I have a 98 XJ8 Vanden Plas with 168,000 miles and the transmission is failing.
It's a ZF 5HP 24. Does anyone have a good used or rebuilt one for sale? I'm in Escondido, CA (Southern California)
Any help would be appreciated.


Bob Gold 760-580-4653


goldfinger27@gmail.com

 

Bob,

Failing in what way? I ask this only because it is not at all uncommon to get a "Gearbox Fault" message (as well as a variety of other spurious warning messages) when your battery is on its last legs.

I thought I had a failing transmission at one point, too, when I started getting a series of "Gearbox Fault" warnings in a row. After our local Jag expert did a complete code reading (my reader is advanced, but does not cover "everything") and he didn't find the code(s) he expected for a real gearbox fault, we went the new battery route.

I have not had another warning since. My car has traveled approximately 153K.

 

Brian,


Thanks for the info, but I already checked out the battery (and changed it) but I had to have the transmission checked out and it's got to come out.

Believe it or not I have found a transmission shop here that will rebuild and install one (including torque converter) for $1,650 with a 6 month warrantee. That's hard to beat.
I have been quote up to $4,200 for a rebuild.


Bob

 

I had mine rebuilt here in Florida for just over $1,700 -- your price sounds great to me.

 

As guyslp is recommending to do all your diagnosis for the signs and symptoms first.

If you will need a rebuild after all testings, I recommend a tranny shop in Menifee, CA - Menifee Transmission 951-566-5088 (215 freeway/Newport). I dealt with them before for my Suburban's 4x4 transfer case. I already inquired about their services for Jag tranny.

They do all the work inhouse: open the tranny, show you what's wrong with it and parts that will require replacement. They charge $2500 for the rebuild with 2 years/24k miles warranty.

 

Bob,

Sorry to hear this, though it sounds like you have found a good deal on the repair if the shop is capable of doing it correctly.

One of the things I've learned over time is that this car is exquisitely sensitive to a weak battery, but at the "level of systems monitoring." You can still crank the car when the battery is too low to satisfy some of the various monitors. Another common spurious warning from a low battery (even though the car easily cranks and starts) is ASC/Traction Control failure.

There are also a lot of technicians (I won't say mechanics) who's skill level is limited to pulling codes and throwing parts related to those codes at the problem. These cars can throw a variety of codes that have one base issue, and if you fix that one base issue the rest of the codes fall like a house of cards. My recent response to the person who complained of all eight cylinders misfiring at once (which, while possible, is exceedingly rare) was to make sure you don't have a single root cause. When I had my first ignition coil failure the "standard solution" was to replace all eight, which I did not do given the ludicrous cost of doing so. As time went by I found out that the replacement coils were as likely to die at random as the original ones were and that age had little to nothing to do with the likelihood of failure. I still have five of the eight original ignition coils in my car at 153K and carry a few spares in my trunk. It takes all of 15 minutes to change one (or more, in the same bank) if you have one fail and keep a code reader (or code reader dongle and Android-powered smartphone with Torque or Carista, for instance) with you so that you know which one has failed.

In the end, it astounds me that one of the things not monitored by the car is the charging state of the battery. I recently had the battery replaced and the tech who put it all back together managed to somehow fasten down the ground cable from the battery to its chassis stud just every so slightly incorrectly. I was getting enough contact to start the car, but you could see, once the thing was taken off, that intermittent arcing had been taking place between the connector and the stud. When I measured charging voltage before I took things apart, cleaned them up, and put them back together again it was barely 12V, not nearly enough. Once things were tidied up again it was back to a solid 14V.