Re: V8 transmissions

[Christopher Olson <ceolson@pclink.com>]

Dave Weiss wrote:
> 
> Christopher Olson <ceolson@pclink.com> wrote:
> 
> > I just thought I should relay some of what I learned in my recent
> > experience with a failing transmission in my 90V8.  I was told by most
> > I talked to that they cannot be serviced and that I would be stuck
> > buying a rebuilt unit from Audi for about 5000.00 Plus labor.  This
> > turns out not to be true.
> 
> <SNIP>
> 
> > ...grand total of 3548.00 to get me a rebuilt transmission.
> 
> No idea what failed on your car, but FWIW, dealer here got a 90 V8, 100k
> mi, on trade, wouldn't shift, pump making noise.  They dropped exhaust
> and cleaned the screen (instead of just changing the fluid) and now it
> works fine.  The service mgr bought the car.
> 
> Dave Weiss
> '91 V8 5-spd
> '93 90 CS UnQ
What was wrong was that the clutches for the forward gears were burned
to a crisp.  The friction material could be scraped off with a
fingernail.  This was probably the result of poor maintainence by the
previous owner.  The mechanic was of the opinion that simply cleaning or
replacing the screen would have temporarily gotten rid of the noise but
that shortly thereafter I would have had complete failure of the unit. 
"It wasn't going very far" is was he said.  He said that the
transmission has a tendency to apply torque to the forward gears even
when it is in neutral so that if you left it running for long periods of
time it would fry the clutches.  He claims it is a design problem and in
order to correct the problem he had to drill a small "bleeder hole" in a
piston.  It is supposed to create no ill effect in overall transmission
performance and I haven't noticed any since getting the car back.  It
would be interesting to find out if that guy who bought your car had any
problems with the transmission later on.