Thread: slight shudder from auto trans

Which metal pan did you end up with, the ZF one, or I heard there is one made in Austrailia. Sourced the ZF here in the us for 285.00 so I am sure it can be done in UK as well, as they come from Germany directly.

New Transmission required

Quoted $6800 Drive in - drive out by A&B in Melbourne, Steel pan and latest updates to the transmission included. 2 yr warranty
Approx $7500 by a Canberra repairer with the exchange supplied by A&B
Quoted $11952.42 by Dealer, presumably with a LR sump

I have logged a complaint with the Office of Fair Trading since Land Rover have no intention of contributing to the costs of repair. Failed within the 3 yr warranty period with 145000KM on the clock. I'm a bit dirty about the $1040 the dealer charged to do the oil change which patched the problem for a month before it reoccurred as well.

I think the lesson here is

Change your Transmission fluid regularly

Not sure what regularly means, local repairer reckons 40,000KM, ZF say between 80000 - 120000 KM.
On a reassessment I dont think that the oil report indicated that the cooler is leaking but I will continue to get the oil tested and watch the results.

Regards,
Tote

That is not good - whom is the local repairer? Did you find a ZF dealer in Canberra/Queanbeyan?

Did you try a Ford dealer??

Garry

I was educated by bbyer on the subject of the pan change. The reason why you would want to fit a metal pan is that to change the filter on the factory pan, you have to change the pan, the filter is built in. In order to change the pan, you need to lift the engine slightly, a real hassle, and expensive.

One particular handy tip was to cut the old pan off, if fitting a metal pan, and you do not need to lift at all. The metal pan can be fitted, and removed for filter change without the need for lifting.

It seems like, if you did 2 filter changes, the metal pan would pay for itself.

I see the updated, new transmission required after I posted. These transmissions can be rebuilt, much cheaper than a new one. The common failure points (sounds like your problem) is the torque converter. These transmissions are in a lot of vehicles and are rebuilt regularly, for a lot less money... It might be worth contacting some transmission shops familiar with the ZF Transmissions. If you cannot find parts, let me know and i'll point you in the right direction.

Excellent video of how the ZF torque converter works, which is more often than not, what goes wrong. The next video, after that shows a torque converter being built (not ZF) It is easy to see, based on this video, how and why the judder might develop.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeR-Uf4NKso&playnext=1&list=PLA6B51AB7975874C2"]YouTube - ‪ZF ZDW new converter generation for passanger car transmissions‬‏[/ame]

g'day

PM Me for Diff parts

Originally Posted by Tote

New Transmission required

Quoted $6800 Drive in - drive out by A&B in Melbourne, Steel pan and latest updates to the transmission included. 2 yr warranty
Approx $7500 by a Canberra repairer with the exchange supplied by A&B
Quoted $11952.42 by Dealer, presumably with a LR sump

I have logged a complaint with the Office of Fair Trading since Land Rover have no intention of contributing to the costs of repair. Failed within the 3 yr warranty period with 145000KM on the clock. I'm a bit dirty about the $1040 the dealer charged to do the oil change which patched the problem for a month before it reoccurred as well.

Regards,
Tote

Worth fighting for LR to replace FOC as under consumer legislation there is a "reasonable expectation" that a transmission on a car will last longer than 140,000km.

I have been fortunate in that I do not have a lot of experience with paying for transmission repairs. Over the past 30 years, I have had to deal with a few of them on GM products however.

I was fortunate in that I had a shop that I trusted; hence the repair philosophy was tear it down, see what it needs, and if it is not too bad, fix it. In all cases, (about a half a dozen), the problems were fixed for less than the initial estimates. Basically a tranny repair seems to be a judgement thing as to what is good and what should be replaced.

The torque converter, at least as far as my repair shop was concerned, was a sealed unit, and it was either a replace, or don't touch, sort of approach; the rest of the tranny repair was "we will keep this and replace that". I do recall one time them asking me how the minnows got in after I had taken the pickup swimming one weekend.

The only repair that annoyed me was on my Buick Roadmaster where the torque converter had to be replaced. It did not actually quit until after the GM new car warranty had expired. I knew there was a problem but could never duplicate it at the dealership - there was only one hill in Alberta about 200 miles away where it would shutter - that was until after the warranty expired and then everyone seemed to remember that my tranny was the one with the weak converter and it should be replaced with the upgraded one. It was, at my expense.

Good to catch up on this thread and see all the happenings...

Thought it worth adding that I bumped into a former LR mechanic who has seen this issue a lot and he told me at length how the torque convertor was the real issue with transmission shudder on the Discos... made a lot of sense when he explained how on the XR6 for example, you put the boot in and the wheels spin. All the torque goes somewhere... on the Disco you have near 3 tonnes to prevent any wheel spin etc and the fluid gets hot as a consequence and eventually the torque convertor will become an issue. Made sense and seems very consistent with the comments in this thread.

Mine has had a fluid change and pan change as previously mentioned and now has a slight shudder back. Nowhere near as bad but still present and we can all only hope the tc swap outs will come down in price as the problem has bulk discount status applied to it.

Unfortunately the engineers of the D3 really dropped a lot of balls (does that sound rude?).

Cheers to all.

Originally Posted by CaverD3

Worth fighting for LR to replace FOC as under consumer legislation there is a "reasonable expectation" that a transmission on a car will last longer than 140,000km.

Certainly as the Land Rover service schedule indicates that servicing (changing fluids) is required only every 240,000km under normal usage.

Garry