Trans suddenly started slipping. Takes a Lot of acceleration to get to move. Before I parked it, it seemed like if I could get it going up to speed it seemed almost normal. Slips no matter where I place the shifter, even reverse, but will move. Car has about 190,000 been driving it since about 160,000. I read up on B2 issues and pulled the pan. Trans seems very clean, zero metal and normal fluid color, no smell. Pan was so clean it must have been changed before I bought it. I have read that if slipping in both forward and reverse gears while manually shifting that trans is shot and not really clear from my research if B2 affects reverse. Only problems since purchase was bad 1-2 or possibly 2-3 flare (these trans shifting confuse me), assuming you start in first, it seemed liked you felt a "little" shift almost immediately, so flare came later, must be 2-3, so I mostly manually shifted the low gears to avoid the flare. I went ahead and put in a new filter and cleaned the pan again, but have not refilled with fluid yet. It has sat for several months, but just did the filter last night. Decided not to fill until I got some feed back and maybe needed to check in pan again. No B2 rod in pan or anything obvious and my B2 externally has zero access. Any ideas?

I had an 82 SD that gave me fits. At first it just shifted bad/hard. Then it started flaring between 2nd and 3rd, or skip 3rd and hit 4th hard.

I bought an aftermarket transmission manual, ATG IIRC, that covered the 722.XXX, and pulled the trans out and tore it apart expecting to find something fried. The bugger was pristine. No wear, nothing broke. I went ahead and put all new seals and o-rings in it, and put it back together. Then I turned my attention to the valve body.

The 722 valve body is like 10 or 20 times more complex than a domestic car of that era. A load of slide valves, a whole lot of springs, and a whole lot of little check balls. I carefully disassembled it, cleaned everything as spotless as possible, and put it back together. On first test drive it drove better than ever. Still a bit harsh, but almost normal. I drove it home, pulled in the garage and shut it down. Later that day I decided to try it again. But it never left the garage. It wouldnt do anything. No gears, didnt even try to creep.

So, I dropped the valve body again. I cleaned it again. I checked the book again to see if every valve was correct and that each ball was in its correct spot. The book was too generic and didnt really cover EVERY valve body schematic. I had to wing some of it. I put it back in, and this time it worked even better, but not really "great". All told, i think I dropped it 5 times. I tried in to buy another body, but they are not available. And a used one would just be dumb.

Ive come to the conclusion that probably 90% of the trouble with the 722, is in the valve body. I bet if you could find a good rebuilder and get them to go through just the valve body, using the unobtainable transmission FSM, you could likely get it working. That you noted it was clean inside points pretty hard at the VB rather than anything mechanical.

Measure the working pressure.

__________________
1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!