39 replies to this topic

[Dimeb4g]

so i bought the b4... 165k on the clock...

1st drive cold it slipped from 2nd into 3rd and had no 4th in sports shift and in drive... after i drove it some more in second it kicked in and went fine for the rest of the trip...

took it to the mechanics as it was booked in for service and once over the next day.

after the mechanic had it he took it for a drive... still fairly cold, i dropped it off at 8am and he drove it about 12.. so plenty of time to cool down... he said it felt sharp and direct...

it was then taken to the wheel aligner.. he did his thing to it ( all on the same day) and he said it flared up on him after 500m!

i took it to the auto place around the corner... and it was fine... then all fine on the way home.. and i even changed down from 4th to third3 on the highway and it handled it like it was nothing...

the mechanic dropped the fluid, which he said it wasnt horrendous, nor was it brilliant... but he replaced that and the filter... and the only person to have it give em grief is the tyre fitter...

help!! any advice.. am i hopefully a candidate for tightening the bands??

and before anyone says it... manual conversion is just not going to happen!! lol

Thanks in advance... i did do a search firts.. and found someone else had this exact problem... but manual conversion was his solution... so i cant really go off that!

[Dimeb4g]

Nobody???

[Morgan]

It's Sunday night, bro.

Give it a few more hours...

[Alex]

Unless you have had an arm amputated, I can't see why you have an auto.


Now you have two things to convert.

[TSG]

I honestly have no idea, for it to work fine sometimes but not others is odd. But to be honest I have only ever driven one car with a broken auto, sisters pulsar. However it was rough/noisy on the changes. Wonder if its electronic/sensor related? Otherwise it could be the torque converter failing / transmission on its last legs.

I think you'll find it was Monday night Morgan

[Dimeb4g]

lol i thought i read that... we'll forgive ya morgan

i have way better things to do with my time than shift gears when i drive around town... i do more than 100km a day and most of it 10km city trips... so auto is what i want to stay sane...

i took it for a drive tonight, after about 5 hours of rest and it was freezing cold tonight... and nothing... at all..

could the new oil have worked its way around the box and maybe softened up a few things that were a bit sad?

i also wanna know about the TCU... should i just reset it for peace of mind sake??

[Morgan]

Haha Sunday/Monday... Same same!

[Richo]

Interesting....

Who did you take it to ?

[Dimeb4g]

Mechanically I go to the local auto one... He's been great to deal with and has looked after everything I have had without a problem, gives me a good discount on things as well... It's not his business... So I guess it's better than dealing with a bloke that does the books lol... I took it over to p&d autos in Bunbury, they wanna drive it from cold... So will be interesting to see what they say... However I drove it this morning... From cold and it was cold this morning too... 6deg at half 6am... And it seemed to hold 2nd for a while... And after a bout 100m it seemed to go nah.. Don't want 3rd.. But the other times it would slip on the journey in in the previous days, it didn't... And was fine.... Starting to do my head in... Although I'm hopefull it's on it's way to recovery

[SUBARU]

This is a tricky one and really hard for us to diagnose.

Have your mechanic plug into the cars computer to see if there are any fault codes being thrown up. That might pinpoint a particular issue. I think everyone has accurately stated that it could be the torque converter on its way out, it could be the bands need adjusting (although you'd think it would happen more consistently), it could be an electrical problem, it could be a vacuum leak....

Try this on for size... Disconnect your battery overnight. This should reset your ECU and TCU and hopefully remove any "learned behaviours". It's a long shot, but at the moment you've got nothing to lose by doing this.

If it's still playing up after the fluid change and "reset", then it's time to take it to a transmission specialist.

[cameron]

Try this on for size... Disconnect your battery overnight. This should reset your ECU and TCU and hopefully remove any "learned behaviours". It's a long shot, but at the moment you've got nothing to lose by doing this.

dont do this if you have a brant

[SUBARU]

dont do this if you have a brant

The brandt is disconnected (mentioned in a different thread).

[B4TT]

Don't take this the wrong way, but take it to someone who specialises in automatic transmissions and have them diagnose the problem... might need to leave the car with them.

Posting a rough outline of a problem that could be one of many things is not going to get you a desired answer or fix the issue.

[SUBARU]

Don't take this the wrong way, but take it to someone who specialises in automatic transmissions and have them diagnose the problem... might need to leave the car with them.

Posting a rough outline of a problem that could be one of many things is not going to get you a desired answer or fix the issue.

+1

[Dimeb4g]

hey guys i found a pretty indepth read on the old 4eat... it was all pretty mind numbing untill i got to this part...

"If multiple signals are seen in
the forward ranges the inhibitor switch is ignored and there is no fourth gear."

what does this mean??? its refering to fail safe components and failure results...

sounds like what happens to me...

anyhow here is the link so you can maybe decipher it for me... http://www.northursa...ission/4eat.pdf
its on page 16 the bit i'm talking about....

[SUBARU]

Good on you for having a crack at reading through all that. It's good to get an understanding of the way the 4ET works, but you're probably doing your head in at the same time!

In all honesty, the question you're asking above isn't the right question to be asking, the reference to failing solenoids is what we've mentioned previously in that it could be an electrical issue.

Undoubtedly the problem you face will be one of the issues we've covered already, so the question you should be asking is; "does anyone know of any good auto transmission specialists in my area?"

[Dimeb4g]

what i'm trying to do is avoid going in blindly and saying what all trans specialists want to hear... " yeah sort her out mate, it has to be done" which in their eyes equates to " fleece me as i am an ignorant git and have no option"

if i can avoid them needlessly rebuilding it to fix something that may not need to be pull apart i would like to give myself every chance...

if you guys can put up with my questions, i will ask another... can anyone point me to the link for TCU resetting and the diagnostic procedure... i wouldnt mind to check codes as well... i mean hey it does have the ability to tell you what is wrong....

i do appreciate what your saying SUBARU but i hope you can understand me 1 wanting to learn and 2 not wanting to be an ignorant customer that mechanics and whatnot rub their hands together over...

[Scuba-Roo]

http://bit.ly/M1tlUZ

Does that link work? Could be an easy solution.

[Dimeb4g]

be good if i was in VIC getting it over to WA would be ghastly expensive!!!

[SUBARU]

what i'm trying to do is avoid going in blindly and saying what all trans specialists want to hear... " yeah sort her out mate, it has to be done" which in their eyes equates to " fleece me as i am an ignorant git and have no option"

if i can avoid them needlessly rebuilding it to fix something that may not need to be pull apart i would like to give myself every chance...

if you guys can put up with my questions, i will ask another... can anyone point me to the link for TCU resetting and the diagnostic procedure... i wouldnt mind to check codes as well... i mean hey it does have the ability to tell you what is wrong....

i do appreciate what your saying SUBARU but i hope you can understand me 1 wanting to learn and 2 not wanting to be an ignorant customer that mechanics and whatnot rub their hands together over...

I hear what you're saying and understand that you want to learn about the situation at hand so that you can potentially diagnose the problem. That's certainly the kind of behaviour we encourage. However, at this stage of the game, you've got a lot of information at hand, probably as much as we are able to provide without physically looking at your car.

You know the behaviour of the transmission, when it happens, what happens e.t.c. You have a handful of suggestions from us. So with that, you can go and speak with someone about a specific problem, rather than just chucking the keys at them and asking for a full strip down.
More than likely, they will run a diagnosis on the ECU and TCU and try to pick up some fault codes straight of the bat.

I'm leaning towards an electrical fault, given that it only seems to happen part-time. A mechanical failure would be constant. Any diagnostics will need to be run with an OBDII scanner, which I would suggest a tranny specialist would be able to do at a minimal, if not no cost.

As far as restting the TCU goes, you can literally unplug the TCU for a while, or disconnect the battery as was earlier suggested. I'm not so sure that this will fix the problem.

One final word of wisdom. The longer you delay on this, self diagnose, road test, delay, rinse and repeat, the more likely are the chances of your transmission totally melting down and leaving you stranded and more out of pocket.
Get out there and nip it in the bud. Use the money you set aside for tuning and upgrades in fixing this problem, so that you have a rock solid base to start working with.