Comberford wrote:

i Have a Disco 3 TDv6 SE. I am at the moment in France. The car is playing up and the price of repairs at the Landrover dealer here astronomical! When driving the car recently i have noticed that when i slow down to go round a corner or at an island or whatever, sometimes the car is not responding when i re accelerate and then all of a sudden it 'zooms' of again, almost like when you 'over rev a manual car, mine is an auto. Today it completely stopped and when i revved it a 'transmission fault' display appeared. If i push the gear lever in to manual drive it works better. I have contacted a garage in the Uk who said that it would need to go on the computer reader to find out the problem. I have heard about those things you can buy to reset the computer system but have no idea where to start. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys!

Donie wrote:

Hi Trucks5181, and Ebygum32,

Were both of your Disco3's doing the same thing, and did replacing the selector lever on the side of the gearbox cure the problem?

My problem is much as Ebygum32 described.

Intermittently it lets the revs rise up, just as if it was a manual box with a slipping clutch, but there's no error code showing up on the dash, and the drive selector is no stiffer than ever to operate. It feels exactly the same as always.

If the selector lever pivot/clamp on the side of the box is the culprit, because it is gradually seizing, how does it manage to knock the gears out of drive, and back in again?

I'm finding it difficult to imagine how this can occur, but on the other hand the symptoms are exactly as if the gearbox was going from Drive into Neutral for a few second, and then back to Drive.

I guess I'm just looking for re-assurance that this relatively easy replacment of the lever and rod clamp will cure the problem.

From our own experience having changed the gear pivot linkage without success due to high revs in cold weather which then didnt work after 5k miles (no error codes on the ecu nor on the dash) had a new transfer box AND complete new gear selector/cable coz the box went pete tong and I thought its would a good idea to change the selector/cable in the hope that this might resolve the issues once and for all.

Last friday after another 6k miles the car went out of 1st gear and rev'd hard when hot after a 450 mile day as I coasted at 15mph but this time the ecu recorded a PO928 - Gear Shift Lock Solenoid which LR workshop says "check the curcuit between the Transmission Control Module and the shift lock solenoid. Check the Transmission Control Module connector and the power/ground circuits to the module. Clear he DTC and retest. If the problem persists, renew the module"

Fitting a new module would mean stripping down the auto box. The module would be around £700, plus 10x£21 for AFT, plus pan filter £70 with labour around £600. Once you've started messing around with the box there might then be other failures come to light in the future which would mean another £600 plus repair bill so would suggest you get the dealer to carry out an external inspection based upon the comments from the LR

On Saturday at the same time as plugging him in to the LR system we took a small sample of the ATF and from a visual inspection it looked and smelt "cooked" despite taking into consideration the very nasty smell of ATF which has now lead us to believe that the route of our problem could well of originated from the radiator/intercooler possibly or about to fail along with the distinct likelyhood that if the intercooler has failed then the auto box is knackered or about to be knackered due to water contamination (bear in mind there is a £700 surcharge against an old box for a new box). This thought has also been furthered by the fact that the fan comes on farily quickly after starting even after cold weather which we'd put down to a heat sensor failure.

So for us, based upon time off the road/against revenue lost/against further issues in the near future, its more economical to replace the complete box/radiator/oil cooler hoses (which comes already filled with ATF, pan filter, solenoid) at around £2800 with a 12 month warranty on parts and labour and run the D3 for another 15 months rather than sell it now, spending another 15-18k on a newer d3 only to find the same issues occur

mind you, the box has done 393k miles so its about time it went pete tong.