Thread: Gearbox rebuild

Mine was a shopping trolley never been off-road or towed more than a box trailer and started having issues at about 180 odd K's , at 209k now and I'll be doing the valve body rebuild soon.
Fluid/ filter first done at 100-120k and twice by be since, no sign of TC judder touch wood.

Originally Posted by BradC

When we were D3 shopping back in 2016 I looked at a number of D3s with lunched transmissions and none of the ones we looked at had ever towed.

It's a heavy car and there's a lot of people that seem to want to drive them like a Porsche.

True which is good because I drive like grandpa.

There’s big kms on them in Fords and other with regular servicing.

Originally Posted by Eric SDV6SE

200000km seems ok for a rebuild if the fluid has never been changed. I hope they rebuilt or services the valve body too. Fluid changes every 60000km on these ZF boxes is reasonable. Using penrite bmv in these boxes causes no issues.

For reference, mines at 220000km and has had a valve body rebuild, steel pan upgrade and filter change, plus full fluid change at ~ 180000km and has been running penrite bmv since with no issues at all

Was the valve body a DIY job, or did you get someone to do that for you?

Originally Posted by veebs

Was the valve body a DIY job, or did you get someone to do that for you?

DIY, pit a Sonnax Zip gen2 kit through it and used a 10dolllar garden pump up sprayer to refill the tranny and torque converter with BMV.

Originally Posted by PerthDisco

I wonder if these are predominantly tow tugs as I’ve never towed and don’t have any TC issues ‘yet’ (touch wood). Slight harsher change 2-1 / 1-2 but can’t determine if that’s more drivetrain related.

I seem in the minority of people not pulling a 2 to 3.5 tonne caravan around.

I disagree. The tc locks at 1250 rpm in every gear and the box is rated for 650NM or more. To me the issue is stop start city driving and weekend "soccer runs", meaning the tc is continuously locking and unlocking, causing the pressure plate and seal in the tc to wear out, whereas on a touring drive towing a van you are sitting for hours with it locked up and transmitting torque through the mechanical parts of the gearbox. Fluid cooling plays a big part too, on a long drive, efficient air cooling is achieved. On stop start driving there is no airflow to speak of and the fluid can quickly carbon up. Just my opinion.

Mine had a very slight shudder under hard acceleration,before i moved it on.

MR said just leave it could go for ages like that.

Fluid had been done every 60000Km as per their recomendations,with the ZF genuine fluid.
Minimal towing.

I have just had the t/c done at 200km got the sonex kit through the box , now going well
had error messages re the t/c cost around $3.5

2003 td5 378,000 k's with towing 3 tonne van for 60,000 k's still on original auto box. D3 and d4 rubbish.