need help or advise with autobox disco 2

hello readers. i have some problemens with the auto box fitted in my disco 2 my2000 the automatic gearbox oil is dark brown after 25000 km and the m and s lights came on blinking a few times in my holiday. after stopping and turning the engine of the problem was gone till it happened again. i was pulling a boat of 3.5 ton on that moment trough germany on a road with a lot of hills. my question is how the oil gets dark brown and in case of a damage wat is broken in the box. the car is chipped with a p.s.i. chip and has 225000 km on the clock. hoppefully it is not an expensive problem.

hope to hear from you

tia a dutch landrover driver

Reply to
obiwan
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The box sensor went nuts on mine, but change the oil & filter as a minimum

Reply to
Nige

The 'twinkling lights' could be as simple as wires rubbing through the insulation and shorting out on the gearbox casing. It tends to lead to problems in the wet.

The dark coloured oil is not such a good sign, but could be associated with the above. Did you notice that the 'box was in a high gear? When 'limp home' mode takes over ('twinkling lights') you are left in either

3rd gear if it happens on the move or fourth if stationary (it might be the other way round). If you continue blindly and drive normally in this state you'll be in convertor drive, and with a heavy load, with considerable slippage - you'll overheat the gearbox/convertor oil.

Does the oil smell burnt?

At the very least, do as Nige suggests. If the lights are 'twinkling' don't expect to transmit high torque without problems.

Reply to
Dougal

today i went to the garage and had a fault code read of the gearbox ecu no problems where seen with the wiring but i will check this . on the moment it happend it was dry. the only thing is that it happened on the same road same area around frankfurt on the 7 hill road on both wayes . i mean when i left for my holiday and when i returned . i think the gearbox had a lot of work overthere. the hills are steep and one after another , it goes on for about 100 km or more. its on the 3 in germany.

when i am pulling the boat i put my car at 92 on cruise control and let it go. i only have to break then. the gearbox swiches earlyer then i can do with my foot and also uses the kick down. the box goes in 4th gear at 86 km and the rev is 2250 at 92 km with the highest tork at that rev. it happened in 3 and stayed in that gear even when i was driving 5 kmh i took it to a autohof and let it cool down while i and my familie had diner.

If you continue blindly and drive normally in this

yes , it has the color and smell of old coffee , you now you left some coffee in the pot and forgot to swich the machine of and go shopping. when you come back after a few hours you smell the burned coffee when entering the house.

i will have a look at that swich thing and wires . and have the oil changed , i read something about flushing the system by taking the cooler leads of and getting all the oil out underneath the airfilter, maybe there is sombody ho allready did this and can give some advise about how to do it. i also read about putting in a better oil quality with a higher boiling point , i now use normal atf. but maybe someone has a better alternative

greetings rob

Reply to
obiwan

Do not trust the gearbox oil temp sensor, they are s**te & mine failed.

There was nothing wrong with my box, change the oil (I had to do this too. Get a new sensor, they are s**te.

Reply to
Nige

Rob Hi,

ATF in such a colour and smelling like that is definately NOT a good sign.

I would suggest you immediately change the oil and the filter and if you find lots of debris in the filter this most probably means that it is not only the oil that has to be replaced but the friction disks will need replacement.

If you are too unlucky debris may have found its way to the hydraulic system ie inside the pump, governor and the valves.

Since your gearbox does NOT exhibit any strange behaviour with getting stuck in a gear, whining, selecting a forward gear or reverse and the car not moving at all I believe that you are lucky and no contaminants have found their way to any of the above components.

I hope an ATF and oil filter change will allow you to sort out the problem.

But such heavily burnt oil is not a good thing. Please also change the oil filter and check for small particles/"dust" from burnt friction plates. This may lead to the autobox giving symptoms of slipping while in gear.

Take care Pantelis

Reply to
Pantelis Giamarellos

On or around Sat, 13 Sep 2008 16:56:32 +0200, "obiwan" enlightened us thusly:

You've cooked it. As has been said oil and filter change ASAP, possibly do it twice to flush it out more as you can't (without big effort or expense) get all the oil out of it.

Hopefully, only the oil is cooked, not the clutch plates. If it works OK afterwards, with no bad symptoms, I guess you've got away with it.

If you can find anyone with the gear to flush the thing out without dismantling it, it would probably be worth it. I daresay such gear exists, in principle, all it would need is an external oil supply and run the engine/box on a ramp with the sump off, feed new oil through it 'til it comes out clean... I don't know if anyone does that though, I'm just saying it could be done.

You can't get all the oil out 'cos a fair bit stays in the torque converter (among other things, but mostly in the TC). If the box has to come out anyway for repairs, then the TC can be drained and flushed.

Reply to
Austin Shackles

This, I think, confirms what I was saying. Did you try changing gear manually? - you would have found that it would not. Every time you came to a hill the T/C would slip excessively and the oil will have got hot.

If the lights are on after a restart (ignition off then on again), you will be forced into 4th gear T/C drive and it will be very obvious when pulling away from rest.

There is one very nasty side effect to this limp home mode - you can't change down either, so descending steep hills becomes a bit fraught! You've always got the option to use low box which will give you one lower gear (4th low) but that's only roughly equivalent to 2nd high.

This is not a solution, even if such exists. Make sure that the gearbox is changing gear and you will have no problems.

Reply to
Dougal

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