Bloody astra J

[sierraman]

Miles and miles out of your way but can recommend M&T Transmissions in Sheffield. 

[red5]

Did it actually cut out? That's quite important before anything is looked at...

[New POD]

38 minutes ago, red5 said:

Did it actually cut out? That's quite important before anything is looked at...

No.  Its Just been delivered back home on a recovery truck, and  I've had a look. No warning lights currently on. So I took it fir a drive. Seems better than before. Given that the garage can't look at it for a week, I might just take my code reader with me and drive it to work Thursday and Friday. 

[Mally]

Be aware that if you do and it breaks down again the RAC will wash their hands of you.

@warren t claimhas a truck though😀

[warren t claim]

5 hours ago, Mally said:

Be aware that if you do and it breaks down again the RAC will wash their hands of you.

@warren t claimhas a truck though😀

Along with garage facilities on Merseyside that employ an automatic transmission guy. 

[New POD]

9 hours ago, Mally said:

Be aware that if you do and it breaks down again the RAC will wash their hands of you.

@warren t claimhas a truck though😀

I knew the first. I was going to suggest to the local reluctant garage that if they couldn't actually find a fault (on a 3 mile test drive last night, on the flat, it was fine), then changing the oil and giving me a VAT receipt would be a way of resetting the RAC obligations. 

Given that there are zero hills on my commute, I thought maybe the risk would be low. However.  When I had the omega, and it kept getting stuck in third, I found I could reset all error codes with my cheap generic code reader. EVEN if I couldn't read the gearbox codes. 

Do we think the same might be true on a car 11 years newer? 

 

3 hours ago, warren t claim said:

Along with garage facilities on Merseyside that employ an automatic transmission guy. 

PM sent. Would like to book it in, to put my wife's mind at rest. 

[New POD]

Also, RAC membership is due to run out in erm...no idea. Based on the way they dealt with my wife, I have no loyalty. 

Who to give money to instead? Or has the race to the bottom reached the earth's core. 

[garbaldy]

 

53 minutes ago, New POD said:

Also, RAC membership is due to run out in erm...no idea. Based on the way they dealt with my wife, I have no loyalty. 

Who to give money to instead? Or has the race to the bottom reached the earth's core. 

I would stay where you are as her treatment didn't sound that bad compared to a mate whose clutch went on his van,  6.30pm broke down called AA who said they would be at him within the hour,  3 hours and numerous calls later he sent wife home in a taxi as she was raging,  9am he's still sitting in his van.

[sierraman]

I’d doubt very much an oil change will reap any benefits by this stage, it will probably be like marmite in there. It needs looking at somewhere that does gearboxes, I wouldn’t expect a regular garage to want to entertain a job like that. 

[New POD]

3 minutes ago, sierraman said:

I’d doubt very much an oil change will reap any benefits by this stage, it will probably be like marmite in there. It needs looking at somewhere that does gearboxes, I wouldn’t expect a regular garage to want to entertain a job like that. 

I doubt it's like marmite. It's only done 57k and it's giffer spec, so hadn't had a hard 12 years. 

The only reason to change the oil would be for the VAT receipt to present to the RAC if it happened again 🤫

But yes, I agree that better to see someone that knows gearboxes.  

[sierraman]

1 hour ago, New POD said:

I doubt it's like marmite. It's only done 57k and it's giffer spec, so hadn't had a hard 12 years. 

The only reason to change the oil would be for the VAT receipt to present to the RAC if it happened again 🤫

But yes, I agree that better to see someone that knows gearboxes.  

Quite a complex job on a lot of modern cars, usually needs diagnostic equipment for the temperature of the oil etc. 

[Floatylight]

2 hours ago, New POD said:

Also, RAC membership is due to run out in erm...no idea. Based on the way they dealt with my wife, I have no loyalty. 

Who to give money to instead? Or has the race to the bottom reached the earth's core. 

Still autoaid for me, son had a couple of breakdowns in his A4 he's with RAC, absolutely shocking service and massive delays and zero attempts to fix, by comparison I use autoaids online booking with my Merc a few weeks ago, old bloke turned out within 30 mins, said its either a fuse or the starters knackered, went straight to the fuse, sorted in 2mins, even gave me a handful of fuses if it did it again.

(And they don't do discounted deals to sign you up then treble the price after the first year)

[Bren]

Breakdown organisations - and restaurant chains and various retail - get passed around private equity like a crack pipe until there's no crack left to smoke. They get ran into the ground - as long as board members and shareholders do ok it's no fucks about the product.

IIRC GM boxes were well regarded by the trade for not having the kind of issues you would normally associate with the likes of ZF or Jatco - not sure who makes them now but I think they used to get them from Aisin Warner.

Race to the bottom? I think the issue with the UK is too many middle men.

[New POD]

Took it for a drive over the moss, all flat. After 2 miles it went into limp mode. I could reset it with my £15 code reader, but eventually once it was properly warm, the code reader wouldn't fix it. Was stuck in 2nd at one point.  That was after after about 8 miles.  Then turned it off, erased all codes and it was okay for  about 400 yards.  Then wouldn't select reverse. Once I'd erased the codes again it was okay to reverse onto the drive. 

IT'S s not going to be safe to drive too FAR. 

[warren t claim]

1 hour ago, New POD said:

Took it for a drive over the moss, all flat. After 2 miles it went into limp mode. I could reset it with my £15 code reader, but eventually once it was properly warm, the code reader wouldn't fix it. Was stuck in 2nd at one point.  That was after after about 8 miles.  Then turned it off, erased all codes and it was okay for  about 400 yards.  Then wouldn't select reverse. Once I'd erased the codes again it was okay to reverse onto the drive. 

IT'S s not going to be safe to drive too FAR. 

Are you in Formby? 

 

I can recover it back to Wirral for £60 plus tunnel both ways. This is a one off price. I'm not prepared to discount recover every AS/TDW members cars at that rate. 

As you can imagine, this isn't going to be a 15 minute fix! I if you want to come along for the ride then fair enough. I'll happily drop you back at the station or negotiate a cheap taxi ride back. Likewise if you leave it with me and want to come and get it after it's hopefully been fixed. 

[Matty]

12 minutes ago, warren t claim said:

This is a one off price. I'm not prepared to discount recover every AS/TDW members cars at that rate. 

I'm too far away anyway Warren. Though I won't pretend I'm not offended 😜

[New POD]

53 minutes ago, warren t claim said:

Are you in Formby? 

 

I can recover it back to Wirral for £60 plus tunnel both ways. This is a one off price. I'm not prepared to discount recover every AS/TDW members cars at that rate. 

As you can imagine, this isn't going to be a 15 minute fix! I if you want to come along for the ride then fair enough. I'll happily drop you back at the station or negotiate a cheap taxi ride back. Likewise if you leave it with me and want to come and get it after it's hopefully been fixed. 

Pm sent. Very much in Formby. 

[warren t claim]

The problem with jobs like this on a low value Vauxhall is where do you draw the line financially?

Any keen Warren Watchers following my posts on this thread will remember that I recovered an Astra J on Saturday. This was to take for a test and do whatever work's needed. At the time I said that it'll need a couple of tyres and one spring may be shagged. It turns out that those tyres were borderline but barely legal and the spring was OK, it was sagging due to me leaving the winch a little to taut.

Now, I drove this for an MOT. I took it to a breakers yard/MOT station/Taxi rentals place that even more keen Warren Watchers will know as the place I struck a deal with regarding weighing in my 430000 mile Mondeo diesel that shat its wet belt. To cut a long story short, I swapped the remains of Thoroughly Modern Half A Millie for rental of another Mondeo estate until my Ioniq was available.

Anyway, Liz the MOT and taxi admin lady remembered me and my cat Smudge! She's a cat lover too and when I handed back my rental Mondeo I gave her a box of feline treats for her cat Marley. I booked this Astra J in and mentioned to Liz and her tester who was in the office at the time that I didn't want any "favours" on this MOT. I'm not being harsh, but the Astra owner is an utter bellend who's caused both myself and my recovery truck partner many headaches in the past. We were wanting it to get mauled so we could make money on the repairs. In fact. if there had been a ramp free at C_G we'd have hoisted the Astra up, written MINISTRY underneath it in yellow wax chalk and then taken it to Halfords for its test.

We leave the Disastra there overnight and eagerly await the results the following day. At 1pm I phone Liz and after a couple of minutes of HARDCORE PUSSY CHAT she fetches the tester in for the grim results.

FAIL. One sidelight buld. One rear seatbelt won't retract and an emissions readout of .65 when the limit's .2. Almost certainly a LAMBADA DANCE sensor. 

[warren t claim]

13 hours ago, warren t claim said:

Are you in Formby? 

 

I can recover it back to Wirral for £60 plus tunnel both ways. This is a one off price. I'm not prepared to discount recover every AS/TDW members cars at that rate. 

As you can imagine, this isn't going to be a 15 minute fix! I if you want to come along for the ride then fair enough. I'll happily drop you back at the station or negotiate a cheap taxi ride back. Likewise if you leave it with me and want to come and get it after it's hopefully been fixed. 

We can and will plug it into the right type of machine to drag the codes out of it. But as I'm sure every garage owner and mechanic on here will tell you, the part the fault code referes to may not be the root cause of the problem. To put it simply, we had something in that pinged up a code regarding the O2 sensor. Replacing the O2 sensor wouldn't have fixed the problem as the cause was actually a dodgy MAF.

As your fault seems to be far from intermittent Gareth the autobox man my be able to diagnose the issue more quickly and accurately, or maybe not. It'd be £25 to plug it in and have a look at what codes Autel finds. I drove Gareth home in the truck tonight and the whole 15 minute journey plus another 10 minutes in the chippy were spent discussing what could be your problem. The only certainty he told me is that there's no chance that he'll be able to say "that's the problem" after plugging it in to Autel.

If it turns out to be serious and costly what will you do? In many cases of a car being uneconomical to repair we'll happily punt you an offer for it, the 14 plate Qashcow I talked about earlier a few pages ago has now been bought by C_G (for fucking buttons I hope) but an Astra J with a banjaxed auto box would even be uneconomical for us to take off your hands. The very best I could offer you is to carry it to the weighbridge for £20 (another exclusive offer just for you as my minimum recovery fee is £30 plus another tenner if I've got to winch it) and send you the difference later that day via bank transfer.  

[RoverFolkUs]

Astra J's seem to have their own weird pricing scale for some reason, they can be worth £1000 or £5000! Being a low mileage auto it might be worth telephone numbers when offered by a dealer forecourt in good working order with a container of tyre shine and 87 photos on a premium Autotrader advert, but a borked Auto box would be telephone numbers to fix if that was the problem..

What I will say is it's worth checking the grounds to the TCM. Hell, even give it another ground for the sake of it. Only reason I say this is because I've served my time with Vauxhall's and dodgy engine ECU grounds... Running a ground wire from the ECU case to the neg terminal has solved (other, completely unrelated) issues on earlier Corsas, Astras etc for me. Especially so given the fact it seems intermittent, which in the cases I mention it was - I think a dodgy grounding issue, potentially even internally within the TCM is not off the cards. I wouldn't have thought a turbine speed sensor could be totally dead if the fault is not immediately coming back as soon as you drive it. Although it could be intermittently breaking up the signal if it is failing internally hence giving the intermittency in the warning lights and fault codes. So it could be the sensor(s) , but it certainly needs diagnosis as already said above as it's not possible to speculate even by simply plugging the car in. 

It wouldn't appear that the transmission would need to be removed from the car to get to the sensor, but it definitely would appear to need the fluid draining and valve body removing to get at it so it's a very involved job 

In any case, a sensor failure is very uncommon as far as know. But I imagine it is just a hall effect sensor so could be equally as susceptible to failure as a cam, crank or ABS sensor 🤷

[New POD]

Given that it's only done 57k and has only had one owner before us, and my wife has a "requirement" for electric handbrake and auto, I've looked at what

 

a) it's worth in a dealer after they marked it up. (Not what I could sell it privately for,  if it were fixed) 

And b) what we would replace it with. (If you were going through the hassle of replacing it, you'd probably buy something newer. 

You pretty much need at least £5.5 k to buy the same car from a dealer,  but then you are dealing with someone on a bomb site in Bolton or Bradford, and trying to avoid the CAT S and CAT N and the blatantly clocked ones. 

There's not many cars of that ilk (5 door hatch) that have an electric handbrake. So you kind of end up looking at the same car but newer.  We'd probably end up spending £8 to 10k 

So whilst we don't have money to throw around, there's more hassle replacing it. 

[New POD]

The control valve block all seem to be bolted to the side of the gearbox between (and just behind) the radiator.  Looks like access isn't the worst. Think you'd definately need to remove the battery box above it but there's space behind the radiator for hands and tools. 

[MikeR]

13 hours ago, RoverFolkUs said:

Astra J's seem to have their own weird pricing scale for some reason, they can be worth £1000 or £5000! Being a low mileage auto it might be worth telephone numbers when offered by a dealer forecourt in good working order with a container of tyre shine and 87 photos on a premium Autotrader advert, but a borked Auto box would be telephone numbers to fix if that was the problem..

What I will say is it's worth checking the grounds to the TCM. Hell, even give it another ground for the sake of it. Only reason I say this is because I've served my time with Vauxhall's and dodgy engine ECU grounds... Running a ground wire from the ECU case to the neg terminal has solved (other, completely unrelated) issues on earlier Corsas, Astras etc for me. Especially so given the fact it seems intermittent, which in the cases I mention it was - I think a dodgy grounding issue, potentially even internally within the TCM is not off the cards. I wouldn't have thought a turbine speed sensor could be totally dead if the fault is not immediately coming back as soon as you drive it. Although it could be intermittently breaking up the signal if it is failing internally hence giving the intermittency in the warning lights and fault codes. So it could be the sensor(s) , but it certainly needs diagnosis as already said above as it's not possible to speculate even by simply plugging the car in. 

It wouldn't appear that the transmission would need to be removed from the car to get to the sensor, but it definitely would appear to need the fluid draining and valve body removing to get at it so it's a very involved job 

In any case, a sensor failure is very uncommon as far as know. But I imagine it is just a hall effect sensor so could be equally as susceptible to failure as a cam, crank or ABS sensor 🤷

I was pondering that earth , power issue  possibility , wonder if a battery swap and alternator , earth  check might be worth doing ,just to rule it out ,  after all PAS can go the same way and misbehave 

[SiC]

Definitely check the earth's still, but the TCM looks part of the valve body as one assembly. Given the engine and transmission is earthed as one lump, I'd expect starter (as high current) and charging issues if it was earthing related. Hopefully it is that easy a fix but I strongly suspect it won't be. 

[MikeR]

22 minutes ago, SiC said:

Definitely check the earth's still, but the TCM looks part of the valve body as one assembly. Given the engine and transmission is earthed as one lump, I'd expect starter (as high current) and charging issues if it was earthing related. Hopefully it is that easy a fix but I strongly suspect it won't be. 

Might be one of those single cables with a clamped connection in the middle that corrode , engine and battery are connected but the body not so well .... A long shot but worth ruling out ....

[SiC]

1 hour ago, MikeR said:

Might be one of those single cables with a clamped connection in the middle that corrode , engine and battery are connected but the body not so well .... A long shot but worth ruling out ....

Definitely worth checking but a voltage drop across it would be far higher when starting and show up as a weak starter. Easy to check and rule out but I guess I'm saying don't hold out hope it'll be that easy!

My fear/concern is the amount of refurbished TCM/valve bodies about. If a ready market for them, it suggests they can be problematic. With the turbine sensor internal to the box (presumably connected internally too), it potentially makes it difficult/impossible to back probe it when running to check for signal integrity. 

[New POD]

Got this back yesterday from an automatic gearbox specialist behind lookers vauxhall. Internal break up of a "control disc"which sounds to me like a wet clutch, then destroys gears, with the debris.  Not sure I want to disclose the price for a reconditioned box, but most people would have compared the value of the car with the cost of the repair, and rang up a breaker. 

The thing is, a replacement car, would cost more.  And better the devil you know etc....

[New POD]

The worrying thing is that I've essentially the same gearbox in my astra.  Except 5 years newer and with an engine that produces more power and torque, and 30K more on the clock. 

The specialist said "We see alot of these" 

Not sure if I should sell up because of the fear, or drop the gearbox oil and inspect for debris. 

[Rocket88]

Vauxhall gearbox failure…. Mine’s done 260k miles and appears to be as sweet as a nut….. Apparently, they won’t tolerate ( for long) being shifted between forward and reverse unless you are absolutely stationary. Probably goes for any auto box, but the number of times I’ve seen people ( when parking) not doing this is A LOT

[RoverFolkUs]

9 hours ago, Rocket88 said:

Vauxhall gearbox failure…. Mine’s done 260k miles and appears to be as sweet as a nut….. Apparently, they won’t tolerate ( for long) being shifted between forward and reverse unless you are absolutely stationary. Probably goes for any auto box, but the number of times I’ve seen people ( when parking) not doing this is A LOT

In similar vein, they're on a slope, chuck it in park and then release the footbrake before engaging the parking brake. You hear that "clunk" and shudder with despair..!