Hello. It's so expensive to replace torque converter that you'd be better off replacing entire transmission. Looking back I wish I would have replaced the transmission instead of selling it. I had driven ours to 229,000 miles and replaced most every component except the engine and transmission and it still looked and drove new. The cost of the new transmission was around $5,000 at the time (5 years ago). Spoke with new owner and after a year he had zero issues thanks to all the new components throughout. They're tanks.

 

Just wanted to update this. Things have gotten worse on mine. The rpm fluctuations are persistent. It’s now clunking when coming to a stop and trying to shift down into 1st gear. I recently had the valve body completely rebuilt professionally and I installed OEM bridge seals, cylinder seals, and a new filter with new fluid. No change whatsoever.

Either the transmission is shot or the torque converter. However, I still have this sneaking suspicion that either the transmission oil pump or the torque converter clutch (or its solenoid) is bad. It still drives me crazy that driving in manual mode eliminates the fluctuations completely. It makes me think it’s purely a computer/electrical issue.

At this point I’m about to either sell it or do the full transmission.

 

It’s the torque converter. I’ve just gone through this and ended up having a shop replace the transmission due to all the trouble that’s involved and to have a warranty on the work. It’s not cheap. We’ve had our rig (08’ LR3) since 2018 and wheel it a lot and haven’t spent much on it at all so I figure this antes things up. Funny thing is we have 3x LR3’s and the other two have near 200k miles on them and this one has only 100k and was owned by a little old lady beforehand who never did anything with it. Not sure how or why, all the rigs go on the same trails and are driven with vehicle preservation in mind. And yes we had the same exact issue, no surge in cruise control or manual mode. Now it drives smooth as can be.

 

So are you suggesting I just swap the torque converter? Or the whole transmission?

Funny you say yours was owned by an old lady. I’m the second owner and bought it from an old guy who passed. Just hit 130k miles last week and its having issues.

 

If you’re doing the work yourself, I’d just change the torque converter, as that is the root cause of the rpm fluctuations (at least in my case); how or why it doesn’t happen when in manual or cruise control is beyond my knowledge base so far. If getting the work done by a shop I’d just get a new (it will be remanufactured as they do t produce new ones) transmission for the sake of warranty. Best of luck and let us k is how it turns out.

*as to your earlier note on electronics and fly by wire, having multiple LR3’s I swapped out everything I could trying to track the issue down; sensors and really thought it was going to be the throttle position sensor (actual gas pedal with sensor) but no dice.

 

In retrospect, I was I would have just forked over the $5k to $6k for new transmission/torque converter and been done with it. The engine on those are solid, they're iconic and the cost of new and used cars is just ridiculous right now.