Hi All, I'm back after a long hiatus. I used to be here a lot as an owner of a 2004 Discovery II, followed by a 2007 LR3. Now I have a 2008 LR2 that was given to me by an old friend because he knew I would take care of it and he didn't want to part with it forever (it was his favorite car, and first new car of his life). I've actually had it in my possession since 2018 but kept it at our 2nd home in Colorado as a ski runabout, so have done some work to it including a new fuel pump, one of the cats, and a transmission fluid change. It's seen maybe 8000 miles in 3 years, and I recently had it shipped to Richmond to work on as a project with my son, who is 13 to eventually drive when he gets his license. It's a clean California car in pristine condition, with 228K miles on the clock.

Anyway, the problem I'm having is that the once the car warms up fully, the transmission gets annoyed and will start hunting in/out of the lower gears when under load at slow speeds, such as climbing a grade, accelerating from a light in traffic, etc. I did a 2x transmission fluid drain and refill to get most of the fluid out, and did the proper procedure for getting the transmission fluid topped off right, but it's still doing it under the conditions described above. The rest of the time it performs normally. I've done a ton of searching for similar things and came up short. Any ideas?

 

The obvious first. The transmission mode is set to normal (lower left setting), Dynamic Stability Control is off and the Hill Descent Control off as well? Is the HDC warning indicator on the center LCD display on? Any error codes from the computer?

 

Thanks for responding - I've seen your helpful posts to others and I'm grateful. Yes, the transmission is set to normal, and HDC is off with no HDC warning indicator. However, since it happens during normal driving, and I normally drive with DSC on, I didn't think to turn it off to check to see if it changed the behavior. Should I turn DSC off and see if it changes anything?

No error codes from the computer but I only have the ability to scan standard (OBD2) codes, and not LR-specific ones yet. On a parallel track, I'm researching the best options there. I made the mistake of buying an iCarsoft unit for my GMCs and while it's a nice tool, it's nowhere near as capable as the GM Tech 2, of which Chinese-made clones can be had for only 2x what I paid for the iCarsoft, and they work perfectly. If I have to dig into the Aisin-Warner transmission on this thing, I'm going to need a tool that can reset the adapts at a minimum.

After some more digging around, I see that TransGo makes a shift kit for these that apparently fixes the kinds of behavior I'm experiencing as these transmissions wear. The kit's only $100 and the valve body can be removed and the kit installed on the kitchen table without taking out the transmission. I've rebuilt a ZF 5HP24 on my workbench from a BMW 740iL, so if I have to dig in, I'm not too concerned about it. I may just install the kit anyway and see what happens. I'll keep y'all posted on what I learn as I go.

 

My apologies, I meant to ask if the DSC warning light was off, not that the switch was off. You're right, it should be enabled and the warning light off. You can try turning it off and seeing if it changes anything. You could always take the car to a dealer or to an LR shop with the SDD diagnostics and pay a little money to get them to scan the car and tell you if it reports any faults. It would help to narrow down the possibilities before considering changing any parts or adding any third party kits.

 

Ah, okay. That makes sense - thanks for clarifying.

Just for fun, I have a little bluetooth tool made by Innova that works with an iPhone app and can scan additional modules for errors on some cars. I just tried it out and it turns out that it's able to scan most of the modules on the LR2, including the TCM. No errors reported there nor for the RDCM, but there is an ABS error reported for the left rear wheel speed sensor, and a bunch of miscellaneous errors from the BCM, all of which should be inconsequential in this situation. Side note, there is an error from the ECM for catalyst efficiency below threshold (P0430) on bank 2, which is NOT the cat + O2 sensors I've previously replaced, but no CEL is being triggered so I won't worry about it yet. That said, it seems that a new left-side cat and O2 sensors are in my future :-)

 

Clear all the errors, run the car for a bit and then scan it again to see what persists.

 

Also...

Check the motor mounts, bad motor mounts will make this car shift funny and they wear out around 100K.

Do a quick visual inspection of the upper torque mount next to the coolant reservoir, if the rubber is torn it's bad and that almost certainly means the right lower mount is bad too.

 

Yes, the top torque mount is definitely bad. I ordered a new one from Febest which arrived yesterday, so will put that in shortly. Have not inspected the lower mount yet though, so thanks for the tip - I'll do that next.

Update: I had a few minutes between calls today so I went outside and installed the new top torque mount. Took it for a short test drive and the shifting is a little more firm and controlled, but I couldn't get it warm enough to replicate the hunting/hard downshifting behavior. Still have to do the lower mounts at some point also.

 

Interesting. My torque mount at the top was junked when I bought the truck but the bottom ones were fine. I didn't have any trouble with shifting. Perhaps it is a symptom of having top and bottom mounts go bad.

 

A new torque mount will help even if the lower mount is bad, since it minimize engine twisting with power changes. Replacing the lower mount will help more. A bad lower mount will damage the torque mount soon, so check or replace the lower mounts asap.