KKRISTAL, thank you for the insight. Your explanation makes sense. The Explorer is quiet especially at cruising speed and below where the FENG kicks in. Mine is still in the shop awaiting parts for the other issues. I've found this site very insightful (and a little entertaining at times). I often use some of the information here to help communicate with the service advisor. I'll report back once she comes home.
Thanks mwinn. Yes, this forum is very helpful and the members are so knowledgeable (unlike me) that I have avoided so many trips to the dealer. Imagine, if this thread was Not there, I would have let my dealer test my vehicle for no reason by multiple techs there and creating a new problem.
I was originally discussing this in another thread but that thread was for a different issue. Luckily I found this thread which was the exact thing as what I was experiencing. Here is the detailed test result that I posted earlier in the other thread.
After extensive testing in isolated/quiet roads near my house (had to go do this in the night so there was no traffic).
1. First of all, to give a background, I generally baby my vehicles most of the time. I do open in up once in a while depending on the open road and my mood etc.
2. So I give very little gas when driving (because of my babying habit), which means that most of the initial gear shifts maybe upto 4th gear happens with the RPM less than 2000
3. Under the above conditions, I see that the engine is revving/increasing RPM to accommodate the gear change since it is too low (I can see the RPM go up and then down during the gear change). this automatic blip in RPM is the noise I hear which is basically the engine rev
4. So I decided to test it by driving like a normal human being and gave sufficient gas which made all the shifts at or over 2000 RPM, in this scenario, I do Not hear that noise (that hmmm kind of noise) so basically meaning that the engine has sufficient RPM to accommodate the gear shift without the software having to rev it any further.