Long-term reliability of modern bazillion-gear automatic/semi auto transmissions?

Like many of you here I'm sure, I've always been a manual transmission guy. While a lot of it is due to enjoyment of the process, preserving the spirit of the old ways, etc. a large motivator has always been the relative complexity and unreliability of automatic transmissions. While a few slushboxes stand out as pretty reliable with a reasonable amount of service (thinking Aisin-Warner, GM boxes) there are also a lot of horror stories (early V6 Honda transmissions, anything Chrysler, BMW). Given that manuals are typically easy enough to find for the older vehicles whose transmissions worry me, it has never really been a concern of mine.

Times are-a-changin' though. Between the new automatics with ridiculous amounts of gears and flappy paddle semi-auto "manuals", both of which get much better gas mileage than traditional manuals, not to mention the market penetration of CVTs, development of EVs where a manual is useless, and extremely low take rates of the few manual models that are still available, it is very clear that automatic transmissions will consume all that they cannot destroy.

Given that the days are numbered for the manual, logic follows that in a decade or so anyone shopping for a new vehicle that isn't a hardcore niche vehicle is likely to be dealing with an automatic of some kind. But are these newfangled automatics with an absurd number of ratios reliable for more than the warranty period? Is anyone shopping for a family car doomed to deal with an extremely service-heavy transmission in a few years? Are any brands building these things an order of magnitude better than others (I seem to hear Nissan sure isn't)? Any evidence these things will go beyond 100k without crapping the bed yet? Really curious to hear how these things are doing so far.

The OEM's don't care what happens once warranty expires. This is the problem I have with new cars.

Last I heard the new 7? speed Chrysler auto transmissions are non rebuildable at the dealer. You scan vehicle, do update then talk to Chrysler tech support. If it needs work, they send a new transmission and you send the old one back.

I have heard that the Toyota Prius CVTs are surpassing expectations for a lot of people, many clearing 200k with minimal service in true Toyota fashion.

That's what got me thinking. Whether it is by design or sheer accident, someone out there has to be better at making these than the ones you hear complaints about like ZF (Chrysler) and Nissan.

As the owner of two ZF 8 speed equipped cars (not Chryslers though), what known issues are you referring to?

pointofdeparture wrote: development of EVs where a manual is useless

Manuals aren't useless on EVs, just unnecessary...there's a reason most electric race cars have some kind of manual gearbox.

I asked my transmission guy this same question when I had the Jeep transmission rebuilt.

He said he loves them for the revenue they are generating and hates them because of the difficulty and cost of repairing them.

His estimate is they fail at double the rate of the older 3 speed/OD transmissions. There are also a bunch of them that require a dealer reprogram after rebuild. For those he has to load them on a wrecker, haul them to the dealer, drop them off for reprogramming and then go back and get them. It adds a lot of cost and labor to a rebuild.

As stated above, there are several that just aren't rebuildable. They are stuck buying transmission from the dealer. Needless to say they charge exorbitant prices for them.

Dashpot wrote: As the owner of two ZF 8 speed equipped cars (not Chryslers though), what known issues are you referring to?

The aforementioned FWD 7-speed ZF Chrysler is using is getting terrible reviews from a reliability/service perspective. No idea how ZF's other units are.

I have a hard time believing the reputation of a transmission in the hands of an average person. People just seem to be really good at killing the things...

Let's look at my Jeep as an example. 218k miles, original trans. It's been living with a modded motor for the last 100k. I threw a shift kit in it at 120k and I turned up the line pressure a bit the last time I had the pan off. I need to replace the torque converter (lockup clutch is failing), but other than that, the trans still shifts perfectly and is rock solid. If its reputation and people's experiences on forums are to be believed, it should have been failing before 100k, the replacement should have failed by 150k and it should be failing again now. But it's not...

rslifkin wrote: I have a hard time believing the reputation of a transmission in the hands of an average person. People just seem to be really good at killing the things... Let's look at my Jeep as an example. 218k miles, original trans. It's been living with a modded motor for the last 100k. I threw a shift kit in it at 120k and I turned up the line pressure a bit the last time I had the pan off. I need to replace the torque converter (lockup clutch is failing), but other than that, the trans still shifts perfectly and is rock solid. If its reputation and people's experiences on forums are to be believed, it should have been failing before 100k, the replacement should have failed by 150k and it should be failing again now. But it's not...

Going to agree here. I had a '95 GMT-400 with the early "failure-prone" 4L60E. We took good care of it with regular services but that truck got used as a truck and the transmission went 280K miles before the rest of the truck fell apart around it. That transmission still shifted nice and crisp and never acted up and still sits in the truck in our backyard, ready to be yanked at a moment's notice.

The Indi Benz guy that I have taken our R to says as long as the fluid gets changed every 60K or so the 7 speed we have will last as long as the vehicle. He said one of his customers has an 06 R350 with just under 300K miles on it and it is on the original trans.

OEM's care. But there's a limit to how much many can spend on robustness.

IMHO, something that is NOT part of a routine maintenance schedule (which the trans is) should last without being taken care of in a special way. It should cover 99.99% (R/1000 of 10) of owners without issues. That's ALL owners, not ones that treat the trans within a small boundary of usage.

But that's just me, at the moment.

The 8 and 9-speed ZF gearboxes have had 1/3-1/2 the mechanical failure rates of the 4, 5, and 6 speed gearboxes they replaced at FCA. Not many out there with 250k miles yet but the smaller ratio drops help to reduce shock loading on the gearsets and clutches, and there is less heat being generated by torque converter slip - they just downshift.

MattW, "Last I heard the new 7? speed Chrysler auto transmissions are non rebuildable at the dealer. You scan vehicle, do update then talk to Chrysler tech support. If it needs work, they send a new transmission and you send the old one back."

I'm glad you included "at the dealer" in that comment. The fact that many component parts are not rebuilt at the Dealer is due more to logistics and total end cost than that they just aren't rebuildable, which isn't true. I know people in the Dealership business, from mechanics to owners, the component parts are turned around because of speed to get the vehicle back in service and because of total end quality of the finished product. Component parts such as engines, transmissions and rear gears are just not taken apart at the dealers anymore because of the technical skill needed to rebuild them, the cost of specialized equipment, and the time involved. It is just more cost effective and a greater degree of assurance for the customer to replace the part in kind. I happen to have 2 Nissans. My wife drives a Rogue with more that 60k miles on it and I drive a 2008 Pathfinder V8 with about 75k miles on it. I have towed a 19 foot boat all over 3 states almost every week in the summer time since I bought the Pathfinder new in 2008. There is no sign of transmission trouble with either of these vehicles and they have been the most mechanically reliable vehicles I have ever owned.

I like 'em simple. I ran transmission repair shops for years. Someone brings me a TH400 and my builder could reman the whole thing in an hour for $500. Nissan's first 5-speed was a really common one through our shop doors and it was probably $3200 minimum. Audi twin clutch? I wouldn't touch it until I had a $10k conversation with the customer. The computer alone (which was inside the tail housing and required a partial teardown) was $3300. $63 per quart for fluid, $450 dealer reflash, and that is just to fix the malfunction. If it caused other damage internally, then I have to have an additional $15k conversation with the customer.

The complexity inside these new boxes is mind-numbing. Some of the logic controllers require an incredibly narrow range of resistance in the wires and even a factory internal harness sometimes wasn't right. Dozens of solenoids, servos, sensors, wires, solder joints, and potential failures.

New auto transmissions (to me) are like modern TVs. They're assembled by robots with intense accuracy. Rebuilding these boxes on a greasy shop bench is like trying to fix a flat screen TV in your basement. The TV will cost $400 to fix with a nerd holding a soldering iron to repair what a 60 million dollar robot did the first time in a dust-free room... or a new TV is $239. Same with these transmissions. Rebuilding one is more or less out of the question. You'll spend weeks in and out of the car testing and tweaking until you get it right, and even then you'll have the computer fighting to figure out why the output speed sensor is showing slippage because the programming sends a PWM signal to a shift solenoid only to discover that you have .003" more space between the clutches than it expects causing trouble.

If I'm going to have an automatic, I want a governor tripping a valve and sending hydraulic pressure to a servo. If I want OD and need more torque capacity, I might consider a first-gen 5-speed auto from some American RWD pickup, but the new multi-speed autos on the market now are just ridiculous.

Let's face it; they're all just trying to out-do each other, but what they're really doing is just closing the gap between a geared transmission and a CVT. They're spending all this money on complexity when they should just do a CVT. Then they could call it something like "IVR" for infinitely variable ratio.

Vehicles are getting to a level of complexity where I'm wondering if it just makes sense to either lease or buy a CPO and only keep it as long as the warranty is available. I'm all for the buy it new or used, maintain it well, and run it into the ground as the cheapest option financially, but with repair bills of $2-4k being common, I've started to question that approach.

MattW wrote: The OEM's don't care what happens once warranty expires. This is the problem I have with new cars.

Did they ever? At least now there are some pretty good, lengthy warranties, so they have to build in some robustness or pay out a bunch of money.

I know this is going to devolve into the typical "New cars suck" GRM thread, but I'll leave you saying that new cars, including their transmissions, are better than ever by a long shot.

IMO this is a good reason to buy older vehicles. You have a chance to see what the average life span is for all the various combinations. Then you hunt around and buy a low mileage example and have the benefits of low depreciation and a somewhat warm and fuzzy feeling that you got good value.

It does seem like some stuff just lasts, and some stuff doesn't. When it's brand new, you just never know which side of the fence stuff is on.

I don't necessarily think that more speeds will equal less reliability, but my ASSumption is that it's safer to wait a few model years for the bazillion speed transmissions to become the "norm". Remember, Powerglides had 2 speeds. The 4L80E has FOUR. That's 100% more gears, yet it's known as a beefy reliable trans. I bet the same will happen with the 6-8-10 speed units as well.

pointofdeparture wrote: I have heard that the Toyota Prius CVTs are surpassing expectations for a lot of people, many clearing 200k with minimal service in true Toyota fashion.

The Prius CVT, from a mechanical standpoint, is far simpler than almost any other transmission out there. Its just a single planetary gearset. No clutches, no tq converter, no slippage.

ProDarwin wrote:

pointofdeparture wrote: I have heard that the Toyota Prius CVTs are surpassing expectations for a lot of people, many clearing 200k with minimal service in true Toyota fashion.

The Prius CVT, from a mechanical standpoint, is far simpler than almost any other transmission out there. Its just a single planetary gearset. No clutches, no tq converter, no slippage.

My Civic's notoriously bad CVT has just shy of 200k miles, including a few years of auto-X. The start clutch keeps getting worse, but I've now thought it was "about to die" for 20k or more miles and it hasn't. So CVTs seem better than expected.

doc_speeder wrote: IMO this is a good reason to buy older vehicles. You have a chance to see what the average life span is for all the various combinations. Then you hunt around and buy a low mileage example and have the benefits of low depreciation and a somewhat warm and fuzzy feeling that you got good value. It does seem like some stuff just lasts, and some stuff doesn't. When it's brand new, you just never know which side of the fence stuff is on. I don't necessarily think that more speeds will equal less reliability, but my ASSumption is that it's safer to wait a few model years for the bazillion speed transmissions to become the "norm". Remember, Powerglides had 2 speeds. The 4L80E has FOUR. That's 100% more gears, yet it's known as a beefy reliable trans. I bet the same will happen with the 6-8-10 speed units as well.

Funny that someone ALWAYS posts this.

When, in fact, cars are lasting a LOT longer with much less maintenance than ever before.

It helps that many on this board like working on cars, and that has lead to the lament of working on modern technology. But most modern cars just need regular oil changed as well as constant feeding of fuel. Those oil changes are now reaching to 10k miles in some cars, too.

But if you want to keep an old car, that's fine.

Just don't forget that new cars are, in general, more reliable and require less work.

alfadriver wrote:

doc_speeder wrote: IMO this is a good reason to buy older vehicles. You have a chance to see what the average life span is for all the various combinations. Then you hunt around and buy a low mileage example and have the benefits of low depreciation and a somewhat warm and fuzzy feeling that you got good value. It does seem like some stuff just lasts, and some stuff doesn't. When it's brand new, you just never know which side of the fence stuff is on. I don't necessarily think that more speeds will equal less reliability, but my ASSumption is that it's safer to wait a few model years for the bazillion speed transmissions to become the "norm". Remember, Powerglides had 2 speeds. The 4L80E has FOUR. That's 100% more gears, yet it's known as a beefy reliable trans. I bet the same will happen with the 6-8-10 speed units as well.

Funny that someone ALWAYS posts this. When, in fact, cars are lasting a LOT longer with much less maintenance than ever before. It helps that many on this board like working on cars, and that has lead to the lament of working on modern technology. But most modern cars just need regular oil changed as well as constant feeding of fuel. Those oil changes are now reaching to 10k miles in some cars, too. But if you want to keep an old car, that's fine. Just don't forget that new cars are, in general, more reliable and require less work.

Ohhh... Ohhh.. The perennial conversation with my dad is about how cars today are better than cars from the 50's... He gets all in a tizzy then I ask him about his 250K mile Honda in his driveway that has the original wheel bearings. I then ask him about repacking the wheel bearings on his old Pontiac and he shuts up. (until the next time I see him).

curtis73 wrote: Let's face it; they're all just trying to out-do each other,

I think consumers actually want more effiecny without sacrificing power or polluting like crazy. One way to do that is to add more gears.

alfadriver wrote:

doc_speeder wrote: IMO this is a good reason to buy older vehicles. You have a chance to see what the average life span is for all the various combinations. Then you hunt around and buy a low mileage example and have the benefits of low depreciation and a somewhat warm and fuzzy feeling that you got good value. It does seem like some stuff just lasts, and some stuff doesn't. When it's brand new, you just never know which side of the fence stuff is on. I don't necessarily think that more speeds will equal less reliability, but my ASSumption is that it's safer to wait a few model years for the bazillion speed transmissions to become the "norm". Remember, Powerglides had 2 speeds. The 4L80E has FOUR. That's 100% more gears, yet it's known as a beefy reliable trans. I bet the same will happen with the 6-8-10 speed units as well.

Funny that someone ALWAYS posts this. When, in fact, cars are lasting a LOT longer with much less maintenance than ever before. It helps that many on this board like working on cars, and that has lead to the lament of working on modern technology. But most modern cars just need regular oil changed as well as constant feeding of fuel. Those oil changes are now reaching to 10k miles in some cars, too. But if you want to keep an old car, that's fine. Just don't forget that new cars are, in general, more reliable and require less work.

Sorry, I think I was perhaps misunderstood. When I said "older", maybe I should have said "not brand new/first model year or two". I thought I made the point that as technology and complexity have advanced, there are some examples of what was new-fangled at one time - like a 4l80E that has proved to be very good, but there are some things that have proven to be not so good or long-lasting. I personally like to see a design go through a couple years worth of production so that some data can be collected on whether it seems to be a fundamentally good design or not. I certainly didn't mean to say that older is better and new stuff is scary and crap. But - ultimately, the proof is in the pudding. Quite the opposite actually. I love new stuff and I think the average reliability of new vehicles is quite staggering given the amount of moving parts and electronics on board. Our Mazda 5 is proof of that to me. Bought new, just rolled 210,000 km. Only failure has been the climate control outside temp sending unit. It's been an incredible car.

So maybe it's better to say that I prefer new-ish, maybe just not brand-new. For example, I looked at a new CX9 yesterday. Lot's of new stuff on it. Will I buy one this year? Likely not, but will I buy one next year or year after? Possibly, if they prove to be a solid design.

curtis73 wrote: Let's face it; they're all just trying to out-do each other, but what they're really doing is just closing the gap between a geared transmission and a CVT. They're spending all this money on complexity when they should just do a CVT. Then they could call it something like "IVR" for infinitely variable ratio.

They why do the OEMs keep programming CVTs like step gear automatics? A CVT in a turbo car should be able to keep it in boost for the best performance, we're not seeing that.

Instead, CAFE is killing a the potential.

Brett_Murphy wrote:

curtis73 wrote: Let's face it; they're all just trying to out-do each other, but what they're really doing is just closing the gap between a geared transmission and a CVT. They're spending all this money on complexity when they should just do a CVT. Then they could call it something like "IVR" for infinitely variable ratio.

They why do the OEMs keep programming CVTs like step gear automatics? A CVT in a turbo car should be able to keep it in boost for the best performance, we're not seeing that.

Honestly? Because people detest driving CVTs. The steps were added to simulate an automatic. 100 years of our brains being programmed to hear the RPMs drop for shifts and feel the kick caused that, not because of efficiency or being "better."

That was partly my point. A properly tuned CVT should net the best efficiency, acceleration, and torque transfer. Instead of everyone flocking to buy a CVT, the manufacturers are just adding more ratios to automatics and people are lapping it up like a cat with milk in his bowl.