Technical The one and only Dualogic failure thread

[jrkitching]

is that the clutch sensor becomes caked in friction material from wear of the clutch

but

They have said that there is a transmission fluid leak

suggests that there's more going on here than can be fixed just from changing the clutch sensor.

That confirms what I already suspected about the dealer. Unscrupulous stuff- they must have known full well what was going on. I assume the last owner knew as well and sold on this basis.

In my opinion, you are more than likely correct on both counts.

In your experience, once the bill becomes so big, do you think it is possible to sell for anything higher than £250?

Yes, definitely. The sum of its parts is certainly worth very considerably more than that, and someone with the requisite skill and facilities might want to have a go at repairing it.

Just describe it accurately and put it on ebay.

 

[Hartake]

It's unlikely the system needs to be completely replaced. A known failure with the 500L transmission (which has the clutch release actuator inside the gearbox bellhousing, not integrated with the rest of the actuator as on a regular 500/Panda) is that the clutch sensor becomes caked in friction material from wear of the clutch. The integral sensor and slave cylinder/actuator is expensive (about GBP 300 if shopping around - more like 600 from a Fiat main dealer) but with a clutch change at the same time, and taking account of recalibration etc, shouldn't be much more that 1000-1200 or so. Obviously still quite a lot of money in absolute terms, but...

The issue is that not many people specialise in the gearbox, and the main dealers only want to sell new actuators (which is borderline criminal). I myself am a small-time Fiat specialist mechanic who has learnt a bit about these gearboxes but am not a deep expert (and alas I am a bit far from you and my facilities are more geared up to the little 500s, else I would offer help).

If you really want to keep the car have a word with Carl Douthwaite at CD Motors Staffordshire. You might need to get it transported there but I'm sure he would fix it for a much more reasonable sum.

Else I would suggest selling (e.g. via an auction) with an honest account of what is wrong - you might find people willing to tackle it come out of the wordwork and you get somewhat more than the doom scrap scenario....

Thanks! Yes, it's tricky to say whether the car really needs a system replacement or if the dealer is taking the easy and expensive option (I would suspect the latter!). The frustrating part is with the lack of specialists in the gearbox, I'm not able to get a second opinion (while I'm based in Coventry, the car is actually in Norwich! But thanks for the Staffordshire recommendation anyway).

With the situation as it is, I will give it up and going to explore auction options, thanks.

 

[Hartake]

Yes, definitely. The sum of its parts is certainly worth very considerably more than that, and someone with the requisite skill and facilities might want to have a go at repairing it.

Just describe it accurately and put it on ebay.

Thanks again- this is useful to know that people do auction non-runners on ebay. My problem is that the car is currently in a garage in Nowich while I am located in the West Mids so it is difficult to do an auction in this way. If I had the car here, the situation would be a lot simpler and I could try auctioning and if unsuccessful, still scrap it in the end whereas I am time-restricted at the garage. The garage will start charging storage fees at some point soon while fees to transport the car will be steep. Any suggestions very much welcome!

 

[Ry90]

Morning all,

So recently my fiat 500 2012 dualogic developed juddering when setting off from a standstill. (if it was manual it would be like you hadnt quite got the biting point)

Had it in 2 garages (when I managed to find one! hardly any garage would touch the dualogic! first was a transmission place and then it ended up at a Fiat "specialist").

The garages found no codes, both test drove it and "specialist" said the same as the first garage, some inner gearbox bearing needed replacing.

first garage quoted £1000, 2nd garage quoted and did the work for £900 inc labour + VAT

So, ended up having said bearing replaced, along with new clutch kit. Was warned it would be abit jumpy from the new clutch? which it was and the first couple of days was very jumpy setting off which did eventually calm down.

Then drove and ran completely fine for about a week and a half. Now as soon as you set off it beeps and flashes a red warning light which from googling apparently means automatic gearbox failure?

Also will not go into any gears other than 1, 2 & 3.... if you try and change up manually into 4th, results beeping and message saying "gear not available"

Rang the garage that did the work (the "specialist") and they have said theyd need it back in to diagnose...but could be the actuator or hydraulic pump? Quoted on the phone anywhere from £600 - £1000

Really just looking for any advice on this as obviously don't want to let the garage do more work, only for it to not actually fix the issue!

Hope this makes sense & thank you in advance for any replies and for reading

 

[jrkitching]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

I'm sorry that you're having this problem.

You will see from the preceding 42 pages of posts that you are not the first person to find yourself in this situation.

Unfortunately there are few easy answers.

From what you've posted thus far, I'm wondering just how 'specialist' this garage is. There is a recalibration program using a Fiat specific software tool which I'd expect a fiat specialist would run as the next step. It might be that the new clutch has bedded in and the transmission needs reprogramming to recognise this. It's possible this might restore normal operation, though I'd be surprised if this were a lasting fix.

Most likely the actuating part of your transmission is just plain worn out.

I'd have expected a specialist garage to check this out properly before spending more than a thousand pounds of your money replacing the clutch & input shaft bearing.

Quoted on the phone anywhere from £600 - £1000

This sounds hugely optimistic to me. Restoring the transmission to the point where the car could be trusted to give several more years of service would likely cost substantially more, and more than the value of the car.

If the garage can get the car to seemingly work again for a reasonable cost, then I'd suggest you sell it - quickly.

If they can't, just cut your losses and scrap it. It's not worth chucking thousands of pounds at a 12 yr old dualogic with a major transmission fault.

 

[Ry90]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

I'm sorry that you're having this problem.

You will see from the preceding 42 pages of posts that you are not the first person to find yourself in this situation.

Unfortunately there are few easy answers.

From what you've posted thus far, I'm wondering just how 'specialist' this garage is. There is a recalibration program using a Fiat specific software tool which I'd expect a fiat specialist would run as the next step. It might be that the new clutch has bedded in and the transmission needs reprogramming to recognise this. It's possible this might restore normal operation, though I'd be surprised if this were a lasting fix.

Most likely the actuating part of your transmission is just plain worn out.

I'd have expected a specialist garage to check this out properly before spending more than a thousand pounds of your money replacing the clutch & input shaft bearing.

This sounds hugely optimistic to me. Restoring the transmission to the point where the car could be trusted to give several more years of service would likely cost substantially more, and more than the value of the car.

If the garage can get the car to seemingly work again for a reasonable cost, then I'd suggest you sell it - quickly.

If they can't, just cut your losses and scrap it. It's not worth chucking thousands of pounds at a 12 yr old dualogic with a major transmission fault.

Thank you for the reply and the info, really helpful, gives me a few things to consider!

So its going back to the "specialist" in 2weeks (apparently hes on holiday) so going to look at getting another car, get this one in the garage....which he has said he will test and diagnose for free, oh small miracles.. we'll go from there I guess!

Thanks again!

 

[jrkitching]

Folks, posts about DIY repairs to dualogic transmissions belong in a different thread; I've copied the last couple of posts across.

This sort of information is extremely useful and it'd be nice to see more of it, but sadly it's not going to be much help to someone who can't do such things for themselves.

I can't imagine a general purpose independent garage being either willing or able to take on this kind of work.

This thread is about what practical options there are for an average person with no mechanical skills, tools or experience when faced with a dualogic fault - which is most folks who post here.

 

[Tomferrari517]

I've got a 2004 Panda with 60k fresh miles, used to be my mom's with barely any use but 5 years ago I became the main driver. This car had the common fault everyone with a dualogic seems to have of the juddering when pulling out of a stop light, in some cases it was severe, no way to park precisely in a tight spot without embarrassing yourself.

Anyway, the juddering calmed down to a "normal" level where it would still judder but it wasn't as severe. It seems during this time, the transmission unbeknownst to me, was leaking fluid all over our garage spot, only when I noticed, the oil stain had accumulated so much that it was about 50% of the entire garage spot.

We took it to 2 dealers over a year to advise on both the juddering problems, and consequently the later leak when I found it. The first, used to be an official dealer that turned into a specialist garage, quoted us for some diagnosis which felt like a rip-off, car was the same, but never had any faults whatsoever before or after this. It was after this however that very very occasionally (about once every 3 or 4 months) it seemed the clutch would stick/slip when cold, and you could press the throttle and only about 50/70% power was actually delivered, effectively, if it were a true manual, you were driving the car with both the clutch and accelerator pressed, restarting the car fixed this on the spot. Magically enough, over the months, the juddering seemed to slowly be going away by itself, it was less and less frequent.

When we took it to an official dealer that same year, after finding the leak and being nervous (Entire gearbox was soaked in greasy transmission fluid), they couldn't (more like they didn't want to it seems) find the culprit of where it was leaking from, they did however top up the fluid which they said was a little low but still had enough for the gearbox to operate, not sure how, given the leak was at least 4 years old and every week it would get 3/4 drops larger. They advised that so long as it had plenty of fluid inside, it shouldn't wreak havoc, that the fluid is the most important thing to keep it working. Not sure if this is just what they say when they don't actually know how to diagnose it or if it truly is sincere from them.

It seems some 2 months after this, the gearbox suddenly has stopped leaking anymore, it's still soaked as before sadly, since they didn't bother to at least clean it up, but after cleaning the garage stain with brake cleaner and putting a cardboard under the car, no leaks at all like before, to the point where I can park it without any fear of staining the garage concrete floor. The juddering is 95% gone too, only seems to happen occasionally on cold weather and for months now, you can even control the dualogic like a manual car parking on tight spots, very precise.

Now I know how disastrous these can be specially after the faults start to appear and spending years reading about the juddering online one can only be even more nervous, but I'd suggest the fluid top up if yours seems leaky or just juddering like mine and from there you can diagnose if at least the lack of fluid is the culprit, most likely it won't do anything from what I've read here for those with larger issues, but it truly helped mine which for being 20 (!!) years old, and being soaked up in oil right now, seems to be working like a champ, however as I stated, the self recovery it's had, started before we took it for said fluid top up, maybe mine just happens to be divine, one can only hope, but it still scares me how brittle these can be with no real support from dealers. I hope this can be of any help if yours is still working but starting to act up crazy, before you keep driving it dry like me and making it worse.

 

[jrkitching]

If you have a 20 yr old dualogic which sometimes misbehaves and has a minor fluid weep, then keeping the fluid topped up and continuing to use the car seems to me to be a reasonable way of dealing with the issue. Just keep it until it fails outright, then scrap the car.

It's not likely to be worth spending significant money trying to repair a dualogic transmission on a 20 yr old Panda.

 

[steveras57]

I find it quite distressing reading all these owners accounts of dualogic failures, and now find myself kinda waiting for yet the next notification of another problem for another owner! How annoying for owners of cars that other than"the transmission from hell" having gone south for the winter" is still serviceable having to scrap the vehicles because the complex gearbox cant play anymore!.

Sure some cases are due to lack of appropriate servicing, mistreatment, or ignorance but it seems that most are down to the dam things just wearing out!.

Pretty sure Fiat did NOT do any high mileage or age related testing on these units before deciding that they was fit for purpose and releasing them on the public! - (much the same as a lot of the twin air issues we are now seeing all the time!) so the idea appears to be skimp on the R&D sort any early issues out under warranty and forget it! ok if your the first(and maybe second owner) but no use when you number six 15 years down the line!
Take the money and run Fiat!

 

[jrkitching]

I find it quite distressing reading all these owners accounts of dualogic failures, and now find myself kinda waiting for yet the next notification of another problem for another owner!

Imagine how I feel having to manage this thread and often being the first one to break the bad news to the owner that it's going to be near impossible to get their car repaired for an affordable price.

In the days when new fiats could be bought at considerable discount, a dualogic was a reasonable choice for a first owner who needed an automatic and wasn't likely to keep the car more than 3-4 years. And for those folks who bought new and kept it until it wore out, if they had to send it for scrap after ten years, they'd likely feel they had fair value from it.

The problem is that cars are being kept a lot longer now, and well beyond the life they were originally designed or expected to have. This has substantially inflated the price of , say, an 7yr old car, and in the case of a dualogic, it's all too easy to spend £8k on a car that may only have a useful economic life of another 2-3 years. How do you tell someone who spent that kind of money on a car 18 months ago that they've now lost most of that value, and have to choose between forking out multiple thousands for a repair, or buying another car?

I've said this many times, but for someone whose finances limit them to an older car, keeping it simple can make a huge difference to the cost of ownership. In the case of a small Fiat that means a manual transmission, a 1.2 petrol engine, and a Panda rather than a 500.

 

[gay stereo]

Folks, posts about DIY repairs to dualogic transmissions belong in a different thread; I've copied the last couple of posts across.

This sort of information is extremely useful and it'd be nice to see more of it, but sadly it's not going to be much help to someone who can't do such things for themselves.

I can't imagine a general purpose independent garage being either willing or able to take on this kind of work.

This thread is about what practical options there are for an average person with no mechanical skills, tools or experience when faced with a dualogic fault - which is most folks who post here.

Thanks @jrkitching .
TO ALL USERS: I am having great success and enjoyment using AI to identify problems with Dualogic. Namely "Copilot" which is available on Microsoft Edge browser. It is so intelligent and saves mountains of hours of researching. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED ))) and makes researching fun!

 

[steveras57]

Imagine how I feel having to manage this thread and often being the first one to break the bad news to the owner that it's going to be near impossible get their car repaired for an affordable price.

In the days when new fiats could be bought at considerable discount, a dualogic was a reasonable choice for a first owner who needed an automatic and wasn't likely to keep the car more than 3-4 years. And for those folks who bought new and kept it until it wore out, if they had to send it for scrap after ten years, they'd likely feel they had fair value from it.

The problem is that cars are being kept a lot longer now, and well beyond the life they were originally designed or expected to have. This has substantially inflated the price of , say, an 7yr old car, and in the case of a dualogic, it's all too easy to spend £8k on a car that may only have a useful economic life of another 2-3 years. How do you tell someone who spent that kind of money on a car 18 months ago that they've now lost most of that value, and have to choose between forking out multiple thousands for a repair, or buying another car?

I've said this many times, but for someone whose finances limit them to an older car, keeping it simple can make a huge difference to the cost of ownership. In the case of a small Fiat that means a manual transmission, a 1.2 petrol engine, and a Panda rather than a 500.

totally agree JR I run 50 year old Japanese motorcycles that had a design life of 3/5 years HOW ANY OF EM HAVE SURVIVED without turning to dust is beyond meguess i still aint old enough yet to consider a 10 year life span for a car good enough!( and wasnt back in the day either!

 

[jrkitching]

guess i still aint old enough yet to consider a 10 year life span for a car good enough!

Back in the 1960's, there weren't many cars that would go 10 yrs before rusting out.

In my youth, it was almost always bodyshell corrosion that put cars beyond economic repair.

But if you've a 10yr old car, a £4000 bill to fix a faulty transmission will scrap it just as surely as corrosion did back in the day.

 

[steveras57]

Back in the 1960's, there weren't many cars that would go 10 yrs before rusting out.

In my youth, it was almost always bodyshell corrosion that put cars beyond economic repair.

But if you've a 10yr old car, a £4000 bill to fix a faulty transmission will scrap it just as surely as corrosion did back in the day.

Almost everything in society is disposable these days! shame we cant get rid of 9/10ths of the people!

 

[Laurenw11]

Hi!
Posting here hoping to get some advice.
I have a 2013 Fiat 500. 87000 miles. I actually only purchased it in December.
I had the red warning light with ‘check transmission’ pop up twice since I’ve had it, both times when trying to move off very quickly and accelerating a lot, so didn’t think much of it. Disappeared immediately and didn’t come back both times.
Then last week, it popped up and did not clear, and the car also stopped moving. Was saying ‘gear not available’, could not go into reverse either. After turning the car on & off it carried on driving. I took it to a garage who said it was the engine speed sensor - £500 later!
I will note it also does shudder between gears but I thought this was possibly just the way that this car /transmission drives.
It seemed to drive a lot better when I picked it up, really minimal shuddering between gears, assumed the problem was fixed. Today, 4 days later, I had to do a fair bit of driving, and the car is shuddering really badly between gears - especially from moving off into 1 and 1 into 2. Then, again when I was moving off accelerating quite quickly (and up a hill) I had the check transmission red warning light pop up again, just momentarily, like before.
So I’m really looking for general advice, quite worried now I have read through this thread ! I have absolutely 0 car knowledge, don’t know anyone with any, and also this is the first car I’ve ever owned.
The place I’ve taken it to is no sort of specialist, but should I take it back there as they perhaps did not properly diagnose the problem?
I’m based in Woking, are there any specialists anyone knows of near me?
Have absolutely no idea what next steps to take or how worried I should be, if I should be driving it, etc. So would really appreciate some advice. Thanks in advance

 

[jrkitching]

Firstly, Hello and welcome to the forum.

And thank you for finding the right place to post your question.

I have a 2013 Fiat 500. 87000 miles

This is the age and mileage where we see most problems with these transmissions.

The place I’ve taken it to is no sort of specialist

Unfortunately such garages are generally clueless when it comes to dealing with dualogics, and rarely succeed in finding solutions which last. Sometimes they will spend your money replacing parts which have no bearing on the problem.

I took it to a garage who said it was the engine speed sensor - £500 later!

Which is what has likely happened here.

So would really appreciate some advice

It's all been said already in this thread. If you want certainty and an easy life, sell the car.

I'm wondering if the previous owner may have done exactly that.

If you want a second opinion about the feasibility and cost of a repair, one possibility is Small Car Services. Not exactly local, but not ridiculously far from you. It's about 50 miles from Woking, and a pleasant drive if you take the A31/A32 and go via Alton. Give them a call first and see what they say.

 

[CRIPACEMT]

Hi Everyone, I was wondering wether you could help me with fiat 500 problem. I was driving along the highway and was going to come to a stop when suddenly the car alerted me with a check transmission. The car's automatic stopped working and could only shift in manual mode (jerky shifting) and only up to 3rd gear. When trying to shift to 4th gear the car says that the gear unavailable. I tried to hook it up to the ECU for Faults and only came up with one U0001 High Speed CAN Communication Bus error. I have even tried clearing it but still it shows up again, and the fault on the dash never turns off.

Have you experienced something similar? Or do you know what it can be?

Thanks in advance

 

[jackwhoo]

What diagnostic tool are you using?

 

[CRIPACEMT]

What diagnostic tool are you using?

An OBD 2 Car Diagnostic