Cracked, Welded Land Rover Transmission Case Comes to a Close

The saga of a welded transmission seems to have come to a somewhat happy ending.

The Reddit whistleblower at the center of this story, who is an employee of the dealership in question, provided TTAC the details on how the repair came to be. A representative from Jaguar Land Rover was also able to confirm that the incident was resolved, resulting in a satisfied Land Rover owner.

The Reddit user, who’s an employee of the dealership, shared some background information on the incident and confirmed that the vehicle in question is a 2013 Range Rover Evoque with a 2.0-liter GTDI engine (we previously thought it was an LR2).

“It originally came in for a timing chain sprocket replacement and when the tech tried to start it the engine failed,” said the dealership employee whistleblower. The engine and transmission had to be removed to replace the engine, which resulted in an incident that damaged the transmission.

According to the whistleblower, the Land Rover dealer service manager and the dealership shop manager for the dealer group initially decided to repair the transmission and not tell the customer. Since the dealership is not equipped to weld aluminum, they decided to send it to a third-party shop for repairs. The whistleblower is careful to note that the repair is not a Land Rover practice and was solely made by the service managers. He also stated that, in his mind, Land Rover has a decent reputation as it tries to take care of customers the best it can.

He updated the post over the weekend and stated that the dealer informed the customer that it repaired transmission, but he was not sure if the dealer divulged the extent of the damage. He also stated that the pan was sealed and the transmission was installed, tested, and the car drove normally.

We reached out to Jaguar Land Rover to see if the automaker had knowledge of these claims. It confirmed the dealer completed the repair and informed and the customer. The dealership extended the warranty on the transmission for the life of the vehicle. The vehicle in question has 49,000 miles, so the original 50,000 mile warranty would have ended very soon.

Our whistleblower cleaned up most of his earlier comments but did issue a final follow-up in the thread, which matches what Jaguar Land Rover told us. He also stated that he now wants to cover himself and tread lightly as the incident is now resolved and the post could put him in an awkward position at work. He finished off by stating that multiple people and reporters contacted Land Rover corporate, which caused this case to be taken very seriously.

I am glad to hear the dealer resolved the issue and I hope the repair lasts for thousands of miles to come, but I still wonder if replacing the transmission may have been a better idea. The lifetime warranty does give some assurance to the current owner, but I can’t help but think that the second or third owner might end up with a leaky mess of a transmission at some point.