Hi Bill!
In the article wrote by
Car And Driver, you will see that in fact it is an electronic fault.
Bad crimping on a connector, generates a different resistance (Ohm reading) causing the strange behaviour.
ZF asked to the car manufacturers to avoid physical changes, and created a software update to address the issue (costs less).
My car accordantly to the dealership, have been updated, however the issue remains, and the strangest thing is that I can see anywhere on the service records (see attached pdf).
If you have a connector, and deterioration takes place (worse is the fact that started with a defect) as time passes, the resistance will change for sure.
The solution thru software changes, has given to ZF a easy and low cost to "resolve" the issue.
Try to imagine FCA (Fiat Chrysler and Jeep), Honda and Tata Motors (Land Rover), reverting the costs for production stops, recalls, man hours and etc...
The manufacture could declare any number for these costs, and then you have the actual costs, on a new cable/connector for each car... FCA recall more than 900.000 cars worldwide.
Only ZF knows the real number, because they know the time range for the production defect.
They know exactly when stoped, because they had changed the production line. but going back in time to know for sure, only by testing production batches (the cars are sold and costs are proibitive).
If you give the software a range of readings, instead a fixed number, and redundancy checks, with a table of readings, you are telling the transmission how to behave, maybe will work for 90% of the cases, but I believe isn't enough for the 100% of the cases.
In the meantime people are dying, or suffering material and psychological damage.
Sad thing!
