Discovery 3 transmission

G'day Tony,

no offence mate, but the advice you gave in your post (above) is 100% contradictory to what I was advised, by Land Rover Australia, to do when towing with and automatic Disco 3.

I specifically contacted them when I purchased my vehicle because I had heard many stories of "blown" auto trannies in all makes of vehicle.

Land Rover's advice is as simple as "put it in drive and the transmission will take care of itself". They specifically advised AGAINST using the manual mode of operation when towing.

The reasoning is that the trans is both adaptive and intelligent. It interacts with the engine ECU to ensure that the right gear and the right revs, fuel mix etc are made available to keep the gearbox within its operating parameters at all times. They argued that locking the trans in a specific gear would heighten the risk of overheating the transmission.

We pull a 3.5 tonne 'van and have done 83,000 trouble-free Kms so far. I don't know the circumstances of the trans failure that the original poster had but I do know that in the 6 months I spent working at a Land Rover dealer last year, not one D3 came in with transmission failure.

ZF are so confident in the transmission that they manufactured it so that you cannot check or top up the trans fluid and it is not checked by a dealer until the vehicle has done over 200,000 Kms.

It will be interesting to see a follow-up post about this issue once they have determined what went wrong.

Cheers

Russ

I have heard the same advice from reliable Land Rover workshop employee in the know. Even though marked as 'sealed for life', he told me to change the tranny oil around every 100K at least.

Mike

Fords also recon there transmissions are that good you never need to look at them. But if you are towing any thing large by a bout 100000ks if you drop the trans sump you will find the oil pump filter is pretty damed dirty. Personaly i would change the filter & fluid, which is about all that can be done as bands dont have adjustments anymore they are shimmed at manufacture. There philosiphy these days is drive till it dies, then fit a rebuild.

Agree with what mikehzz and dbish say. The boxes dont have bands any more, just two sets of clutches.

G'day Tony,

Here's a development!

Just yesterday my Land Rover dealer personally came to see me. He had just been to Sydney to do the Disco 4 training. At that training session the subject of the Disco 3 transmissions came up. It seems that Land Rover are aware of the issue of towing heavy 'vans with the auto transmission and they have issued an edict that the "sealed for life" transmission should be opened and the oil changed at approx 80,000 Km intervals. They actually call it a "service enhancement". What a joke. They have a problem that costs the vehicle owner a heap of money to solve and it becomes an "enhancement".

Here's the best bit.....the transmission oil is a very special formulation and is all but $100.00 per Litre. That means a bill for at least $450.00 plus labour!

The driving instructions (the official line from Land Rover) remain unchanged, let the transmission do the thinking.

I was lining up for the Disco 4, but now I'm not so sure. I don't like surprises being sprung on me AFTER I've purchased a vehicle in good faith, which is what has happened with the current vehicle.

Cheers

Russ.