Now that it is corrected, don’t let it go here again. Despite the “schedule” in the Scheduled Maintenance guides, change the oil every 5000. And ALL the other fluids and filters every 50k. (Yes, I change the power steering reservoir when changing the fluid.) You will benefit from longer life in the engine, steering, transmission, PTU and diffs.

 

It has 230,000 meticulously maintained miles on it. The work I did is preventative to get it to last for the next 100K.

 

x2.

I'll go to 7K (or one year) with Mobil-1 since we normally have a lot of road trip miles.

 

Yes, I've always done no more than 5K miles between oil changes, which works out to about every 3-6 months, depending on driving habits. On this LR2, the oil is still clean on the dipstick well past 3K miles. Nothing in this thread has anything to do with engine oil change intervals though so I'm a little curious why 2 people have now chimed in on it.

 

So the new valve body seems to have solved the shifting problems. I took it out for a test drive a little while ago and it drove like a dream. No more hunting between gears when the fluid is warm, and no more slamming on hard acceleration in left hand turns pulling onto a main road. I'll update this thread if anything changes. Thanks for riding along on this journey.

 

After driving the LR2 for a few days, I have a fairly significant transmission fluid leak. Gonna have to pull the belly pan again and try to figure out where it's coming from. The only sealing points I touched were the fluid pan and gasket, the o-rings where the cooler lines go into the transmission, and the drain & fill plugs. I suspect it's the pan for 2 reasons: 1/ It's the most difficult of these items to reach. 2/ I used a rubber gasket instead of the RTV that it came with from the factory, because I thought it would provide a more reliable seal in imperfect conditions. More when I can get it apart.

 

Properly applied RTV always provides for a better seal than a rubber gasket.

 

Always seems a bit strong and doesn't match my experience over the years. And, there are also plenty of transmissions on the road with rubber gaskets sealing their pans with no leaks. I rebuilt a ZF 5HP24 on my workbench that used a rubber pan gasket and it never leaked a drop.

The original sealant on the LR2's pan was precisely applied on clean, dry, lint-free surfaces by a robot. I'm good, but I'm not that good. Given the limited working space around the pan and the high potential for contaminants on the surfaces despite cleaning, I judged that it would be nigh impossible to get a consistent bead of uncontaminated sealer around the edge, and any places with too much sealant would pose a risk of a piece breaking loose and obstructing one of the myriad fluid orifices and galleries in the transmission. On top of that, trying to get the bolts in with limited working space meant that the sealer would get smeared around before the pan could be permanently positioned.

Like so many other things in life, the choice of sealing method in this case was the result of analyzing multiple factors and rolling the dice. Given that I have always had good luck with rubber gaskets and mixed results with RTV, it tipped the decision toward the gasket. Oh well.

 

AND, was the procedure followed for the tightening of bolts. If I recall, in a clockwise motion from the mid point, alternating sides at each bolt(if that makes sense.)
Awaiting your response.

 

Only thing I can say is that there is a good reason it came with RTV and not a gasket.