automatics cars?

My Accord Coupe slushbox cost me £1000 just for a fluid leak and they wanted another £1000 just to guarantee it as they said they wouldn't honour any it as there may be swarf in the lifters?

They are fine when they are fine but you gotta budget a grand for a failing, however if I had a new car every three years or a c/car then I think I'd pick an auto simply because most of my time is spent stop start in London Village
 
maccapacca said:
My Accord Coupe slushbox cost me £1000 just for a fluid leak and they wanted another £1000 just to guarantee it as they said they wouldn't honour any it as there may be swarf in the lifters?
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This is far more inline with my expectations, as was Robbie G's price which is why i went with his figure. Autobox failure came up a lot on the Mondeo forums when I was on there - it was always a 4 figure bill and as a result people avoided 2.0 Auto Ghia X's like the plague. Ditto the BMW's - always £1500 for replacement with a refurb box and it happens far more often than you'd expect.

And before you bleat about how Mondeos and BMW's have more expensive parts please do remember that car manufacturers do NOT make automatic gearboxes and most of these quotes were from autobox specialists not ripoff main dealers.

I'm still laughing at Morba implying it was a couple of hundred quid tops to swap a box out for another :D

There are just so many potential negatives I can't see the point in bothering when the only reason you ask is because a car round the road is auto - just keep looking for the manual.

Auto's are great when it's got a proper engine to power it and a warranty for somebody else to pick up the tab. And yes they are popular in America and Australia - where nobody cares about the reduction in fuel economy as fuel is far cheaper than it is here, and where the average engine size is far bigger...

I've driven 2 small autos now and both were dire. One was a 1.6 Mk4 Golf the other was a 2.0 Toyota hire car. The autobox just made things hugely frustrating in a way that a manual wouldnt have. Both needed working hard yet the box just wouldnt really allow it. And no, I wasn't in a race.
 
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[TW]Fox;17852525 said:
No, not at all. You say these days like a Xsara Picasso, a car that appeared over 10 years ago, is going to have some some sort of cutting edge gearbox in it!
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You don't need a cutting edge autobox for a 1.4/1.6l to be just fine. Have you actually driven any cars with such engines, [TW]Fox?
 
[TW]Fox;17858208 said:
This is far more inline with my expectations, as was Robbie G's price which is why i went with his figure.
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I think mine needed the seal where the drive shaft connected and the connector inside the unit and was done outside Honda and by a very good slushbox guy.

My S80 when I pick it up will go straight to my local independant for a full box flush, they reccomend it and it's 14 litres of fluid @ £10 per l :( , even the Volvo stuff breaks
 
The autobox on my 2003 325i costs £1900 for a replacement (inc fitting). This is for a basic off the shelf refurb ZF or GM unit (I forget which type mine has). It's on it's second one at the moment.
 
Morba said:
One day you will grow up :)
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You're just as bad - commenting on auto boxes vs manual repairs when you had no idea how different they are! It's like some people feel the need to post on every single thread, no matter what the subject, no matter how little they know. Normally it's just to reply to fox and try and prove he's wrong. Do some work or something. ;)
 
Wicksta said:
You're just as bad - commenting on auto boxes vs manual repairs when you had no idea how different they are! It's like some people feel the need to post on every single thread, no matter what the subject, no matter how little they know. Normally it's just to reply to fox and try and prove he's wrong. Do some work or something. ;)
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Wicksta, please, add me to ignore as you clearly have an issue.
 
[TW]Fox;17857988 said:
It's not 80% at all, where did you get that?

There are 2249 Picasso for sale on Autotrader. Only 131 are auto.

That means you exclude 94.18% of the market. If you dispute my figures please provide reasoning.
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If you do a simple search for auto gearboxes on wikipedia it will tell you the ratio in Europe (80% manual) and link to the research behind it.
 
[TW]Fox;17858356 said:
Nice swerve. You can't replace an auto box for a few hundred quid.

.
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I never said you could.


See:

Morba said:
[TW]Fox;17857672 said:
Are you telling me that if you, as a lay member of the public, went to a local yet reputable repairer with a failed autogearbox, you could drive it away later with a refurbished replacement for £250 all in?
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No that's a quote for a replacement auto box.
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and:

[TW]Fox said:
Morba said:
Comparing it to another car that would be a good option, as I stated.
£150 fitted? Learn to read maybe, you will see that I state that its probably not refurbed and is just a quote for the box only.
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Either quote a price for the full job or don't bother, the OP isn't a mechanic.
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My autobox replacement costed £1270 for a completely rebuilt transmission and a new torque convertor, including all labour (which in itself was a considerable cost!).

The box had done 168,000 miles and lasted 20 years so hadn't done too badly....oil pump drive sheared and made a massive mess of the whole thing.

Had a similar failure on an LT77 manual gearbox once! Ho hum.....
 
[TW]Fox;17858208 said:
This is far more inline with my expectations, as was Robbie G's price which is why i went with his figure.
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So one other person has given you a higher figure and thats that?

If I was to say I've just spoken to a local garage and got a quote for £375 for the box and £200 labour how would that figure?

There are boxes on ebay for less than £500. Even if you double that with labour it's still lower than your expectations.

One person backing up your guess of how much a replacement costs does not mean cheaper solutions can't be found.
 
Morba said:
I never said you could.
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What I dont get is why you confused the issue with that figure. If it wasnt the complete cost for replacing the box why mention it when we are talking about box replacement costs? It sounds like me saying that its £500... for a new steering wheel in a thread about how much it costs to buy a car :p

Orange Peel said:
So one other person has given you a higher figure and thats that?
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No, thats not what I said. One person in this thread gave a figure, which tallied roughly with the figures I remember from when I was into Mondeos, and compares with the figures all over the various BMW forums for when people suffer autobox failure.

If I was to say I've just spoken to a local garage and got a quote for £375 for the box and £200 labour how would that figure?
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It would be considerably cheaper than anything I'd seen before. Is that for a refurbished box from the supplier or just.. a random box out of a breakers yard?


There are boxes on ebay for less than £500. Even if you double that with labour it's still lower than your expectations.
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I agree but it's still a grand to fix a box the OP didnt even want anyway, he's just happened to find an automatic for sale down the road.
 
[TW]Fox;17858356 said:
Nice swerve. You can't replace an auto box for a few hundred quid.
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I managed to replace one on a 9 year old and for £300 for the box and £300 fitting, in 2008 I bought a 1999 reg car with an almost undrivable gearbox (previous owner had been slamming the hell out of it, bouncing of the rev limited, downshifting 4 gears to take off, etc) bought a used box with 60k miles on it from somebody doing a auto to manual swap and had it fitted. I was pretty lucky with the circumstances that let me acquire such an immaculate box but you could get them from a breaker just as cheaply.
 
£600, whilst again cheaper than previously discussed, is also not a 'few hundred quid' either! It's also not THAT easy to get one from a breakers! I've just demonstrated how only 5% of Picassos on the market have an autobox, how many are there in breakers yards?!

Just.. why bother when you wanted a manual anyway and only asked about an Auto because it happened to be for sale down the road? What is the point!
 
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