Land Rover Repair: landrover discover automatic stuck in reverse, landrover discovery, gear oil

Question
landrover discovery v8 , r reg , automatic ,petrol/lpg .hi ,put the car into reverse , it made a bit of a clunk at the time , then i reversed to let a passer by and now it is stuck in reverse . it will not budge out of gear , i have now turned off the engine but of course it will not start now unless is can go back into neutral . please help asap , have an airport run next weekend !  regards kerry

Answer
Hi Kerry,

it could be that the transfer gearbox gear oil has leaked out over time.  If this is true, eventually the shifter could seize in any gear (in your case reverse).  

You could crawl underneath your Disco, open the fill plug for the transfer gearbox and add the appropriate gear oil up to the level of the fill plug opening.  There is NO dipstick measurement for this.  You have to add gear oil until it starts leaking back out the fill plug hole that you are using to add the gear oil.

I've seen this with my '95 Disco.  I had a slow leak that eventually drained my transfer gearbox of gear oil.  One morning on my way to work, I shifted into 3rd and was about to shift into 4th gear but could not.  It had seized.

I immediately stopped the Disco, managed to wiggle the gear out of 3rd and into 2nd.  In 2nd gear I managed to limp back home, investigated and found the transfer gearbox fluid to be gone!

I hope this is all that you have to worry about.

Best of luck,

JohnMc