Land Rover’s specially designed 9-speed gearboxes increase efficiency and fuel consumption
In the past decade when Land Rover has decided to work on the gearboxes and transmissions, the failure rate in the Discovery and Range Rover Sports models has increased. Even in the local garages, these models are now well known for their gearbox faults.
These problems start increasing from around 80,000 miles and then there is no way to get a gearbox repair or buy a reconditioned Land Rover gearbox for sale from any well-known Land Rover gearboxes reconditions in the UK.
Most common gearbox faults
After travelling around 80k miles, Land Rover gearboxes start shuddering at low revs, say from 2000rpms, the gear engagement response becomes slower when it’s cold, even the torque converters jams up sometimes. With some these issues mentioned, sometimes drivers run into hefty repair bills as well.
Over the past few years, Land Rover has considered this issue very seriously and started working on the gearboxes. For your information, in the UK, the longest life ever vehicles are Land Rover vehicles.
Innovative gearbox technologies
Land Rover has demonstrated the world with its first 9-speed automatic transmission. This transmission was introduced at Geneva motor show in 2013. Having a 9-speed transmission in a passenger car is such a great fun.
Land Rover closely worked with the world’s well-admired transmission maker, ZF and comes with this excellent solution. The ZF HP9 9-speed gearbox has been designed to resolve the failure issues with the help of compact ratios. By using the nine ratios instead of six works excellently and they have improved the overall performance of the vehicle.
Land Rover confirms that the new transmission has improved the overall performance of the system by reducing the fuel consumption by 12 per cent on average and increased the efficiency by large. Based on the ZF control technologies, it is an improved version of the ZF 8HP transmission.
How is ZF 9HP innovative?
The ZF has increased the number of gears from six to nine in a standard transmission and decreases the ratio steps. The ratio spread of 9.3 with even smaller steps improved the efficiency.
ZF says that the ZF 9HP glides between the gears and ratios smoothly on the downshifts unlike the ZF 6HP transmissions, they require sequential downshift. The lowest gear ratio is even lower than then smallest ratio on the ZF 6HP gearboxes and in this way they become more suitable for off-roading at the same time.
The 9-speed transmission reduces the 0-62 miles per hour acceleration by 2 seconds if compare to the standard ZF 6HP transmissions, thus the fuel economy has been improved by large.
ZF6HP26/6R60/6R80 6-Speed Automatic Transmission
Land Rover uses ZF Getriebe transmissions in its wide range of vehicles including the Jaguar models. It is by most delivers an excellent driving experience but faults are everywhere. The separator plate, accumulators and valve body controls are the most unfortunate points in these transmissions.
The components in these areas wear out relatively fast and when it happens, they invite several other problems to join the party, including hard shifting, gear slippage and sliding shifts etc.
The particularly common problem in the Range Rover Sports models is juddering, the torque converter of the most admired models commonly fails and add some more fuel to the fire. The hard to absorb thing is that there is no repair of these torque converters and the only option is to replace the converter with a new unit.
In case if the transmission goes into the transmission failsafe along with the gear ratio codes, it is likely the worn bushes which are causing issues. The fix would be very simple and easy in this case, a replacement of bushes would resolve the issue.
Vehicles Running the ZF6HP26/6R60/6R80 6-Speed Automatic Transmission
There are a number of vehicle models using these gearboxes but most common models running a 6HP26 automatic transmission include.
- 2002–2005 Jaguar XK8/XKR
- 2003–2008 Jaguar S-Type
- 2004–2009 Jaguar XJ
- 2003–present Range Rover
- 2005–present Land Rover Discovery
- 2006–present Jaguar XK/XKR
- 2006–present Range Rover Sport
- 2009–present Jaguar XF
If you notice a transmission judder at any speed band, you must contact the garage and investigate the issue as soon as possible. The debris from the internal components of the converter can cause serious issues and further damage to the transmission.
Leave a Reply