Thread: TD5 Transmission rebuild - Melbourne

No torque converter lock up is the reason for poor economy.
Trans will need a full rebuild , more than likely a new oil pump i$ required.
Get them to reseal transfer case at the same time, including intermediate shaft.
Also new cooler and lines.
If the car is a keeper Either a V8 converter upgrade or at least lowering the stall rate of TD5 converter together with remap is strongly recommended

I agree entirely with Discorevy's synopsis.

The auto needs a rebuild most likely, that and all the extras you've bolted on are probably then entire reason for the economy woes!

On a stock auto with stock gearing, and with only a bullbar as an add on and hybrid turbo, I get about 10.3 on a 600 km highway run, with about an hour and a half in Adelaide City thrown in.

I've also got another with a desperately flogged auto that consistently gets about 14 or so.......

I’d have a chat with Andrew at Les Richmond Automotive. If he doesn’t do them he’ll know someone good who does.

I've had a good experience with Borg's Automatics in Coburg North .. very close to my house too(ie. very handy).

They aren't the cheapest, but good people.

Last few things I've had them do is a couple of power steering pumps. One cheaply enough .. but the Tdi pump cost a small fortune in the end.

Their ph is 0393504500 and they have a website if you search.

If you are much further up north as Tins said try LRA. I'm 99.9% they don't do auto rebuilds, but they do mechanical work, so would do the remove/refit and seal up the TC.

A few months back in my Tdi(auto) .. I had a similar issue re lockup. it sometimes(randomly and rarely) did this no lockup even up to 100k/h, but slowing a tad(say 90), manually pull back to 3rd, back into 4th and straight away it's change into 4th and lockup 1/2 sec later.

This one time tho, no matter how many times I tried this trick.. just would lockup.
Pulled into a servo, got a 1/2 lt bottle of trans fluid, slowly emptied bottle into dipstick tube(real bloody slowly) ... lockup back in business.
Next day, checked trans level .. just a smidge over the full line. Hard to fathom that just half a litre could do that. I was thinking that maybe it was the cold weather or something.

I've had to top it up a bit more than 1lt a few times over the past 100k klms I've had it, and it hasn't done the 'no lockup' thing for so long.

One other question for 'ya.

Does it lock up now? does it sometimes not? From my experience with the Td5 (and Tdi) is that they're quite resistant to unlocking at say 100 k/h when working well.
When brother owned (now) my Td5, it had some lockup issues. Wouldn't lockup, then would. and so on. But when his would lockup, it unlocked at the slightest touch of accelerator during this time, and more importantly a very hard vibration when locked, just prior to unlocking. We and mechanic basically guessed that the torque converter was on it's way out. Did a stall test and it revved up over 3k rpm all too easily.

A week or so later, new torque converter was installed, rebuilt by Dominator Torque converters .. quick turnaround(this was back in about 2017-2018) .. they operated around the corner from where LRA used to be in Thomastown, pulled into there bought a HD flex plate too .. up to mechanics and just done.

You say you get about 500k's per tank, but how many litres are you filling up with? Do you fill to the first or second click and stop there?
Makes difference.
Dunno if anyone else notices this(at least in Melbourne) but Mobil diesel foams up a lot less than all other 'brands' of diesel.

(note I say 'brands' in quote marks because there are only one other brand of diesel in Melbourne .. don't know about other states) .. no matter what diesel you buy, it's either Mobil or Shell .. but they do have blend varieties).

I can recommend Chris at Airport Automatics in Tullamarine.

The two most often quoted are A & B Automatic Transmission Service | Repairs & Remanufacturing – AB Automatics who are the official ZF re builder. And Manual Automatics in Thomastown who rebuilt mine completely- going very well.

Back about 4 years ago the going rate was about $5500 drive in drive out.

I can vouch for A and B automatics.

Originally Posted by d2dave

I can vouch for A and B automatics.

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