The gearbox started playing up right after I bought the car, I'd say 2-3 journeys after buying it I got some thumps and occasional slip. Holding off kick-down and using tip mode, as many others have documented, you'd never know it was an issue. The car has been particularly good the past few weeks and the few times I've driven it I have found aggressive starts off the lights and kickdown have even been fine. My wife has driven it daily on the school run with no issues.
Until this morning. Even a very sedate take-off from standstill results in massive slip and a thump into second - you almost feel like it's not going anywhere. Once it's in 2nd it's fine until you change back to 1st again. Putting it in tip it's still a bit slipping but alot better. The torque converter stuck/off code came up right away (this has come up fairly frequently the past 6 months), no other codes.
My thinking is that i should first get an oil and filter change on the gearbox and see if I can put off the full replacement till next year which would be a much better time. It's not had a gearbox service since July 2011. But there's a part of me thinking I should just suck it up and do the lot now, if I spend near enough 2k only to find the gearbox is still sh@gged I won't be in a position to put another 3.5k into the box and it's game over. But if I could get the lot done for 4k or close I could squeeze to it.
