Ford Repair: 2003 ford tauras- torque converter, ford tauras, torque converter

Question
hi steve, yah another torque converter problem. i bought the tauras in 03 w/ 1700 miles on it and it has been a great car until last week when all of a sudden while my wife was driving home when the speedometer went down to 0 and the car revved upped and she pulled over and tryed to shift the gears and realized she didnt have any gears. the car gave us no warning at all, i even drove the car occasionally and it didnt give any sign of rough shifting or anything. anyway i took the car in the dealership and they were able to tell me within hours it was the torque converter, and with it it is going to cost 2500 to rebuild the transmission. so my question is is this an fair amount for this job? and how common is this torque converter problem especially with no warning?

Answer
Bobby-

  How common is this problem?  How does "extremely" sound?  I've answered over 6,000 questions in my time on this site...all kinds and sorts.  However, when I see "Taurus" and "Transmission" in is a subject line (or, if it's a Mercury, the Mystique) it's 99.9% of the time a torque converter gone bad.  It never ceases to amaze me that Ford never issued a recall for those things.  I think $2500 is a pretty average price for a transmission rebuild on these cars.  I've seen it go $500 in either direction, but $2500 seems to be about the middle ground.  As for having no warning...converters aren't like other transmission parts that can degrade gradually over time.  It's almost always a sudden failure.  There really aren't any typical signs of a converter getting ready to give up the ghost.  Hope this helps.

Steve