore. The aluminium case wears where the servo piston travels, line pressure escapes past it, and the result is a delayed or missing 2–3 change and a slip that gets worse as the transmission warms up. Sleeving the bore is a recognised repair and is far cheaper than a replacement — but only while the bands and clutches are intact, which is the argument for acting early.
The solenoid pack accounts for most of the rest, producing harsh engagement or a limp mode, and it is a bolt-on part behind a symptom that reads as catastrophic.
The letters are not decoration: E is the electronic four-wheel-drive version, N and S the later Jaguar and Explorer units with different valve bodies. A procedure written for one does not necessarily describe another.
Cars fitted with this gearbox
10 generations. Only where a source names the model and the generation together — a gearbox is documented as a product far more often than as a fitment, so this list is deliberately shorter than the truth.
Ford
Jaguar
Lincoln
Mercury
Information, not instruction
CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.
Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
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