The other day, I was tooling around town in my 98 Windstar when I realized that I needed some fuel. After I filled up, the van started surging at idle in drive. I thought maybe I had gotten some bad gas as everything had been fine up to this point. I added a gasoline additive to dry any water. Made several more trips to town that evening, no change although I did notice the overdrive light flashing which cleared as soon as I shut the engine down and did not reoccur. Next day I started the van, it idled fine but as soon as I put it in drive the engine shut down like I had shut off the key but all the dash lights were still on. Still on the fuel thing, I changed the fuel filter (no water) and verified fuel rail pressure. No change, let it set a couple of hours and it would start and drive, but the low speed surging was still evident. No surge in low gear. Help!! Any ideas??

 

had you been driving in a hillyarea .?do you use your cruise alot when in these type areas. your transmission will react this way if you drive a prolonged period of time with cruise control on in a slightly hilly area. we found that out two years ago when we were driving in the mountains and forgot to turn the cruise off. you end driving in altitude and not realizing it and forgeting to turn the cruse contron off.it will make your transmission do what you are decribing . other than that unless you are just low on transmission fluid . hope this helps. we have the very same vehicle 3.8 litre 98 windstar.


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Ouch!
My 98 Windstar's o/d light would flash due to high temperatures on highway.
My symtoms were the rpm's would go up and down (2300 up to 3200) and eventually making my overdrive light go on and blinking. I then, while still on the highway, pushed the overdrive switch in hopes it would shut it off, but instead it actually tuened the overdrive ON and my rpm's jumped up to approx. 3000 and I could not shut it off until I pulled over andturned the whole vehicle off. I turned the vehicle back on and the flashing went away but not for long. It did the same thing.
Bottom line, I took it in to get it diagnosed and found out the tranny was slipping. Clutches and a few other internal components wore out. Tranny got rebuild and here is the worst news... $24,372 uuuuhg! just had it done last week. the van had 135,000 miles on it.
good luck!
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This is my first post and I will soon be posting a question regarding my 98 Windstar... yaay!
Mud