Land Rover Repair: 2004 Td5 Landrover Discovery gearbox, transmission shops, forward gear

Question
Hi John,
Had the gearbox checked on our Td5 before heading off on a 6000 km trip around Western Australia, pulling a 2.5 tonne caravan. All well sat on 95 kms at just above 2000 revs. Two days before returning home, the gearbox started revving out to about 45000 revs before changing to second. Changes up from this were fine, and the fault seemed intermittent, but probably worse on colder mornings. Arriving home we couldn't select reverse without the car stalling, disconnected the battery to reset the computer which seemed to fix the reversing problem but not the forward gear revving out. Checked the oil level which is okay. Have booked it in to a mechanic but because of the remoteness of where we live we don't have the best support for landrovers. Just thought it would be good to get an experts opinion before we take it in.

Answer
That sounds like a failure within the gearbox.  Those ZF boxes are tricky to work on and beyond the skill of most transmission shops. Here in the USA there are a few ZF authorized rebuilders.  If your truck were here I'd pull the transmission and send it to one of them for overhaul.  Hopefully ZF has a service network in Australia, too.  Removal and refit of the gearbox is pretty easy; it's just heavy work.


Best of luck with it

John Elder Robison

check my car blog at http://robisonservice.blogspot.com