The Toyota Landcruiser Owners Club

[Plumbo]

I have just noted this post on horizons, I was thinking about the wholesale autos conversion!

any help & advice for this chap before he defects!!!

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hubb/toyota-overland-tech/80-series-auto-box-temperatures-47292

Andy
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'94 80 series, OME 864's, allisport intercooler,LRange fuel tank, winch, snorkel,  twin rear wheel carrier / bumper, roof tent, split charge, atf cooler, water tanks, BFG A/T etc etc etc
www.egyptian-sahara.com

[Google]

[kayamtom]

Thanks Andy,

Nice to know you are out there keeping an eye on us!   Lets hope some Auto box Legend saves my day.

Kind Regards

tom

[wildsmith]

I did reply on that other forum, didn't even realise I'd signed up and expected it not to let me post but lets carry on here: Obviously doing a diagnosis on line is a bit hit and miss so keep that in mind.

So far what you've described sounds like you may have a problem with the torque converter not locking up. At 40mph or just above, on low throttle, does it feel like it changed up a gear? At 50mph on the flat not pushing too hard, what are your RPM's?

I'd say either lock up isn't working or your cooler circuit is blocked (which can also prevent lock up). You said the gearbox was rebuilt, did they also rebuild the torque converter and was it OEM or just a gearbox 'specialist' ? There have been cases of poor quality torque converter refirbs causing the lock up friction surface to break up and clog coolers.
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Jon m0zxj

01 UZJ100 lifted (AHC & 40mm BL), ARB locked f&r, cryo'd 4.88's, TJM front bumper, 12k goldfish, sliders, rack, snorkel, 35's, storage, aux power etc.
93 HDJ80 sold
94 HDJ80 RIP

[kayamtom]

Good Morning Jon

I guess we must have been writing at the same time and I missed your reply on "that other forum"!

I do not have an OD button.  It is the A442F transmission according to the VIN plate.  No electronic business on it.  

As for the gear changes,  1,2 and 3rd are working just fine.  It is from there up that things are not doing so well.  

There is what I would describe as a half gear in between 3rd and 4th (when all is working well)  but now it struggles to make it past that half gear into top gear.  If it is at all warm outside then it will stay in that half gear all the time.  55mph will see 2500rpm or more up hills.  

On the way down to Tunisia through France and Italy, hitting the Alps, it was a real pleasure to drive with the box locking up and the wagon really pulling up into the hills, 55mph at 2000rpm with solid revs when accelerating, no sloppiness or slipping up hill with the load.  

No she is different.  At 50 mph no pushing the engine will sit at 2000 rpm.  At 40 mph it is in in 3rd gear it may tickle over into the half gear but only when cold.  Any more than 50mph when hot and things go wrong quickly gets hot and the gears start slipping.

The box was rebuilt by Stephens Engineering who I located via the FATE website.  I am not sure if the Torque Converter was refurbished.  They did say that they would use genuine parts but lots of people say that and don't.  I have to say that they Stephens Engineerings have been helpful and come across as an honest bunch.  I will speak with them again today.

Kind Regards

tom

[wildsmith]

Ok, being the hydraulic box it will be a bit harder to diagnose what gear you're actually in and wether it's OD that isn't engaging or lock up isn't happening. I'm not sure what went on at Toyota with the labeling of these earlier box's but even if they call the hydraulic only box an A442F on the plate it seems to be exactly the same as the A440F! On the electronic version you could experiment with turning OD off manually.

There isn't a lot of difference RPM wise between the effect of OD and lockup. I think it sounds like OD is working fine (your half gear) and lockup is what's playing up but please remember I'm sitting comfortably at home at a keyboard, not crawling round your truck or footing the bills!

The main thing I think is indicating lock up failure rather than OD failure is the overheating. When the torque converter isn't locked up it slips, hence the higher revs, but it also makes a lot of heat. The faster you go without lock up, the more heat is created by that slipping. Pretty much anything from 45-50mph up will be too much for the cooling system to handle and it will overheat.

If it were just OD failing to engage, it would still lock up in OD and the heat produced then is minimal, there would be no reason for overheating even if the cooling system were completely blocked, air flow over the caseing cooling would be enough to stay on top of it.

Go for a drive to get it warmed up, you need to do a 50mph run with it not working properly but try to stop before the warning light comes on, get out and have a feel of the Kenlowe cooler. It should be HOT so be careful but if you have a blockage it will be cool. If you have a blockage you will have to use a process of elimination to work out if it's the Kenlowe, the radiator, the pipes or something in the box that's blocked. Let us know the outcome of the cooler test before I go through those though, you might not be blocked up. If you are blocked up, it's likely to be a side effect of another failure rather than the cause of no lock up but you never know ...

I think most gearbox places send the torque converters off to be refirbed rather than doing them themselves.
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Jon m0zxj

01 UZJ100 lifted (AHC & 40mm BL), ARB locked f&r, cryo'd 4.88's, TJM front bumper, 12k goldfish, sliders, rack, snorkel, 35's, storage, aux power etc.
93 HDJ80 sold
94 HDJ80 RIP

[kayamtom]

Hello Jon

Kenlowe cooler gets hot, made sure to check this these last couple of days.  I guess that if there was a real blockage there would be a heat problem but also if the oil does not flow then the box would behave very badly all of the time?

So it seem that you are narrowing down the possibilities?...

I really appreciate the help here so thank you very much.

Kind Regards
tom

[wildsmith]

The cooler being hot is another sign it's lock up failure I think. As I understand it, the cooler circuit runs from the output of the TC lockup circuit and when the TC is locked there is no flow through either i.e. no cooling but it's not needed because the heat source isn't making heat any more. The hot cooler suggests ample fluid flow at a time when the TC should have been locked and the cooler should have been getting cool. If you'd said it was cool, we'd have to have come up with a way to test if it was because of blockage or lockup working.

I'm about 90% sure you your lockup has failed. I don't know a way to test on the hydraulic only box if it's the TC itself or the valve body other than by process of elimination i.e. change one and see if the problem goes away.

Just checking in the FSM RM184E, AT-23, it says the following to test lockup: "drive at a steady speed of about 85km/h (53mph), lightly depress the accelerator pedal and check that the engine rpm does not change abruptly. If there is a big jump in rpm, there is no lock-up."

Choices are not good, you can swap the valve body out for another one (do you still have the original?) and see if the problem goes away or drop the box and change the TC. When I had a similar problem I swapped the standard VB to an Extreme one, still had the problem and so had to drop the box and swap the TC. I got a heavy duty TC from Rodney, exchange, and asked him for a report on the state of the old one when he cut it open so I would know if I needed to look elsewhere before the box went back in. That's where the information about low grade friction surfaces that break up came from and that's what had happened to mine, blocking the cooler in the radiator as well. My box and TC had also been rebuilt not too long before ...
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Jon m0zxj

01 UZJ100 lifted (AHC & 40mm BL), ARB locked f&r, cryo'd 4.88's, TJM front bumper, 12k goldfish, sliders, rack, snorkel, 35's, storage, aux power etc.
93 HDJ80 sold
94 HDJ80 RIP

[kayamtom]

Hello again,

Just to recap on one thing and that is the effect of ambient temperature.  The problem gets much worse with hotter weather (25-28C) and on cooler days(20-25C) when the truck has warmed up.  

Would the problem not be bad all the time if it was the lock up?  That is not to say that it is perfect when cold, it just gets worse when warm so maybe I'm being a bit thick?..

I will be seeing a few people here tomorrow to see what prices and ideas we come up with.  Some local mechanic came onto camp today to quote on a few fixes for other overlanders and said he could replace my gearbox with brand new for £700!  Imagine that?  I'd love to believe it but I'll shop around first and see what turns up.

How fast can Rodney dispatch TC's?  I'd like to keep the faith but like you said there are 2 likely problems and you know what that means for Rodney..

I have conducted the test you mentioned on the way down purely by coincidence, well something close to it, and the results would point toward the lock up problem.

Oh the joys of travel!   Sadly the truck was one of the few things I thought that I could rely upon.

Thanks again,

tom

[wildsmith]

Ambient temperature always has a big effect on cooling related issues like this. In the cooler ambient temps more heat can be dumped and so you'll have less of a problem. When it's hot ambient temps the heat isn't dumped as easily and so you overload the cooling system more easily. Heat is a big killer of auto box's, it's probably past time you stopped driving your truck till it's fixed or you may burn out or warp the clutch packs as well and need another rebuild.

I've no idea what Rodney's turn around time is like unfortunately. I got lucky / he felt sorry for me and it was with me in 4 days but I also shipped my old one to him for a diagnostic / exchange. It wasn't cheap but I wanted a part I could rely on. They're quite heavy BTW, maybe 25kg but I still have mine in the garage if you need a proper weight estimate for shipping.
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Jon m0zxj

01 UZJ100 lifted (AHC & 40mm BL), ARB locked f&r, cryo'd 4.88's, TJM front bumper, 12k goldfish, sliders, rack, snorkel, 35's, storage, aux power etc.
93 HDJ80 sold
94 HDJ80 RIP

[cantanko]

Random (and potentially unhelpful) thought - does your transmission cooler have a thermostat in it? The one I had on my Land Rover did, and the 'stat managed to get stuck in the cold position once, hence not actually engaging the auxillary cooler... Took me a while to figure that one out
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'94 Landcruiser HDJ80
'94 Celica GT-Four ST205 WRC
'06 Mazda RX-8 PZ
'90 Celica GT-Four ST185 RC 1266•5000

[ecco123]

Did you get your stock ATF cooler disconnected when you installed your Kenlowe cooler?

My transmission "specialist" installed a HD cooler and disconnected the stock cooler that went into the engine radiator. Then it started to overheat (not ATF oil temp on, but I noticed by Rodney's gauge).

So I started to mess around with lots of possibilites, the specialist that did it insisted that the stock cooler shouldn't be reconnected as there was a risk of it breaking and water entering the transmission.

Then I emailed Rodney and he told me that was a lot of bs as long as the engine radiator was in good condition and the coolant  changed regulary, the chances of the coolant entering the transmission were minimal and that I should be reinstalling the stock cooler.

He also told me that the aftermarket cooler wasn't a very good quality one.

So I got another aftermarket cooler the kind Rodney recommended, reconnected the stock cooler in line with it and... problem solved, I went from 130ºC to 80ºC in the same situations.

[kayamtom]

Hello ecco

I have both the stock ATF cooler and the Kenlowe cooler fitted.  ATF passes through the stock cooler first then to the Kenlowe cooler.  I am from time to time suspicious that the Kenlowe is not up to the job but then there may also be something up with stock cooler even though what I can see of it looks okay.  Changed the coolant regularly and have got the red Toyota stuff in there.  Which cooler do you now have fitted that Rodney recommended?

In the meantime..

The progress on things here is that Rodney has been completely brilliant and shipped another valve body over in the hope that it would fix the problem.  Sadly it has not fixed the problem.  I am amazed at how helpful Rodney has been and would recommend wholeheartedly that anyone considering the Wholesale Automatic upgrades just go ahead and do it.  Rodney is a pleasure to deal with.  I am now seriously considering getting the whole upgrade and shipping over to The Sudan or Ethiopia a complete gearbox so that I know that it is all good inside.  We must leave Egypt to avoid the expense of staying here and the taxes on anything imported to help fix our problem.

So thanks to all for your input.  There will be more news to come.  The last thing I want is for this trip to be all about nursing a sick car from A to B to C etc.  so there will be a fix soon, I hope.

Many Thanks
tom