Thread: L322 not changing gears when hot

Ok here is what happened, I hope other people can learn from me answering my own post! Graeme Cooper changing the fluid did nothing to help the situation, it seems like a stop gap. He put two loads of fluid through the gearbox to try to clean it up. But the lesson here is once you've cooked your transmission fluid, the box has had it. Mine was still shifting totally fine, was nice and quiet (only not changing gears properly when hot), but the fluid went dark again not long after, so even if it acts like its fine its probably dead.

The reason is this - Land Rover say its lifetime fluid. That is total bull****. Mine had 60,000kms on the clock. Maybe its because the didn't think Australia gets any hotter than the UK midlands. Or southern Germany. The issue is with the cooler. As soon as the fluid gets a bit thick it clogs up the transmission cooler on the ZF box. Then it starts to run hot, cooks the fluid and some of the clutch material which comes away and clogs the cooler even worse. Eventually the box won't change gears properly (hangs onto one gear revving the engine hard) which is probably a way that the computer tries to protect itself from really overheating. You might also get a 'check coolant level' warning.

So the message is change your fluid even when you don't think you have to.

Now to the fix. The best guy seems to be Auto Trans Australia in Alexandria. They do all the work for Trivetts and BMW Sydney etc and he's the ZF preferred repairer. He rebuilds almost everything in house. Once your box is cooked, its not going to be cheap so swallow now. Joe has about 3 L322s in there a week for this issue. He knows what he's doing. But like I said its dear (cost me $5500 odd. that hurts). Its why you buy shell out the extra for a 60,000km car in the first place.
Anyhow its been perfect ever since. I intend changing fluid every 40,000kms. Did I mention you should ignore the Land Rover lifetime service interval and change your fluids?