Jump to content
  • 0

Dualogic Gearbox Issues


Mikey
 Share

Question

I recently purchased two 2012 Ypsilon twinair with dualogic, one each for wifey and me. One had gearbox issues just two weeks after purchase, this was repaired under the used car warranty - apparently requiring the replacement of the gearbox actuator. After a year of ownership, the second car started having the same problems. As it is out of warranty and the cost of the repair on the other car was about £1500 I thought I would see if I could repair it. Success (details below), I know there are not many dualogic Ypsilons in the UK, but if this post helps one other owner it will of been worth it. :-)

 

Symptoms: Gears unavailable message when stationary and stuck in neutral, randomly getting stuck in gear under braking with no throttle and then gears unavailable message and stuck in neutral when stopped. This mostly happened from a cold start and when the car had been running for less than 30 minutes, dependent on outside temperature.

DTCs: P060A, P2917, P2916, P1742 in various combinations.

Cause: There is a small aluminium piston in a bore behind the black cover at the back of the actuator (near the bulkhead). It needs to be able to move backwards and forwards freely as this motion is the same as moving the gearstick in a manual car from side to side to align to 1st or 2nd, 3rd or 4th, 5th or reverse. If there is dirt in the bore, movement is not free resulting in incorrect location of the piston and hence the failure.

Solution: I flushed it out with a can of brake cleaner and then regreased the pins before closing it up again. I also removed the solenoid from the side of the bore and cleaned that, if you do this be careful not to lose the little spring from inside.

Considerations: My car is almost 5 years old and started having this problem a couple of months ago. My wife has the same car and had the same issue just after she purchased it at just over 3 years old and 13,000 miles. The actuator on my wife's car was replaced under warranty, but it probably just needed cleaning. I don't believe a drop of oil in the bore would cause an issue, but there was a lot of aluminium sludge caused by wear from the back and forth movement. It is a simple job to do and so for me, I will just check / clean / regrease as required once a year.

Hope this helps others with dualogic issues. :-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 answers to this question

Recommended Posts

  • 0

Hello! Thank you very much for your post. I guess I have the same or at least a very similar trouble with my car. Mine is a 2012 Lancia Ypsilon (the same car's version for Ukrainian market).

I had no problems with the car until recently. First it started to have trouble switching from neutral to rear (mostly immediately after startup). The biggest trouble however was that it failed to switch down when I was driving it in Romania - I was going downhill and started to break gradually. Normally it switches down from 5th to 4th and on, but this time it stuck on the 5th gear, and when I switched off the engine, it would not switch into gear. After some time (about 1 hour) and repeated attempts it stated to function normally. This repeated 3 times during a week's trip. 

 

From your description, it seems very likely that my problem is also in that dirty cylinder. 

Do you happen to have a photo of the part you cleaned, or maybe you can point its location on the whole assembly? 

 

I've found an e-bay item selling this unit, with some pictures of it:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fiat-Dualogic-semi-Auto-Gearbox-Actuator-Grande-Punto-Panda-Idea-500-selspeed-/291906435484?rmvSB=true&clk_rvr_id=1170928834218&nma=true&si=f4P9N43uXT%252BWH9PfEIZWpYEiPs0%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

 

Maybe you can identify the problem part on these pictures?

 

Thank you in advance for a reply!

 

Regards,

Valerii Riazanov

Edited by vvr1978
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

 

From your description, it seems very likely that my problem is also in that dirty cylinder. 

Do you happen to have a photo of the part you cleaned, or maybe you can point its location on the whole assembly? 

 

 

 

Hi vvr1978,

 

Sorry for the late reply. 

 

You can view a photo of the dualogic unit here: https://flic.kr/p/Sapqzb

 

You can just see the edge of the black cover in the red circle, the green circle shows the solenoid I removed for cleaning.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Hi Mikey,

I hope you will read my comment. I had similar problems with my Ypsilon from the very beginning. I bought the car new in 2013, after couple of months the problems appeared. The car was repaired under warranty as well, however few months ago the issues came again. Since one week my car stands in the workshop in my neighborhood. They have no experience with italian cars, so they couldn’t even connect to check what’s the problem. Luckily my colleague succeeded and there are same errors as you had. Now my questions: did you have to remove the actuator or the part is available from the bottom? What kind of grease did you use? Any special tools necessary?

Greets from Germany, Robert

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
Hi I have a noise in gearbox in my 2013 ypsilon sound a bit like flat tyre noise but I’ve checked all tyres but now I’ve notice a slow leak of gearbox fluid now absolutely love my car just don’t want to pay fiats loads of money to tell me what it is as had bad experience with them when I took my car there before
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Answer this question...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...