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Technical Dualogic failure newbie help

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Technical Dualogic failure newbie help

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panda07

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A few weeks ago, my 2007 Panda dualogic (<45k miles) went into the garage and what with it being Christmas, not much has happened.

Having not used the car for 3 weeks, I drove it 100 yards then stopped to load up the kids and it would not go into 1st. "Gear unavailable Check Handbook", also gearbox warning light flashing. Bizarrely, the handbook mentions neither. Mechanic later explained that it was stuck in 2nd. Never tried 2nd gear in manual mode but I think engine is programmed not to start when you do that anyway. They claim they can now get it into 1st and 2nd but otherwise no dice.

-Pump noise is still active when I open driver door
-Puddle of liquid was under car when we pushed it off (can't be sure it wasn't already there, but pretty sure it came from the car)

They have said I need a new gearbox and an actuator. They got a quote from Fiat for £2k for the former and about £900 for the latter. Fiat would not give out part numbers to source them elsewhere which the independent garage assumed was because they were trade so they asked me to phone. I got selespeed unit part number but Fiat explained that the gearbox could be one of four and they could tell me what it probably was but they would rather not as they couldn't be sure.

I phone Fiat CS and they said the same. Only way to check is by taking apart the car. Garage says they will charge me £120 to find out part number by checking the actual gearbox as it is very inaccessible and will take a mechanic 2 hours. They seem keen to find a way to avoid this, so they can give me a quote for free. I do not know if the 2 hours will save time with the eventual gearbox install or they will put the car back together while they source the parts.

The Fiat dealer said that it will probably just be the selespeed unit as they fail far more often, but the garage says that's irrelevant, as the reconditioned ones tend to come together anyway, and it makes sense to replace both at once. They say the install will take 3-4 hours and they will source the parts on ebay. There is a gearbox actuator on ebay for £350 (including installation, with exchange of broken equivalent). I do not know whether that means just the actuator or the whole thing as one unit.

Obviously, the garage will not want to give an indication of part prices until they can source one they trust but they said Fiat want 10x what they expect to pay.

I guess I'm posting to ask if anyone who knows about these things can confirm the veracity of what I've been told and if there's anything else I should consider. I largely trust the indy garage (they're my neighbours and they've been very reasonable about everything so far), and they claim they have 2 automatic specialists and all the relevant diagnostic equipment.

I have never owned a car before this. It cost me £2k 6 months ago. I researched whether or not Fiats still had gearbox issues before buying as I knew a few people who went through gearboxes often in manual Puntos back in the 90s. I found nothing. Now I keep finding references to dualogic failures all over this forum (although admittedly not in the sticky in this forum which I think I looked at before buying, and they seem to be more common in the 500 forum). The fiat dealer I spoke to on the phone explained that gearbox problems and particularly dualogic failures are very common at low mileages. I have to say that my feelings towards the car have changed drastically and I feel a bit cheated. I loved it a month ago. In my ignorance, I thought spending £2k on a car would mean it would not need to be repaired anything like as often as a £1k car, but instead it just means you have to keep paying to repair it, as selling it for parts would be throwing away £1500. But if I get it repaired, it's likely to end up back in the garage within a year. The car seems to have gone through about 5 owners in its 9 year lifespan, suggesting this may be a chronic problem.
 
Hello and welcome to the forum :wave:.

Sorry to hear it's in such sad circumstances.

Realistically, I don't think it's likely your car will be cost effective to repair unless you can source some cheap secondhand parts and do the work yourself. Your best bet now might be to cut your losses & sell it as is (and if anyone offers you £500 then I'd bite their hand off).

Unless you really want to keep this car, you'd probably be better off putting the money you'd otherwise have to spend fixing it toward something different. The £2000 you've spent is already gone; you won't get it back by paying someone else to fix this car. Even if repaired properly, I doubt you could sell a 10yr old Panda (it's 2017 now so your car is a year older) for more than about £1000 unless you were extremely fortunate.
 
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A3jeroen said:
If it were my car I would be very interested at knowing what fuid had leaked and if fixing the leak and topping up the fluid (probably the special hydraulic fluid for the actuator) would fix the problem.

gr J
Click to expand...

panda07
"gear unavailable" usually means that the actuator ( and the computer that drives it )are showing faults. and therefore cannot physically move to select a gear..or 2 ( it uses fluid - and you've lost some..:chin:)

it's NOT a conventional "automatic" , the gearbox is basically the same as a manual punto, and it's VERY rare for those to fail at such low mileages

where are you / the car based..?? :confused:

TBH - I'd attempt to get somebody else to look at it, ;)
we have no end of people on here with "unfixable" problems where their "village garage" cannot repair it due to not actually having the correct kit - despite actually charging for doing the job,:bang:

Charlie - Oxford
 
Good advice from A3jeroen - Definitely worth finding out where it leaked from. It is possible that the problem is relatively minor (crack in selespeed fluid tank, or split pipe), in which case a reasonably competent mechanic could fix it using basic tools and some (probably secondhand) parts for not much money. It can then be bled and re-setup relatively straightforwardly using MultiECUScan.

If the leak is coming from one of the actuators it is a more complicated proposition. The simplest solution in that case may well be to have the Dualogic unit removed and sent away for refurbishment. Still within reach of a reasonably competent mechanic. Have seen refurbishment service advertised at between £350 and £400. It seems that most, if not all, of the versions are interchangeable.

If the selespeed fluid has leaked into the gearbox then gearbox may also need repair. This is apparently not usually the case, but it has happened occasionally. However, some repairers seem to insist that the gearbox is replaced as a matter of routine. I don't understand why, as, unless it has been damaged by the Dualogic unit failure (or caused the Dualogic failure) it is just a gearbox, and as long as it is still working OK, it should be fine.

So, as jrkitching points out, it may not be worth repairing, but on the other hand, it could be a simple fix.

I would suggest you contact one or more of the refurbishers and ask for advice. If they are willing to spend the time discussing your problem, then you can make a judgement as to whether to repair or get rid of it. Some will do all of the removal and refitting plus the set-up if you can get the car to them. And warranty the whole job, rather than just the Dualogic mechanism.
 
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The Selespeed system will have sensors that show what the gears are doing (engaged or not engaged) It could be as simple as a faulty sensor on 1st gear. The computer can't see what's going on so raises a fault code in this case "gear missing".
 
panda07 said:
A few weeks ago, my 2007 Panda dualogic (<45k miles) went into the garage and what with it being Christmas, not much has happened.

Having not used the car for 3 weeks, I drove it 100 yards then stopped to load up the kids and it would not go into 1st. "Gear unavailable Check Handbook", also gearbox warning light flashing. Bizarrely, the handbook mentions neither. Mechanic later explained that it was stuck in 2nd. Never tried 2nd gear in manual mode but I think engine is programmed not to start when you do that anyway. They claim they can now get it into 1st and 2nd but otherwise no dice.

-Pump noise is still active when I open driver door
-Puddle of liquid was under car when we pushed it off (can't be sure it wasn't already there, but pretty sure it came from the car)

They have said I need a new gearbox and an actuator. They got a quote from Fiat for £2k for the former and about £900 for the latter. Fiat would not give out part numbers to source them elsewhere which the independent garage assumed was because they were trade so they asked me to phone. I got selespeed unit part number but Fiat explained that the gearbox could be one of four and they could tell me what it probably was but they would rather not as they couldn't be sure.

I phone Fiat CS and they said the same. Only way to check is by taking apart the car. Garage says they will charge me £120 to find out part number by checking the actual gearbox as it is very inaccessible and will take a mechanic 2 hours. They seem keen to find a way to avoid this, so they can give me a quote for free. I do not know if the 2 hours will save time with the eventual gearbox install or they will put the car back together while they source the parts.

The Fiat dealer said that it will probably just be the selespeed unit as they fail far more often, but the garage says that's irrelevant, as the reconditioned ones tend to come together anyway, and it makes sense to replace both at once. They say the install will take 3-4 hours and they will source the parts on ebay. There is a gearbox actuator on ebay for £350 (including installation, with exchange of broken equivalent). I do not know whether that means just the actuator or the whole thing as one unit.

Obviously, the garage will not want to give an indication of part prices until they can source one they trust but they said Fiat want 10x what they expect to pay.

I guess I'm posting to ask if anyone who knows about these things can confirm the veracity of what I've been told and if there's anything else I should consider. I largely trust the indy garage (they're my neighbours and they've been very reasonable about everything so far), and they claim they have 2 automatic specialists and all the relevant diagnostic equipment.

I have never owned a car before this. It cost me £2k 6 months ago. I researched whether or not Fiats still had gearbox issues before buying as I knew a few people who went through gearboxes often in manual Puntos back in the 90s. I found nothing. Now I keep finding references to dualogic failures all over this forum (although admittedly not in the sticky in this forum which I think I looked at before buying, and they seem to be more common in the 500 forum). The fiat dealer I spoke to on the phone explained that gearbox problems and particularly dualogic failures are very common at low mileages. I have to say that my feelings towards the car have changed drastically and I feel a bit cheated. I loved it a month ago. In my ignorance, I thought spending £2k on a car would mean it would not need to be repaired anything like as often as a £1k car, but instead it just means you have to keep paying to repair it, as selling it for parts would be throwing away £1500. But if I get it repaired, it's likely to end up back in the garage within a year. The car seems to have gone through about 5 owners in its 9 year lifespan, suggesting this may be a chronic problem.
Click to expand...
I agree with the comment from A3jeroen that your first action should be to remove the pressed aluminum plate covering the reservoir for the Dualogic actuating fluid and check the level.
4x 10mm head bolts, careful getting the cover off, it drops down under the car. A bit of bending the top part helps....try not to disturb the components on the gearbox under the cover. One of them, a sensor is often a source of fluid leaks.
The filler cap for the reservoir will be easily seen, the fluid level mark is not so easy... use a torch. Fluid will be black probably, new Fiat fluid or Dexron 3 full synthetic will be ok to top up for now. Will need to be bled of air if it's run low.
Try all this before thinking of spending more $$$ it may not be a disaster yet!
 
Thanks all for taking the time to reply to me.
jrkitching

I have read through your merged dualogic thread on the 500 forum and it was very interesting. You may be right. It's hard to discern the value of the car as it seems they are listed for over £2k on autotrader but sometimes go for less than £1k on ebay. I would have thought I could trade in a working one for £1500 though, and the repair is likely to cost quite a bit less than a grand as others point out.

But yes, it's borderline not worth bothering, which within 6 months of buying my first car, is what makes it all so frustrating.
A3jeroen

True. I will try and establish whether or not they have had to top up the level in order to achieve anything as they mentioned they got it out of second gear and into first.

varesecrazy

Interesting and similar to what the fiat dealer said, i.e. the gearboxes don't fail anything like as often as the selespeeds do. I'm in London.

irc

Also v interesting.

I definitely need to get them to clear up what my options are and ring around.

burrowsdeano

I am in London.

DaveMcT

That makes sense but wouldn't explain the puddle, assuming that it came from my car. It seems there are a number of gotchas with dualogics, that can see them get replaced unnecessarily. Supposedly, you can't change gear if the brake sensor is giving a false positive, for example.

Bergi

Useful tip, thanks. I did try to check the level myself but couldn't figure out how from my attempts to google it. I must admit that although I am relatively hands-on with DIY, fixing electrical items and the like, I have never so much as looked at the underside of a car and although I'm keen to learn, I don't have anywhere I could do that even if I were to get it back from the garage as it would mean doing it on a busy London street.

But it was annoying me that that was what the dash was effectively telling me to do and I didn't know how, so thanks.
 
panda07 said:
It's hard to discern the value of the car as it seems they are listed for over £2k on autotrader but sometimes go for less than £1k on ebay.
Click to expand...

It all depends on whether you're buying or selling, trade or private.

For example, here's one for sale just now at a shade under £2k.

Now try selling the same car. I put the same details into WBAC, with 20,000 less miles, and the valuation was £375 - and you'd have to deduct another £50 from that for the 'transaction fee'. :mad:

The trade will generally want to make at least £1k on any car they sell. So if they're going to put it on the forecourt at £2k, with let's say 10% headroom if the potential buyer wants to haggle, then they're going to pay £800 tops - their opening bid would likely be under £500.

As a trade in, it depends entirely on what you're buying, because they can inflate the price of what they sell to make the offer for yours look more attractive. If you don't have a trade in, you could likely negotiate a hefty discount on the ticket price - I got about 27% off my Panda when I bought it new for cash.

Privately, you'll get a bit more, but as you've seen on ebay, getting more than £1k would be a long stretch indeed.

If you buy a used car from the trade for £2000, you'll most likely lose at least half that just by driving it off the forecourt.

I hope for you that those who are saying there may be a cheap and easy fix are right, but you need to be realistic. Experience has shown that repairing misbehaving dualogics can be something of a lottery and I'd hate to see you spending many hundreds of pounds on a losing ticket. If the garage you're dealing with are reputable (and there's no reason to suppose otherwise as they're trying to find you a financially viable solution), then I'd like to think if it were as simple as just a fluid topup, they'd have done that by now.

I'd only consider spending significant money on a repair if you're planning to keep the car afterwards. If you're planning to move it on quickly, and it needs more than a simple topup, bleed or software reset, then I doubt having it repaired it would make you any more money than selling it as is, unless you're going to use salvaged parts and do all the work yourself.

Sorry if I'm sounding negative but I don't want to see you throwing good money after bad. Sometimes you just have to cut your losses and move on.

I do have some idea of how you must be feeling. Back in 1973 I spent my life savings on my first (secondhand) car and it broke down 2 weeks later. I spent every spare penny I earned trying to keep it on the road, then ended up selling it after 3 months for about 10% of what I paid for it. It was another 2 years before I could afford to buy another car - but I never made the same mistake again.
 
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panda07 I can't disagree with any of what jrkitching says, even though I have a Dualogic and love it.
I would not have bought it at "full price" because of the cliff-edge cost of a failure with the Dualogic unit.
I actually bought it as spare parts for another Panda, sight unseen, for the roof rails and wheels.
Previous owner got a > £1000 quote for fixing the gearbox, from his local garage so sold it for just above scrap value.
I've had a year's use out of it so far, for the cost of a replacement pump motor (£165) and 1 litre of Selespeed fluid (£10).
Moral of the story is get some good advice from someone who really knows about Dualogic/Selespeed units and then decide, but unless it is a simple fix it will probably be uneconomical to repair unless you intend to keep it long term.
 
I learned to weld on my first car and all sorts of other stuff that it needed was also first time for me. I sold it for what I paid for it which wasn't too bad. But it always was a lemon.

The Duologic is great when it's working but nobody seems to know how to fix them when they fail. Dropping in complete new or remanufactured actuators is the usual method. Not cheap and not always fixing the problem.
 
Thank you for all your help, guys.

I wish I had understood all that before I bought my car jrkitching. I asked a lot of questions but really didn't get very helpful answers. I had no idea the markup was so high. I figured it was more like £400. Doesn't seem worth buying a car from a dealer at that spread. Makes sense on a £5k car when the warranty is worth more but not on a £1k car when you're paying double-bubble.

I largely bought the car to get my insurance down as my wife just passed (on an automatic license, hence the dualogic). I expected to get a larger car after about 18 months or so. Talk about a false economy spending £1000 extra on a car that didn't quite meet my needs just to save £500 in insurance.

Oh well, lesson learned. Thank you for the wisdom.

Still not sure what I'm going to do, however.

A few questions jrc, dave mct, if you don't mind.

i) Did you diagnose the component that needed replacing with multiECU scan or by sight?
ii) When you say the pump motor, do you mean the entire selespeed unit, or just some component thereof?
iii) How long did it take you to fit it?
iv) Did you take the whole gearbox out, just the selespeed out or could you fix the selespeed in situ? The mechanic said it's much easier to work with these things on a bench.
v) Am I right in thinking multiECU scan is just €50 + a £15 dongle and a laptop?


Apparently, no leak has been spotted, so it may have just been a puddle. The car drives, however, in manual mode, it's just that it gets stuck in 2nd. The only way to get it out is to go into neutral. It will not go beyond 2nd but it will reverse and go into 1st.

The garage is basically saying they would want to replace the whole thing largely because it's easier. They will want me to source the parts myself and can obviously then not offer a guarantee. They don't think there's anything wrong with the gearbox, just the selespeed. There's a guy on ebay in Portsmouth who will replace the selespeed for £350 parts and labour ("no fix no fee") in return for the broken selespeed. I will try and ring around automatic specialists this week.

You are correct Dave McT, the economics of the car don't add up after so many years. The other option I've just learned about is warranties. Apparently, i could have got a warranty on the gearbox and expensive stuff for around £230/year, and all parts for £300/year. Useful to consider for any automatic I would have thought as the gearbox repairs are always crippling. But particularly with the dualogic.
 
Mine was easy to diagnose - the pump motor just stopped working every now and then, resulting in the ominous "Gearbox Failure" message on the dashboard and the car going into neutral.
Changing the pump was done without removing anything else apart from the heatshield. 30 mins in total.
Few ideas:
Where are you based? There may be a member nearby with MES who could have a look at your codes. You obviously will not want to buy MES if the diagnosis is bad enough to scrap the car.

Is the fluid level correct? If it is, then there's a possibility that the problem is electrical rather than hydraulic, and therefore probably easier.

Be careful about "automatic specialists". It is not an automatic gearbox, so some will not touch it, and some others probably shouldn't. An Alfa Romeo independent may be a better bet, as Alfa had the system for ages, and they tend to be quite experienced.
 
Bit of an update on this:

Having almost listed the car as broken a few times this week, I finally drove it to my local FIAT indy. I spoke to Alfa Craft in Mortlake (probably the most helpful mechanic I've ever had the pleasure spoken to - immediately turned down the business on the grounds that he doesn't touch dualogics anymore, but proceeded to give me 15 mins worth of free advice nevertheless) and Firela in Clapham.

I took it to Firela who charge £60 to look at it. The local garage said I was safe to drive it provided I didn't push it beyond 2nd. It took me all of 300 yards to defy their advice. Lo and behold, the problem has fixed itself. I did 3rd and 4th in both manual and auto.

Having read dozens of forum posts about selespeeds, my amateur guess is that the gear position sensor was playing up in the weather as I'd left the car idle for a few weeks. I drove it around the corner, pushed it up to 2nd and it got stuck. Because I never tried putting it in manual and pushing it up to 2nd in order to have the computer marry up with the gearbox, I couldn't get it out of 2nd. The mechanics either got it out of second by doing that or with the diagnostics (they definitely did diagnostics, they left the panel off the port).

Either it was the gear position sensor or them resetting the system, fixed whatever electrical problem caused it. They either didn't test it properly after checking the diagnostics, or the problem went away due to changes in the weather.

I largely trust the local guys. I think they honestly didn't know what else to do but replace the whole thing, even though that was clearly overkill. Pretty confident in it myself having driven it around for 45 mins, but the wife has insisted I get it checked out by the specialists anyway.

I will wait to see what they say. I am definitely very appreciative for the advice not to trust a local garage with these cars, given by many, earlier in the thread.

In the meantime, I have learned from the following page:

selespeed's dot org page

that only going into 1, 2, R and N is actually just "safe mode". I suspect my local mechanics simply did not know that.
 
Looks like you just saved a dualogic Panda(y) And a lot of money in the proces.
You could apply some contactcleaner and vaseline to all connectors and make sure that the level of hydraulic fluid is ok.
And having a specialist look at it (and clear old faults if nescessary) might give extra peace of mind.

gr J
 
For what it's worth you might as well change the gear position sensor.

I don't know about Fiat but many such things are potentiometers that wear with use so will fail over time.
 
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