Quote:
I don't know if it was deliberate, but you haven't disclosed the exact nature of your "trans failure" only that it occurred whilst transiting a mountain pass (which gives me several ideas) and that it was obviously sufficiently serious that the car was undriveable.
Does Binny have the (optional on the 1850) trans cooler fitted? And what colour was the oil that came out?
Steve
Not really deliberate Steve, I just don't know what went wrong.
We were climbing the Passo Giau about 20kms out of Cortina d'Ampezzo on the 4th day of the run. Everything so far had been fine, no signs of problems, no funny noises or anything like that. Then suddenly as we rounded a hairpin and started to accelerate up the hill to the next one the car just stalled. (edit: Here I think...
https://goo.gl/maps/KqSZuyGxdvh4dWuz5 although it looks like the lay-by appeared sometime after 2019!)
It wouldn't restart, turning over really slowly as though the battery was flat (my initial guess at the problem was that somehow the battery/charging had failed - and that's why we cut out)
We rolled the car back round the hairpin to a lay-by on the previous "straight" section, got the hazards on and the bonnet up.
Various cars on the run stopped and helped and with a jump start we got the engine running, but on releasing the throttle it died. Again got the engine running and it was ticking over. Selected drive and nothing in any gear or reverse.
Dipped and topped the trans fluid up - still nothing.
Then finally we got a small amount of drive (but slipping), u-turned and started heading back to Cortina. After about 1km we lost drive again so gave up and called for recovery. I periodically restarted and tried for drive over the 7 or so hours waiting for recovery, but at no point did we regain any drive in any gears.
When the car came back (about 7 weeks later) there was sufficient drive to get it off the driveway into the garage, but it was slipping and something was screeching.
I haven't inspected the oil properly, at a glance slightly cloudy.
My working theory is that the gearbox pump jammed/blocked - the sudden high load on the engine caused the stall and the "flat battery" symptoms, but once we turned it over enough we'd either wrecked the pump or something and that's why drive was gone.
Hopefully I'll find some evidence in the next few days as I strip it down. At this stage I'm thinking I'll bite the bullet and go for a full recon box and torque converter and "play it safe" rather than trying to repair it myself (depending on what I find)
Edit: to add, no transmission oil cooler fitted.