What Brisbane asks of a gearbox
A hilly city
Greater Brisbane sits on a hilly floodplain, with Mount Coot-tha rising to about 300 m in the west. In a manual, hill starts with a load on board are where clutches wear. RACQ points out that an automatic avoids that clutch wear, but it has its own heat to manage.
Towing out of town
Head west and the Warrego Highway climbs to the top of the Great Dividing Range on the Toowoomba Bypass. Head south and the Mount Lindesay Highway winds up the McPherson Range past Rathdowney. Both are long pulls with a caravan or a boat behind.
A cooler for heavy towing
RACQ says heavy towing with an automatic often calls for an extra or larger transmission cooler to prevent overheating, and some makers' towing packages make one mandatory. If you tow, ask whether yours has one.
Peak hour in summer
Crawling through peak hour on a hot day is hard work for an automatic. If the car spends a lot of time like that, or tows, ask whether the book puts the transmission fluid on a shorter interval.
Signs the transmission needs a look
The revs rise but the car doesn't pick up. It flares or bangs between gears. It's slow to take drive or reverse. It shudders, or a whine gets louder over the weeks. A transmission warning light comes on. Any one of those is worth a call, and two together more so.
On a CVT (the type of automatic that uses belts and pulleys instead of fixed gears), CarsGuide's advice is to check the fluid first, since a low level can cause delays and slipping under load. These units are sealed and shouldn't need topping up, so low fluid usually means a leak. RACQ says an accurate fluid reading needs the car parked, in neutral, with the engine running, which is a job for the mechanic.
What to ask a transmission mechanic
- Do you work on this kind of gearbox: conventional automatic, CVT, dual-clutch or manual?
- Have you read the codes, and what do they say?
- Is it the fluid, a sensor or software, or something inside the box?
- Would a transmission cooler suit the way I tow?
- Was this fault logged while the car was under warranty?
If it were our car
We'd stop towing with it at the first sign of slipping and get it checked that week. Caught early, the answer might be fluid, a sensor or a software update. Left alone, a slipping gearbox makes heat, and heat is what turns a small job into a rebuild.