Oil Leak Between PTU and Auto Transmission - Fitted Incorrectly ?

I've sprung a leak between the 9 Speed ZF auto box and the power transfer unit on my 2017 2.0D HSE which spewed a lot of oil out from the output shaft oil seal area. It was gearbox oil definitely exited via the output shaft seal / sleeve.

It seems there's a recognised weakness on the transmission sleeve design. I found all the info including Land Rover technical service bulletin SSM74140 which recommends the re-designed replacement sleeve which is part number LR123857.

Having removed the transfer box I found that strangely the sleeve which sits between that and the gearbox output shaft slid off by hand. This seemed a little odd as the info on line suggested it would need a slide hammer to remove it. On closer inspection I found there were 2 identical circlips fitted ...

1 in the groove on the output shaft it's self ...



and 1 identical circlip in the groove inside the sleeve (the end facing the camera is the one which slides onto the output shaft) ...



Now logic is telling me that there should 1 single circlip, and that it would then lock the sleeve into position. I'm wondering if this is the case ? anyone fitted one of these who can offer some advise ? or should there be 2 circlips which effectively sit up against each other when the sleeve is in place ?

No replies how did you get on?

Well I got the seal kit for it which only came with 1 replacement circlip, and any diagrams I could see online only ever show a single clip. Sure enough when I refitted it with just the one, there was a re-assuring click and the sleeve seems to have locked into place in the gearbox (hopefully at the required distance for the width of the sleeve to seat against the new seal correctly).

I'm hesitant to declare any form of success just yet, but covered over 1000 miles so far since repair and it seems to be holding the oil. I also found it was only a couple of litres short of gearbox oil after it was ejected, so I'm hopefully the box wasn't damaged and touch wood it's running nice so far.

pete10 said:

Well I got the seal kit for it which only came with 1 replacement circlip, and any diagrams I could see online only ever show a single clip. Sure enough when I refitted it with just the one, there was a re-assuring click and the sleeve seems to have locked into place in the gearbox (hopefully at the required distance for the width of the sleeve to seat against the new seal correctly).

I'm hesitant to declare any form of success just yet, but covered over 1000 miles so far since repair and it seems to be holding the oil. I also found it was only a couple of litres short of gearbox oil after it was ejected, so I'm hopefully the box wasn't damaged and touch wood it's running nice so far.

Click to expand...

Excellent, so to put it simply.. it's doing its job

Spoke too soon on this one started to leak again so I removed the PTU at the weekend. The transmission sleeve had un-seated again so it was letting oil past the seals which annoys the hell out of me having done this job once already less than 6 months ago. the circlip just isn't up to the job of locking the sleeve onto the gearbox.

It's described right down at the bottom of this page which I've found on an one of the RR specialist's sites Common Transmission Issues & Symptoms | Bell Engineering

It would seem that the only way to truly fix this is to modify the PTU so that the sleeve is held in place, rather than rely on it being locked onto the gearbox.

I'm sending my PTU for the modification to made, and spending another day refitting it all - hopefully this time it will actually last.

There's no words I can use to describe my thoughts on JLR (not without getting banned from this forum). They released a technical document on this fault Topix SSM74140 back in 2018, and are now selling a repair kit for £350 which doesn't fix it either. how is this type of thing not a recall.

pete10 said:

Spoke too soon on this one started to leak again so I removed the PTU at the weekend. The transmission sleeve had un-seated again so it was letting oil past the seals which annoys the hell out of me having done this job once already less than 6 months ago. the circlip just isn't up to the job of locking the sleeve onto the gearbox.

It's described right down at the bottom of this page which I've found on an one of the RR specialist's sites Common Transmission Issues & Symptoms | Bell Engineering

It would seem that the only way to truly fix this is to modify the PTU so that the sleeve is held in place, rather than rely on it being locked onto the gearbox.

I'm sending my PTU for the modification to made, and spending another day refitting it all - hopefully this time it will actually last.

There's no words I can use to describe my thoughts on JLR (not without getting banned from this forum). They released a technical document on this fault Topix SSM74140 back in 2018, and are now selling a repair kit for £350 which doesn't fix it either. how is this type of thing not a recall.

Click to expand...

A recall costs JLR money, something to be avoided at all costs

Got the modified PTU back from Bell Engineering last week and fitted it yesterday. So I now have my fingers crossed for second time lucky!

It seems that the circlip to hold the transmission sleeve onto the transmission just doesn't do the job. Even with the so called "repair kit" from JLR mine had popped off and slid in the PTU direction away from the gearbox which then means the right section of the sleeve doesn't marry up to the oil seal = oil leak.

So a word of warning i guess - if you pay to get this fixed with the standard or JLR replacement parts make sure you get a long warranty on the repair, and do yourself a favor and remove your undertray just before the warranty runs out to check for oil leaking.

I'm eternally hopefully that the PTU mod will have fixed mine - it prevents the sleeve from sliding any further towards the PTU if (when) the circlip gives way again so i can see how it should work. Just frustrating that it wasn't designed properly in the first place and JLR actually have no long term solution to the design fault.