Possible Auto Gearbox issue

[gramsey438]

Over the weekend I took my car from sunny Hampshire up to Blackburn and back. During the trip on a few occasions I noticed the car hesitating on gentle uphill inclines on the motorway or dual carriageway type roads. It seemed to me that the car appeared to be momentarily trying to shift gear but then thinking better of it and immediately switching back.

I did have a gearbox flaring issue a couple of years ago which was a lot more pronounced and at much slower speeds which was resolved with a gearbox fluid flush.

The car is very low mileage for it`s year ( 108K ) and only gets used on short trips generally at the weekend. I would guess it has not done more than 20K since the last flush. The car has also had new plugs only a thousands miles ago

Other than this the car performs perfectly delivering power when I need it still and is not displaying any errors on the drivers DIM.

I have yet to connect my DICE unit but would be interested to know if my suspicions might be correct and that either another flush is going to be needed or if a gearbox reset might resolve the problem. Or are there other possible causes ?

[Georgeandkira]

Don't DICE units just plug in? Do that whilst boiling tea water, no?
Did you select and install the plugs yourself?
Maybe give the ETM (an old, flawed MM ETM, I must add) a squint for gobs of dirt.

[ThomasG]

Ehhh...

S60, 2003, 108k miles... and...?
petrol? diesel?
rather obviously autobox, but is there anything else you could tell us?


With that mpg, i can easily assume its a petrol. maybe even a B5244S

open up hose leading to throttle, check is the throttle clean. a dirty edge of that disc may cause wrond engine load readouts and then management doesnt know which gear to choose

[VOLVOBOY]

Hi.
Question ?
Has the car been playing up only since the plug change?
From your description it sounds as if it possibly could be misfire under load.
What plugs did you fit? Are they genuine Volvo as anything else can cause issues. Are they the correct length for the engine ?
I have found in the past that if plugs are not torque tightened correctly that they can loosen off after a while.

[gramsey438]

Thanks for the replies so far,

Vehicle is a 2.0L Turbo Petrol with autobox

Plugs were changed some 4 months ago and are either NGK or Bosch Iridium`s.

I have not noticed any occurrences of the hesitation issue other than on the recent trip and only when climbing up medium inclines with the cruise control engaged.

I have zero`d in on the gearbox theory because of my previous issue with flaring from the gearbox however this was much more extreme and happened at much slower speeds around 20mpg or less and was not a pleasant experience when it occurred as it was dropping into bottom gear which is really only any use while crawling in slow traffic..

I will check the plugs are all tight as my next job but would have thought I would see the issue more often especially under acceleration if this was the problem.