Technical Dualogic no reverse after gearbox change

[DualogicFan]

Hello friends.

I am having issues with my 2013 1.2 51kw Fiat 500 Dualogic - the car does not have reverse gear anymore after I changed the gearbox.

I took gearbox from a 2004 Panda with also 1.2 liter engine (188 code and 44kw engine though and a manual from the factory). I thought it would not make a difference, Panda and 500 share a platform and they should both use the C514 gearbox.

Answers for preemptive questions:
1. Before the change all gears were available and Dualogic robot seemed to be working well.
2. The donor gearbox was also working well, it came from a driving car.
3. I used software for calibration (MultiEcuScan and AlfaOBD both).
4. Only the reverse is missing, I could get all the other gears while driving and during the final calibration procedure.
5. No error codes.

I also find something similar but the OP there seemed to have this issue in reverse (he had a manual car and took gearbox from Dualogic/Selespeed car):

Automatic to manual gearbox conversion | FIAT Grande Punto

Hi all I've got a Grande punto with a broken gearbox but have a spare EX automatic selespeed box I was going to use as a donor, by swapping out the robotics and replace with the manual selector box on top of the housing. I thought it was a simple swap over but it may seem to not be... My issue...

www.fiatforum.com

I did not understand what differences he claimed to see between them but as I understood there were some.

So before digging too much deeper, I would like to know are gearboxes themselves really different between Dualogics and regular manuals? Or maybe there are differences between older (attached to 188 engine) and newer (attached to 169 engine) C514 boxes?

 

[z rider]

I have looked at the thread you linked. The Dualogic box shown seems to have the shift pattern of the six speed gearbox. There are four shift rails available what gives reverse a rail for its own and the 5th gear is not opposed by a 6th one in this case. Have a look to the shift pattern so see what I mean.
On a 5 speed manual box reverse is opposed by 5th gear, so you only have 3 shift rails. The robot will be missing the 4th rail for reverse so it cannot be shifted.

 

[DualogicFan]

Thanks for the reply. What you say makes sense because in Dualogic reverse is before 1st and 2nd gear shift rail and on regular manual reverse is opposed by 5th gear in the last shift rail. Unfortunately on a 6 speed box the reverse is after 5th and 6th shift rail not before 1st and 2nd (like shown on gearknobs here):

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_bLtv8vDeWM/mqdefault.jpg

So taking a 6 speed box would not help me and I would still need the correct Dualogic box which are expensive and hard to find.

To illustrate it better for anyone else wondering about shift patterns:

Dualogic 5 speed:
1 3 5
R 2 4

Regular 5 speed:
1 3 5
2 4 R

Regular 6 speed:
1 3 5
2 4 6 R

What I don't understand is why is there a need to have/see 4 shift rails for regular manual (picture here: https://www.fiatforum.com/attachments/20191204_204959-jpg.204855/) if only 3 rails are used? This is why I was quite confident at the first place that it would work properly on my Dualogic car.

 

[DualogicFan]

Hello again and I wish nice holiday season for everyone! I wanted to let you know about my findings for closure of this topic. I finally managed to get a Dualogic Fiat Panda from mid 2000s (similar to the one I got my manual transmission from). And that was working well! I kept my old robot from the 2013 car though because wiring is different throughout the years, but the robot itself fitted spot on to old Panda-s gearbox. I kept the gearbox speed sensor from old Panda-s gearbox and it fitted my 500-s plug and it is also working well.

So even though everything ended well for me, I am still worried about the Dualogic gearbox topic since C514 gearbox is notoriously weak and replacement gearboxes are expensive and hard to come by if they break. Also in addition, Dualogic boxes are especially prone to breaking since Dualogic robot is not as smooth with them as a driver would be with a regular manual.

Solving that issue is for another topic though and I would like it to be something easier than a full gearbox rebuild including the bearings and stuff.

 

[dagdromer]

If I understand correct you did not change the gearbox again. So the shift pattern never was an issue? The issue was inside the dualogic robot?

 

[DualogicFan]

If I understand correct you did not change the gearbox again. So the shift pattern never was an issue? The issue was inside the dualogic robot?

Hi. I might have been unclear in my comment but no, you got it wrong. The robot was always fine and I used the same robot all the time (the robot from my original 2013 Fiat 500). It was about the shift pattern. Using regular manual Panda gearbox I got all the gears besides reverse. But using proper Dualogic Panda gearbox everything is working fine

Only thing I would like to add for people who might have issues with the robot: if your car is throwing some error codes about some actuator being stuck then spray WD40 to the robot and manually move it through the gears. I had this issue since my car was sitting for few months because I couldnt source a proper Dualogic gearbox for a long time. So the robot got stuck and I got the "actuator stuck" errors.