ZF transmissions troubleshooting

[shogun]

http://www.zf-transmissions.com/troubleshooting.htm

[artguy]

Hopefully I will never need it...:D

But at over 200,000 miles, I probably will...:(

Thanks Shogun.

[shogun]

Don't worry, that is not too difficult. Just buy a repair manual, study it, make a trial assembly/repair with a written off tranny and then you are ready to reman a complete transmission. Learning by error is included. We did meanwhile > 10 trannies and they run perfect on our cars. Some failed in the beginning because we forgot the importance of the torque converter. Now we always change the torque converter in case of heavy wear on a tranny. The torque converter has all the oil inside with small metal and wear parts and easily damages a reman tranny again. Flushing is very important too then of the complete system including the pipings for the tranny cooler.
Parts are actually not that expensive and there are various options available for overhaul or reman sets.

[BigKriss]

so do you normally purchase a whole new torque converter?


Don't worry, that is not too difficult. Just buy a repair manual, study it, make a trial assembly/repair with a written off tranny and then you are ready to reman a complete transmission. Learning by error is included. We did meanwhile > 10 trannies and they run perfect on our cars. Some failed in the beginning because we forgot the importance of the torque converter. Now we always change the torque converter in case of heavy wear on a tranny. The torque converter has all the oil inside with small metal and wear parts and easily damages a reman tranny again. Flushing is very important too then of the complete system including the pipings for the tranny cooler.
Parts are actually not that expensive and there are various options available for overhaul or reman sets.

[shogun]

We found a small backyard shop in Yokohama. 3 old experienced guys are doing remanufacturing of torque converters there. No internet, no email, just a normal phone line, in a backyard one difficult to find, even not a compant name plate outside of the shop. But they know their job and reman it.
We cannot do that by our own, as the converter has to be cut in 2 halfs and then the innards are to be changed, then rewelded and possibly rebalanced.
That costs us in average $500, much cheaper than a new one. They even renew bad couplings, shafts, recoil threads, old school guys which do not need much modern equipment, they know their business by heart.
Here a new torque converter costs us 3-4 times of that price. In case you live in the U.S., much cheaper, European transmission sell them for less than 300 $ reman, and you have to send the old core back to them. But a torque converter is quite heavy and sending the old one back to the U.S. and sending the reman from the U.S. to Japan, plus import duty, VAT and the time, so it is cheaper + faster here. For us.
These guys here are known to insiders only. They got converters there from all over Japan, I visited them 2 weeks ago to watch them repair other torque converters.
Maybe you find also such a small shop in Australia. Check with the shops which make service for race cars, they know these specialist shops.
So we decide to change the conveter based on the damages on the transmission we find after disassembling it. We have some torque converters made now there and they are on stand by when needed. If heavy damage to metal parts inside the tranny, we change the torque converter. They also told us that even flushing does not get out all the small metall particles from the converter. After I have seen in their shop all the single parts of a torque converter, I believe that is fact.

[BigKriss]

thanks for your detailed reply Erich.