Transmission problem Fiat 500L- high price quoted!

Hartake

Hi all,

I have a question regarding a transmission issue that I have with a fiat500l (2013). The car broke down the other day (started up, but wouldn't move off), taken to a local garage (official fiat dealer) and has gone through an initial diagnosis. It has been identified that the transmission fluid is leaking (as suspected) but that they now need to investigate further by removing the gearbox- at a cost of £900! before the cost of repairs has even come in to play. That is just to do a further inspection. They said it could be one of a few things causing the leak but they need to take the gearbox to see what that might be. Who knows what the cost of the repair/parts might be...

With the diagnosis, they have also identified another issue- to replace the front suspension which has worn away- a quote of over £1300. 

These costs seem to be extortionate, but are they actually the norm? The other issue is that the car is currently in a garage far from where I am living so it is tricky to get a second opinion. 

Thanks all!

Goudy

There's a lot of labour involved with removing a gearbox and dealer labour rates aren't cheap.
£900 is steep for removal and inspection, but that's what dealers tend to charge.

It might only be a £5 crank seal that's leaking but to get at it takes a few hours and so does putting it all back together.

If it's leaking gear oil from the gearbox you might be looking at a gearbox strip down and recondition or a new  replacement gearbox.
One or two Fiat gearboxes are prone to the input shaft bearing wearing out and that obviously takes the input seal with it.
It can be repaired by a specialist but not sure if a dealer would both though.

If it's a Dualogic gearbox (Fiat's automated manual gearbox), you could be in for an expensive repair.
They are notorious for failing as the actuators weren't really robust enough to start with, but the pumps can fail as well.
First thing most owners notice is the lack of the pump whirring when the drivers door is opened, then when they select D and it just drops straight in neutral, so no drive.

It will no doubt require a new clutch if it's been leaking on that, so count on the cost of that as well.

One good thing regards to the front suspension, they'll need to remove most of it to get the gearbox out, so it's an ideal time to replace what it worn.

Hartake

Goudy said:

There's a lot of labour involved with removing a gearbox and dealer labour rates aren't cheap.
£900 is steep for removal and inspection, but that's what dealers tend to charge.

It might only be a £5 crank seal that's leaking but to get at it takes a few hours and so does putting it all back together.

If it's leaking gear oil from the gearbox you might be looking at a gearbox strip down and recondition or a new  replacement gearbox.
One or two Fiat gearboxes are prone to the input shaft bearing wearing out and that obviously takes the input seal with it.
It can be repaired by a specialist but not sure if a dealer would both though.

If it's a Dualogic gearbox (Fiat's automated manual gearbox), you could be in for an expensive repair.
They are notorious for failing as the actuators weren't really robust enough to start with, but the pumps can fail as well.
First thing most owners notice is the lack of the pump whirring when the drivers door is opened, then when they select D and it just drops straight in neutral, so no drive.

It will no doubt require a new clutch if it's been leaking on that, so count on the cost of that as well.

One good thing regards to the front suspension, they'll need to remove most of it to get the gearbox out, so it's an ideal time to replace what it worn.

Thanks- that is useful to know about the labour involved with removing a gearbox and to know that it is probably not that overpriced. I am just not sure if it is worth it to pay the 900 for inspection when I do not know what the repairs will cost. I could be looking at 1000s on a final bill and I would just rather sell it on in this case.

I am fairly sure it's not the dualogic issue as the pumps have always whirred when the door is opened and I haven't had any other issues like that. But apart from that- it could be anything. How much should I expect to pay for a new clutch these days? 

Mildly_Miffed

Taking gearboxes out is not a five minute job. Of course somebody's got to pay for that time - and main dealer labour is VERY expensive, as are parts. Why on earth would you take an 11yo car to a main dealer?

You could just keep topping the fluid up, and ignore the leak.

Goudy

So it is a Dualogic gearbox?

The gearbox is basically the same as a manual gearbox, with a normal single clutch but the driver doesn't operate it manually with a clutch pedal and gear lever.

A pump builds a head of hydraulic fluid and this fluid operates actuators (slave cylinders) that push and pull rods that then operate the clutch and gear changes for you.

There's a host of likely causes of a leak.
The gearbox it's self could be leaking gear oil and that has got onto the clutch plate.
It would engage gear but slip.

The hydraulic are prone to leaking.
There are a couple of weak spots, the actuator rods can rust and the rust damages the actuator seals so fluid leaks out and the clutch slave cylinder can leak onto the clutch plate.

Without this hydraulic fluid it can't operate the clutch or gears, so gets trapped in to "N" no matter what you do with the gear selector.

I suspect you might have this problem and it's leaked hydraulic fluid (rather then gear oil) inside the gearbox or clutch housing.

The pump can fail or shut off if they are low on fluid.
Without enough hydraulic fluid to pump it's get hot and either shuts off or fails.


I've had a similar automated manual gearbox in a Citroen and the clutch slave cylinder started leaking.
It soon pumped out all it's fluid and refused to operate.
The job to replace the slave cylinder was a bit of a nightmare, my local gearbox specialist didn't want to touch it so I had a go myself (with a friend or three, like a said it was a bit of a nightmare).

Getting at it is difficult as it's deep between the gearbox and engine.
The gearbox wouldn't come out by itself, so we dropped the engine and gearbox together on it's subframe and stripped them outside the car.

The slave was difficult to come by and I had to wait for it from a dealer. It's not your normal manual gearbox slave cylinder and the dealers service department weren't keen on suppling it.

Once in and back together there's no manual way to bleed the system of air, there's no pedal to pump and no bleed valves.

It needed to be done with Citroen diagnostic software.
The system needed to be told electronically, to cycle through all it's different hydraulic operations in order to pump the air out of the header tank.  
So I had to "borrow" (bung a few quid his way) a laptop with the software from a local Citroen specialist.
It took a few goes before we had it working, at the time we didn't know to watch the header tank, to see if it was  clear of bubbles. If we did we might have saved an hour or so.

The slave and replacement fluid weren't expensive, but I reckon between us all we spent around 18 hours or more on it.
Ok we weren't gearbox or Citroen specialists, but we've all changed clutches and slaves cylinders in various cars over the years and most have been done in 3 or 4 hours.

forgotmyname

The FIAT 500 floorpan and suspension is certainly built down to a price no matter which make/model sits on top of it.
Low service intervals on some of them also.  When was the last time you saw a cambelt with a 30k mile (3 years)
change interval?

They also suffer with many plastic parts, the clutch pipe on manual gearbox cars is plastic and on the passenger side of
the car it coils around in a loop about 5 times before it connects to the gearbox and at the lowest point right where the
road muck gets chucked is a connector which rusts and expands causing the plastic section of pipe to leak.

Of course this pipe runs all the way from the master cylinder to the gearbox pushing up the cost to repair.