Alright this is what's going on, and I heard there can be some issues with the ZF5HP** transmissions in the XJ8s (or most cars with this type of transmission i.e BMWs, Audis etc).

Alright, on start up, no lights, noises etc all things normal. Goes through all the gears normal. But here where the problem (symptoms) start. When placed in drive, the engine revs a bit but car wont move, about for 2 seconds then it jerks (slams) into gear and tramission light fault comes on aka going into "safe mode" in higher gear 3rd or 4th I think. Runs normal in safe mode with no more problems besides being stuck in that one gear. Reverse works normal.

Anyone have any idea what causes this and what repairs usually solves this problem?

 

Sounds similar to what I experienced when my tranny hit the dust...
What's the mileage on yours? Mine blew up at ~120k, but some others have reported problems at much lower 70~100k. Best way to check is to drop the pan. If you got pieces of metal floating around, its busted.
Sorry...

 

well no metal pieces floating around and fluid is good. My problems are never that simple.

50,000 miles is what's on mine.

but what was the verdict on yours?

 

Mine was a rebuild... $2800.
Symptoms: when in R, I actually had to give it quite a bit of gas for it to actually start moving. It felt like I had my emergency brake on. On D, the engine would rev up, and that jerk really hard before the car started moving, and it had very little power from the start. Once I got it on the highway though, it felt like nothing was wrong. I did have the Limp mode warming on the display though. Took it to a tranny place in town (Houston at the time) they dropped the pan, and found chunks of metal... $$$ ;(

 

The two most common faults are a worn bearing between the C and D drums. This allows the drums to move, which causes an o ring to fail. That was the fault on mine. I rebuilt it, search posts started by myself. Or it could be a failed A drum, that's a pretty easy fix. Actually both failures aren't that bad to fix.
BTW, my X5 had the exact same symptoms as yours.

 

Well then the internals look similar to the ZF4hp22 I rebuilt and the steaps are what I did. Not going to do this transmission myself as it's still under warranty and stuff plus this current place have no place to do a tranny rebuild.

So with the A-drum, when most people say failed A-drum do they mean the actual hard part drum or some gasket and or bearing.
Since the transmission is being rebuilt in the shop I might have to get clear of what their rebuild kit consists of. Some consist of nothing more than the trans.pan gasket, filter and rear seal, while others go all the way up to all snap rings, bearings, gaskets, o-rings and valve body. While most is in between.

If this stuff wasnt under warrenty it would have cost an arm leg ear nose heart and liver to fix. There is only two places in desert that works on euros, one is the Jag/Audi/Subaru dealer which is notorious for very high prices even by dealer standards and very crappy work even compared to drunk random guy who cant change a tire type of workmanship. Then there is the mechanic I found that was very good so far. Luckily he has a guy that works for him that is very familiar with rebuilding these transmissions. Although I would rather have the warrenty just get a new one as rebuilding can be like opening a can of worms. especially at the shop as they tend to go into CMA (Covering my ***) mode and saying it was something else or it was the valve body or it was the driveshaft or it was the cpu or it was because the Chevy down the street and never because they messed something up. And seeing the lack of choices here, I cant just take to someone else. SO just replacement would be better in my case but hey, if they rebuild it, I'ma be there everyday watching like a hawk, every single move, every single gasket, every drop of oil.

 

Do a search for A drum and you'll see how it cracks along the top ring land.

 

I just started thinking. Since the transmission will be apart anyways and more than likely the A-drum hasnt been replaced, I'm thinking of getting it done regardless as I do not want to nor plan on doing this procedure again. It would suck if they say A-drum is good, put it back togther it works for a few weeeks or months and boom, out it goes again. Now I'm looking at this remanufactured A-drum online now that says the snap ring failure has been solved by a steel weld to area of weakness. Have any experiences with these weld jobs?

Although the part has lifetime warrenty, I know how those goes. First you must prove it was was the part in question which in transmission speak, ya must pay someone to take it apart (again) and look at it out of ya own pocket, send bad part in, hope to get new part in anytime soon, and they may or may not cover the labor.

 

There have been many reports of A drum failure on the XK8 forum. I don't think anyone has had a failure of the replacement part.
RJ_____________
97 XK8 Conv 85K mi

 

I went with the upgraded drum from ZF, plus there's a new pressure regulator valve and shifter valve. These are supposed to stop the high pressure that can crack the drum.
With that , fluid, and the o ring kit it was about $1000.