Autoboxes

In message , SteveG writes

Try ashcroft-transmissions.co.uk

I asked them about putting one in a Defender and they were very helpful

Ah, good idea Hugh :-)

With the stand-alone ECU yes.

Tim..

Hi Tim, thanks for the response.

What do you mean by stand-alone ECU?

Gonna have a chat with Ashcroft's tomorrow

Thanks for the link Dougal. Had quite a chat with Ashcrofts today ... not an inexpensive modification. Too costly to be worthwhile on a 14 year old Discovery even if it is virtually rust free :-)

On or around Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:14:17 GMT, SteveG enlightened us thusly:

why?

D1 / RR auto boxes are easily got... and no electronics to faff with.

Hi Austin,

I was hoping to gain some of the extra features of the newer box (e.g. sport/manual mode, additional gear, etc).

I've been working on how to interconnect the gearbox control ECU from an E32 7 Series BMW into the D1 (they use the same gearbox but the Bimmer has economy/sport/manual modes) but all the rev/speed inputs are wrong and would require re-mapping of the ECU chips to get it to work. Not an impossible task and I may still work on it.

Extra gear? What extra gear, they are both ZF4**22 series boxes, meaning they are both 4 speed, and they both have lock-up torque convertors. One is purely hydromechanical, the other is electrically controlled, no other differences. Even the ZF4**24 is the same ratios etc, the only difference being a higher volume pump and a much stronger main "A" clutch.

Good luck with that - there'll certainly be a market for it if you can manage to pull it off, I'd imagine. Badger.

On or around Fri, 5 Feb 2010 16:42:07 -0000, "Badger" enlightened us thusly:

If I was going to faff around, I'd be wanting to use the 4HP24, for that reason, having had an "A" clutch fail in a 4HP22.

I was looking at it the other way around: I reckon, provided the TD5 flexplate suits the converter on the D1/Rangie classic box, and provided you can get a match with bellhousings, that the Disco I box would be a good mod into a manual TD5, and doubtless a lot cheaper than sourcing a decent disco II box.

The power/torque figures for the TD5 are lower than for the 3.9 V8i, so there's no issue with overloading it, and the TD5 pulls (especially if chipped) nicely from around 1900 revs, which is just about right for an ex-V8 box: it goes back to about 1900 revs at 50 when the lockup comes in. The gearing on the manual TD5 in 5th seems pretty nearly the same as

TC stall is IIRC about 1800, which is more or less OK even for a non-chipped TD5 - it'd be better with about 15-20% boost though.

SG: Ah, my mistake then. I thought the later (i.e. 2003 onwards) D2 auto boxes were 5 speed. Funnily enough Ashcrofts never asked me why I wanted to do it.

SG: I was talking today to a guy from the 7 series resource forum that thinks he has details of the ECU programming. If he has then I'm a big step closer to making that work ... but there's still a long way to go :-)