Guide
Car and van gearbox repair: repair, recon or exchange box
Updated
Vehicle gearboxes are a different market from industrial drives: more standardised, better supplied, and with a real second-hand and exchange trade behind them. That changes the arithmetic.
What moves the price on a vehicle box
- Manual or automatic. An automatic adds hydraulics, a torque converter, valve body and control electronics, all of which are their own diagnostic and repair paths.
- How common the box is. A gearbox fitted across several models with a healthy reconditioned market prices very differently from a low-volume or performance unit.
- Removal and refit labour. Book time varies enormously between vehicles. On some, subframe or engine removal is required to get the box out, and that is labour before any gearbox work starts.
- What actually failed. Synchros and bearings are a rebuild. A broken casing, a damaged differential or a failed torque converter change the picture.
- What took it out. Clutch, dual-mass flywheel, mounts, driveshafts and linkages are often part of the same job, and doing them at the same time saves paying the removal labour twice.
Exchange box or rebuild yours?
For common models the exchange market is usually the answer: a fixed price, a warranty and a fast turnaround, with your old box going back as the core. Rebuilding your own box makes more sense where no exchange unit is offered, where the vehicle is rare or valuable, or where originality matters. Compare on the total: unit or rebuild price, plus removal and refit labour, plus the clutch or flywheel if it is being done at the same time. See repair, recondition or exchange for how the three routes differ.
Before you authorise the work
- Get the fault confirmed, not assumed. Gear selection problems are sometimes linkage, clutch hydraulics or mounts, none of which needs the box off.
- Ask for the price broken down: gearbox unit or rebuild, removal and refit labour, clutch and flywheel if included, oil and consumables, VAT.
- Ask what the warranty covers. The unit alone, or the labour to refit it if it fails? That difference is worth real money on a vehicle with heavy removal time.
- Ask about the clutch and flywheel while it is out. Fitting them later means paying the removal labour a second time.
- Get the old parts offered back, other than an exchange core. It keeps everyone honest.
This site covers both vehicle gearboxes and industrial drives, and they are separate trades: a firm that rebuilds worm reduction units for conveyors is not necessarily the firm to rebuild a dual-clutch automatic. Tell us which you have in the form and we route it accordingly.