Truck transmission repair
Manual and automatic transmissions in medium and heavy duty trucks, diagnosed in the truck and repaired, rebuilt or exchanged on our own bench.
When a transmission acts up, the first question is not "rebuild or replace". It is what is actually wrong. A shift problem can be air, electrical, linkage, clutch or the gearbox itself, and several of those are fixed without pulling the transmission at all. We start in the truck and only pull the unit when the evidence says it has to come out.
Symptoms worth a call
- Jumping out of gear, usually under load or on deceleration
- Hard shifting, or a range or splitter that will not change
- Grinding, whining or a knock that changes with road speed
- Oil on the outside of the case, or metal on the drain plug magnet
- An automatic that flares between gears, slips, or goes into limp mode with a fault code
- Overheating, or oil that smells burnt
Repair, rebuild or exchange
Once the unit is on the bench there are three honest options, and we price them side by side:
| Repair | Replace the failed parts only. Right when the damage is local, such as a shift fork, a seal, a synchronizer or a bearing, and the rest of the gearbox measures good. |
|---|---|
| Rebuild | Strip it completely and replace every wear part. Right when the case and shafts are sound but the unit has high hours or damage in more than one place. |
| Exchange | Fit a rebuilt or new exchange unit and send the old core back. Usually the fastest way back on the road, because the truck is not waiting for the rebuild. |
Exchange units come through our parts store, pgttruckparts.com, so we can usually tell you on the first call whether one is available and what it costs.
Transmissions we work on
- Eaton Fuller road transmissions, from 9 speeds up to 18
- Allison automatics in box trucks, buses and vocational trucks
- Spicer and Meritor (Rockwell) manual transmissions
- Mack T-series transmissions
- ZF gearboxes, including the medium duty manuals behind many box trucks
Makes of truck do not change much here: the same gearbox goes into an International, a Freightliner, a Kenworth, a Peterbilt, a Volvo or a Ford. Tell us the truck and, if you can, the model number off the transmission tag, and we can usually say on the phone what we are dealing with.
While it is out
A pulled transmission is the cheapest moment to deal with the clutch, the release bearing, the rear main seal and the driveline yokes. We will tell you what we find and let you decide. See clutch repair for what that inspection covers, and differential repair if the noise turns out to be further back.
Bring it in or call ahead
Tell us the truck, the symptom and when it has to be back on the road. We will tell you when we can get it in.