164 Auto Gearbox

[Keith Walker <100662.3423@domain.elided>]

Hi

Anyone help with this.

A relatives 164 auto has recently had a complete auto gearbox
rebuild by a main ZF agent (in the UK). However, just after picking
it up the gearchange was awful (no kick down, several seconds to
change gear, etc) and returning it to the agent revealed the kickdown
cable not correctly tightened. They blamed this on the Alfa specialist
who had picked the car up to do a few minor jobs (but none anywhere
near the gearbox), but frankly we don't believe them. They say that
it may have damaged the box from slipping (max 20 miles, and then
a 40 mile journey to them following their instructions to hold the box
in third gear).

However, the cars gearbox seems all over the plce. Occasionally it
refuses to go into reverse (maybe 1 in 10 times). It is just like the
car is in neatral, and waiting or blipping the throttle have no effect.
Taking it out and back into reverse works fine.

The change up points are strange. Depending on gear it will change up
to the next gear from anything from 4500rpm to the red line. It will chan=
ge
up unless the pedal is to the floor (half an inch off the floor and it wi=
ll
change up early), and will only kick down it your foot is all the way
down.

Sitting between 30mph and 40mph the box tries to hunt between 2 gears
which is a bit of a pain.

If you move of normally it will change straight up to top gear and then
does
not want to kick down easily, leading to lots of slow cars overtaking
unless
you are prepared to try to go flat out.

The transmission has had a complete fluid and filter change, which
marginally improved things but not much. The car is a 1990 164 3L.

Anybody any specific idea's about the problem? We want to take it back to=

the people who rebuilt it and tell them to fix it, but we want some idea =
of
what the problem is and how it can be fixed. Is there a seperate control
unit in the box (or maybe an electronic unit to control the box)?

Looking forward to help

Keith

------------------------------