euroben
Established member
I have been chasing a problem with my panda 4x4 for a while now and I hate to say it in case I jinx it but I think I have finally fixed it.
I have posted in many posts of others on here going back years, where they looked like they had something similar so I thought I would post one ‘solved it’ post for anyone else looking for a similar problem.
The car was originally feeling a bit like there was some slippage in the transmission. This was difficult to pinpoint because the clutch was pretty bad and the propshaft central bearing was shot. I took to a Fiat specialist to have clutch and DMF replaced and he took the old propshaft off and told me he had a friend who could split it and replace the central bearing for about £200. I knew I could get a new non-Fiat one for that so he left it off until I ordered one online.
All seemed well after the clutch replacement and I assumed the slipping feeling that I was getting before must have been the old clutch.
Then the new propshaft was put on and shortly after the slipping reoccurred. It was only after the car had been driven for about an hour and was warm and then if you drove on a slight incline in 1st gear taking off from a junction and often when cornering in 1st you would feel this slipping. It felt a bit like a cog missing a tooth and occasionally slipping. As soon as I reached 3rd gear it would no longer be noticeable. It was also intermittent.
I took the car back to the Fiat specialist who did my clutch and said that I thought the clutch was slipping again. He had it for a few days and assured me it wasn’t and couldn’t find anything wrong with it. I eventually managed to get it to do it with him in the car and he thought it felt like a throttle hesitation. I wasn’t convinced by this but I bought a new throttle pedal and sensor and replaced it as it was cheap. Still not fixed.
I then took it to two other garages both of which said I was imagining it and there was nothing wrong with the car. I asked a garage to check the inner CV joints on the rear because I had a feeling it may be there. Again all good. My suspicion was the rear differential may be failing but that is a pricey replacement if I was wrong.
So I asked Chat GPT after telling it everything that I had done and how the car behaves. It suggested that I drained the rear differential oil and run a magnet through the oil to see if there are any metal shavings that may suggest the rear diff is failing.
Finally got around to it this week after having had the oil for a while now. I drained out the old oil and shine a led light on the old oil as it drained out. The oil was very dark and had an awful smell. With the LED light I watched all sorts of sludge come out in the stream of oil. I ran a magnet through the old oil and no mental fragments at all. I got about 500ml of oil out but after following the procedure someone posted on here, I got about 650ml in of the new oil.
I have now been driving around for a few days and it seems to have fixed the problem completely.
I do remember when then Fiat guy did my clutch he said the clutch was full of water and asked if I had driven through flood water. I hadn’t but at that point I hadn’t had the car long so don’t know what had been done to it before. I now suspect that it had been driven through flood water and not only did water get into the clutch but it also got into the rear differential and mixed with the oil.
So for anyone having similar issues, this was a very simple job to do and cost about £12 for the oil. Well worth trying if you have a problem that feels like it is coming from the back end and can’t work out where it’s coming from.
Had the Fiat specialist been used to panda 4x4 and the other garages been used to working on AWD cars then someone may have suspected this earlier.
Hope that is useful for someone else chasing a weird problem like this.
I have posted in many posts of others on here going back years, where they looked like they had something similar so I thought I would post one ‘solved it’ post for anyone else looking for a similar problem.
The car was originally feeling a bit like there was some slippage in the transmission. This was difficult to pinpoint because the clutch was pretty bad and the propshaft central bearing was shot. I took to a Fiat specialist to have clutch and DMF replaced and he took the old propshaft off and told me he had a friend who could split it and replace the central bearing for about £200. I knew I could get a new non-Fiat one for that so he left it off until I ordered one online.
All seemed well after the clutch replacement and I assumed the slipping feeling that I was getting before must have been the old clutch.
Then the new propshaft was put on and shortly after the slipping reoccurred. It was only after the car had been driven for about an hour and was warm and then if you drove on a slight incline in 1st gear taking off from a junction and often when cornering in 1st you would feel this slipping. It felt a bit like a cog missing a tooth and occasionally slipping. As soon as I reached 3rd gear it would no longer be noticeable. It was also intermittent.
I took the car back to the Fiat specialist who did my clutch and said that I thought the clutch was slipping again. He had it for a few days and assured me it wasn’t and couldn’t find anything wrong with it. I eventually managed to get it to do it with him in the car and he thought it felt like a throttle hesitation. I wasn’t convinced by this but I bought a new throttle pedal and sensor and replaced it as it was cheap. Still not fixed.
I then took it to two other garages both of which said I was imagining it and there was nothing wrong with the car. I asked a garage to check the inner CV joints on the rear because I had a feeling it may be there. Again all good. My suspicion was the rear differential may be failing but that is a pricey replacement if I was wrong.
So I asked Chat GPT after telling it everything that I had done and how the car behaves. It suggested that I drained the rear differential oil and run a magnet through the oil to see if there are any metal shavings that may suggest the rear diff is failing.
Finally got around to it this week after having had the oil for a while now. I drained out the old oil and shine a led light on the old oil as it drained out. The oil was very dark and had an awful smell. With the LED light I watched all sorts of sludge come out in the stream of oil. I ran a magnet through the old oil and no mental fragments at all. I got about 500ml of oil out but after following the procedure someone posted on here, I got about 650ml in of the new oil.
I have now been driving around for a few days and it seems to have fixed the problem completely.
I do remember when then Fiat guy did my clutch he said the clutch was full of water and asked if I had driven through flood water. I hadn’t but at that point I hadn’t had the car long so don’t know what had been done to it before. I now suspect that it had been driven through flood water and not only did water get into the clutch but it also got into the rear differential and mixed with the oil.
So for anyone having similar issues, this was a very simple job to do and cost about £12 for the oil. Well worth trying if you have a problem that feels like it is coming from the back end and can’t work out where it’s coming from.
Had the Fiat specialist been used to panda 4x4 and the other garages been used to working on AWD cars then someone may have suspected this earlier.
Hope that is useful for someone else chasing a weird problem like this.
- Model
- TA 4x4
- Year
- 2013
- Mileage
- 108000
