spitanddirt

Did I not explain this adequately enough in my above post about why you may want to follow Tozo's advice and cut the pick-up tube so that it's farther away from the bottom of the pan?

chris.sargent

Hey yeah, now worries, I understand that when we fit a new filter, we should shorten the pick up. I was more asking whether you think this would be related and actually causing the problems I'm having.

Popped in to a place called Revo Technik yesterday and told them what happened. They immediately asked 'what type of oil did they put in and is it full?' We showed them a sample of the oil we'd taken out, which is red and quite thin and again they immediately said it was totally the wrong oil, wrong colour and far too thin and watery. Explained that we might be able to save the box my doing a couple of full flushes and filter changes.

So next step is to contact the original garage who assured us they did it all properly and 'absolutely' used genuine Audi 'box oil - even listed the Audi part number on the invoice. Clearly they haven't so we will be asking for a refund, inconvenience compensation and that we will send a bill to them for a rebuilt box if we can't get this one going. Very frustrating when the guy supposedly worked for Audi for 20 years before setting up on his own (and this is the not the best sorts of things to be doing for your reputation when you're just starting out!) and assuring us he would do it right - we knew how sensitive these boxes were before doing it!

Depending on what they say and how they react, we may ask them to put it right or we just do it ourselves properly so we know it's been done to our standards!

Will update in a few days hopefully....

tozoM8

Red doesn't mean it is a wrong fluid. I rebuild these transmissions and I only use red fluid. Most trans fluid is red. The free is important and the right type of fluid. Mobil 1 atf is good or any Mercon V fluid.

spitanddirt

Sensitive? Hardly. You just happened to inherit the result of someone else's lack of preventitive maintenance or a technician's lack of following a manufacturer's techical data. As long as you aren't beating the crap out of a transmission by playing dragstrip driver at every stoplight, and assuming the transmission is assembled at the factory using parts that don't have any inherent weaknesses, an automatic transmission should last until the clutch linings physically wear out. This could be at least to 200K miles or more.
The whole reason you change the fluid out in the first place is to get rid of the debris and particulate matter that is so fine that it travels through the filter and acts as sandpaper on ultra high tolerance, precision fitted parts(valve body). After 90,000 miles, I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that the fluid is pretty well reached it's saturation point of contamination.

Just FYI, I'm not a professional transmission rebuilder, however, I did work for one disassembling large Allison transmissions to salvage good parts. I learned a lot from the other techs there about why transmissions fail and I've applied that knowledge to any transmission I do work on now.

chris.sargent

I mean sensitive to the oil that's in it - e.g. the advice of using only Audi or other approved oils having the correct specifications, not just any old DXIII from Halfords.