Technical The one and only Dualogic failure thread

Currently reading:
Technical The one and only Dualogic failure thread

PS the cost of fixing the problem is somewhere in the region of £2000, so beware FIAT owners that you are dealing with Companies that will go to any lengths to avoid fixing your car’s faults at there own cost

Welcome.

The cost of repairing the issue is actually no-where near that expensive, if it's diagnosed properly and only the faulty part is replaced.

What you're suffering with here is a dealer who doesn't know what they're doing and is quoting for the easiest thing for them, which is replacement of the entire selespeed unit at £2k expense to yourself (n)

Unfortunately this seems to be typical of a lot of main dealers these days, and is only really one step down from just saying bin the entire car and buy a new one imo :bang:
 
Hi
I’m new here.
5 years ago I purchased my 2014 dualogic fiat500 and have loved driving/owning it…..It had 7k miles on the clock and I purchased it for the princely sum of £8k from a now closed fiat dealership in Bristol.
Fast forward to about 6 weeks ago when it put itself into N when I tried to put it into R. I turned of the engine and started it up again and it was fine. Drove home and noticed the odometer was flashing and my blue and me was not working. Looked on here disconnected the battery for 30 mins and the blue and me worked again. Next time I took it out the odometer started flashing again and the blue and me went again.
Is it worth me trying a different fiat approved garage?
Any advice will be very gratefully received.

Did you make any progress with this ?
 
Please report this fault so this dangerous gearbox is recalled

PLEASE HELP INSIGHT CHANGE AND RECALL A DANGEROUS VEHICLE

Yesterday I was nearly killed in my dualogic fiat 500. I was driving down a bypass on my way home from work and the car suddenly slipped into neutral. I was stranded in the middle of a lane (no hard shoulder) and an HGV travelling at 60mph had to swerve missing me by inches, nearly going into another car in the other lane. There was no pre-warning for this fault. It happened the week before whilst slowing at a traffic light (I thought this was because I manually changed gears). BUT this time showed that this fault can occur (without touching the gear stick) changing from any gear, in any weather, regardless of the gear stick position.


I turned the car off- put the car in neutral. Turned it on, put it in gear- the gear refused to change from neutral. Turned it off, kept it in the gear position, turned it on, still in neutral. Changing the gear stick position did nothing. I had to turn the car on and off over 10 times to get the car to reset into a gear. Whilst sat in the middle of a lane with cars zooming around me.


Looking at this and other fiat forums it seems this has been an issue with semi-auto dualogic Fiat 500s since 2009. People have taken it the garage and diagnostics come back with nothing. The only way people have been able to prove the fault to the garage is if it occurs when the mechanics test drive it (usually keeping the car for over 2 months). Due to no information from diagnostics, garages have changed minor parts and recalibrated these cars to no avail. They would also be unable to log a common fault and report it back to fiat. One person even reported this issue occurring after driving only 45 miles out of the dealership with a new car. The only permanent fix is a new dualogic unit (gear box) which is £2k for the part alone. This is clearly a manufacturer fault with the gear box and is highly dangerous. No amount of fixing or changing of components resolves the issue. I have read many near death experiences due to this fault on this forum and others.


My car is a 2016 model (less than 5 years old) with 36k miles on the clock. I may expect a gearbox failure on an older car due to wear and tear but not in such a young car with low mileage. Fiat do not currently have a recall out for this car. I have been told by fiat that this is due to insufficient reporting of a common issue. I know advice on here and other forums is “patch it up, sell it on”- but that puts others at risk.


SO PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE- if you have experienced this fault (even once) report it to the DVSA (UK) or the equivalent in your country. It takes 5-10 minutes


gov.uk/vehicle-recalls-and-faults/report-a-serious-safety-defect


You can also report it to fiat

fiat.co.uk/contact-us


If enough people report this fault Fiat will have to investigate and issue a recall. If it is recalled they will have to fix your car (without charge). Please help get this gear box recalled so no one else is put in a life- threatening situation like I have been or worse dies due to a gearbox failure.
 
Re: Please report this fault so this dangerous gearbox is recalled

Hello and welcome to the forum.

Sorry to hear about what has happened; I'm hearing that you have been badly frightened by this.

This thread is the correct place for your story; I created it to bring all the various dualogic fault postings together, in part to illustrate the number of folks experiencing problems with this gearbox.

However, please don't revive older threads to duplicate your post - I've now deleted the other instances to keep all the responses in one place.
 
Last edited:
I know advice on here and other forums is “patch it up, sell it on”- but that puts others at risk.

I'd agree with you; basically that's just kicking the can down the road. I generally advise folks to trade these cars in if they can put the warning lights out, but always add that prospective purchasers of used dualogics should be aware the previous owner may have done exactly that.

For anyone who absolutely must have an automatic car and whose heart is set on a 500, I always advise buying new and trading in before the end of the manufacturers warranty.

I'd like to see Fiat do more to help those affected by this, but sadly I don't think this is going to happen anytime soon. In fairness to Fiat, other marques with robotically controlled clutched transmissions are also not without their problems, and on a small car, the inherent inefficiency of a conventional torque converter automatic would be hard to justify these days for environmental and emissions control reasons.

For most folks, dualogic failures have been more wallet threatening than life threatening, but in current traffic conditions (I'm thinking particularly about smart motorways, which basically give me the willies every time I use one), any mechanical failure has the potential to become a life threatening situation. I know it's not always possible, but if something like this does happen, using whatever speed you have to reach the safest resting place you can has to be an instinctive reaction.
 
Last edited:
Re: Please report this fault so this dangerous gearbox is recalled

The only permanent fix is a new dualogic unit (gear box)

Just an FYI, the Selespeed system is independent of the gearbox. You won’t be getting a new gearbox as well within that £2k unfortunately :(
 
Hi All, Just joined this forum, hoping this is the right thread to report my intermittent fault and hopefully get some advice!

My car is a 2008 Fiat Panda, 1.2 Dualogic. I bought this car last December and since owning it the car will switch between two "states" of driving, I will describe these two states below.

State A: "Normal?" In this state 70% of time.
  • Car DOES NOT move without pressing accelerator, I will turn car on, put it in drive, release brake and car will remain still until I apply accelerator. I am aware this is unusual for automatics but assume it is normal for a dualogic panda?
  • Gear changes and driving is smooth, everything else seems fine.

State B: "Faulty?" This state will come about randomly and last for a few days to a week, before going back to state A for a 2-3 weeks.
  • SOMETIMES The engine warning light will light yellow, with code P1221, other times the engine light will not appear however symptoms below will still occur. When it appears, clearing this code resolves nothing and light remains on until car mysteriously reverts to state A.
  • Idle is rough and varying. When sitting idle in neutral immediately after ignition, tach needle will be around 12k, jumping up and down +/- 1k.
  • Car will refuse to shift into neutral from D or R. If I try to shift to N car beeps and following message appears on dash: "Operation not Admissible". I am pressing the brake down when I shift to neutral so it is not that.
  • When sitting in traffic (In D, 1st gear) the car will have a slight shudder/jerk every second or two, as if the engine is about to stall. Very slight. Engine never stalls.
  • When driving slow, there seems to be a dead space on accelerator, pressing accelerator softly does nothing, push a little more and the car lurches off. Difficult to drive smoothly because of this. Car is either coasting, or accelerating too fast. My assumption is the computer is putting car in too high a gear.

I will update if I can think of any more symptoms, but those are the main ones. It is very frustrating to drive when in this faulty state. I've been browsing these forums a lot looking for similar problems. I have cleaned the throttle body and that has not resolved the issue, I fear it may be something more to do with the aging ECU. If anyone has any ideas or advice please let me know. :worship:

Thanks!
 
Only a guess, but I think you should first check the ECU connectors... these symptoms seem to all be related to a rough running engine, rather than the Dualogic unit, and damp or loose ECU plugs will do this.

It looks like the Dualogic actuator is trying to make sense of the information it gets, but I suspect it is unable to understand why you are trying to select a gear when the engine revs are too high... so it doesn't let you. Quite sensible really. Same goes for stuttering drive and bad throttle response.

If ECU connectors are OK, move on to the usual suspects for a rough running Panda - the search function on the forum is pretty good.

Get the ECU codes read and report back.

Don't pay too much attention to individual codes, you will probably need to look at them all together to understand what is wrong.

Also, don't necessarily believe "expert" advice. Some experts just aren't.
 
Hi Irc, thanks for the reply.

I've checked the ECU connections before and went out and gave them another once over there, they're all straight and clean, don't think the problem's there.
There are no more codes other than the one I mentioned.

Is it possible it could be the spark plugs and/or coil pack? Thinking of going in to take a look at them and perhaps replace them.


Thanks
 
Re: Please report this fault so this dangerous gearbox is recalled

I have just read your post and was blown away by the fact that it could have been written by me that is exactly what happened to me me 4 weeks ago with my fiat and I was lucky that nobody went up the back of me. I have written to fiat and tried to get them to reimburse me for the very costly repairs mine is also a 2016 model and has 89,000km fiat aren’t interested as it is out of warranty
Not a happy bunny so I have decided to fight them in anyway I can this is a dangerous fault and should not be allowed continue. I live in Perth Australia and we have a governing body here that helps to resolve issues with faulty manufacturing so fingers crossed this problem will be brought to fiat and get noticed
 
Hello guys,

I have this fiat 500 with selespeed and the problem started while driving the transmission just went to N itself. Now I see another problem when I start the car that the "AUTO" sign in the panel doesnt show up for about 6 to 10 seconds after that the transmission lets me to change the gears, now out of nowhere the transmission goes only in N, R and 1st gear it doesnt shift up.

Multiecuscan showed only one error ( Error Code " P2916 - 07" )
The ecuscan calibration is changing the gears but not when I drive the car :(
 
Hello and welcome to the forum.

I'm sorry to also have to welcome you to the thread that nobody wants to join, but many thanks for posting in the right place - most first time posters don't.

You've probably read most of it already, and in truth there's probably not much more that can be said at this stage. Interesting that MES can change gear; someone may be along shortly with more specific knowledge to help you understand what this might mean, and what issues it rules in, or out.
 
Last edited:
I know this isn't the place for this, but the Doblo subsection is basically dead, so I thought I might get better help here.
My Doblo has the CFC308 dualogic. I can't for the life of me find the technical specifications for this gearbox. Can someone please tell me what the maximum torque this gearbox can handle is?
Thanks for any help.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Can someone please tell me what the maximum torque this gearbox can handle is?

The dualogic is just a robot actuator bolted onto a manual gearbox; if you can find the relevant information for the manual version, I'd expect it to be similar.

But given the propensity of these transmissions for giving trouble, the last thing I'd want to do is put any additional stress on one.
 
Last edited:
The dualogic is just a robot actuator bolted onto a manual gearbox; if you can find the relevant information for the manual version, I'd expect it to be similar.

But given the propensity of these transmissions for giving trouble, the last thing I'd want to do is put any additional stress on one.

Thanks for the reply.

Isn't CFC308 the gearbox?
 
Hello. I’m Meran from Melbourne, Australia. I recently bought a 2012 Fiat 500 .9lt. with dualogic transmission. I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of the transmission failing. My car had done about 92000 km when I bought it. Within 2 days I had my first transmission problem where it got stuck in neutral when in bumper to bumper traffic. I turned it off and on again and it was ok. Over the next week it did a variety of things including crunching when trying to get into reverse, not changing gear, getting stuck in neutral and the warning system going off saying ‘check transmission, see handbook’. I took the car back to the dealer. They said there were no error codes on the computer and they couldn’t replicate the problem so it must be user error ? Over the next few weeks I read lots on this forum and got myself informed. I drove the car and noted the ongoing issues including twice having the car get stuck revving like in neutral when trying to change between third and fourth. Scary. I rang a fiat mechanic and he confirmed what this thread told me that the transmission was failing. I took it back to the dealer and told them what he said. They took it to fiat who said there were no error codes on the computer. When the dealer went to collect the car it had a flat battery. This was a secondary problem that I had advised him of. The odometer had been flashing since I bought it because the blue and me system was broken. It turned out not only was it broken but it was acting as a parasite and draining power from the battery. They decided that the transmission problem was being caused by the power problem. It took 2 weeks but they fixed the blue and me and the odometer stopped flashing. I was sceptical that the transmission was repaired but still hopeful. My first test drive was beautiful with no problems. I started to think maybe it was fixed and enjoyed 45 minutes of problem free driving. Oh it felt so good! The good feel was short lived though. Next drive it crunched going into reverse. I told the dealer and said I’d keep driving over weekend to see what happened. That was the Friday. On the Sunday the big error occurred again. Stuck in second. When I tried to manually gear down it said ‘gear not available’ and changed to neutral and when I tried to put into gear again i received the error ‘check transmission, see handbook’ once again. I took it back to the dealer and after a lot of back and forth including me calling Consumer Affairs I asked for a refund which they finally agreed to. In the meantime they had spoken (finally) to a fiat mechanic who told them the actuator would need replacing but that he couldn’t do it for weeks as he already had a dozen cars to fix with the same problem. So today I got my money back and said goodbye to my sweet little fiat (her name was Poppet). I’m so sad to see her go but equally relieved to be free from the terrible transmission. I can’t believe fiat can go on making and selling a transmission that is so dodgy. Good luck to anyone else with the same problem. Thus forum helped me immensely stand my ground with returning the car and knowing how expensive the new transmission cost are here in australia ($6000). Thanks to everyone who has posted here. Cheers Meran.
 
Hello Meran.

Thanks for joining the forum to tell your story. It is an excellent reference example for anyone contemplating a used dualogic; sadly I expect I'll be linking to it many times in the future.

Well done for getting your money back; probably the only solution that would give you any long term confidence. I hope you find something better as a replacement, and wish you well for the future.
 
Hi, I’m Jane from Perth. We bought a 2013 Fiat 500C Duologic last year from a used car dealer. We absolutely love it (even though we’ve had to pay a fortune to have the sunroof repaired already). Our current issue is that when I was stopped at traffic lights at a busy intersection last week, the Fiat went into Neutral and I couldn’t get it to drive either in automatic or manual mode. I turned it on and off again several times with no luck and had to call a tow truck. After 2 hours of waiting for a tow truck, it was delivered to our mechanic who said it started up straight away. He suspects the transmission is about to go. I’ve spoken to the Fiat dealership in Perth and they said it sounds like the actuator needs replacing and quoted me $9000 for the part plus labour. Now, obviously this is ridiculous on the value of the car. He also mentioned that it would probably be ok if we only drove it in manual mode. Does anyone know if this is the case? Will the transmission be ok if we only drive it in manual? I don’t ever want to be blocking traffic for two hours again!
 
Back
Top