As per the title - I was driving around last night and I had the Neutral light flashing while I was in drive. I'm guessing this is what is known as "limp mode" ?

It began to flast after I did a full 360 turn around a roundabout and tried to accelerate out of the turn. I did around 3/4's of the turn when I trried to accelerate (still turning though) the gearbox harshly threw into neutral, at which point I backed off the accelerator, and when I again (lightly) touched the accelerator pedal when the car was straight, the rev' shot up to around 3000rpm and then car harshly through back into 1st gear. This isn't the first time this has happened, the same seems to happen when the engine is cold and I accelerate while in a corner. Luckily, last night, I was close to home so I didn't have to drive it too far but when I did get home it struggled to get up the incline on my driveway.

When I got home I looked under the car to find my entire driveshaft covered what I think was grease. The area around the transaxle seems to have some grease as well - speciailly on the end with the grease covered driveshaft. The ring & rubber had a light amount and the metal around the transaxle has a thin striip of grease in a circular motion. About two weeks ago I removed the wheel to replace the brakes and found the cv boot to be leaking black grease - it seems the clip had loosened and was no longer holding back the grease. I fitted a hose clamp and tightened it down hard. Looking back on it last night - the adjustable hose clamp had come loose :| could all this grease be coming from the CV joint? One loose end of the boot surely could cover the entire driveshaft and transaxle in grease could it? Would it also be responsible for the gearbox issue?

After I turned the car off, I disconnected the battery and around 20 mins later I reconnected and started the car and the flashing neutral light was gone. Car started and drove me to work this morning with no apparent problems/noises.

So basically tl;dr version:
- Limp mode gearbox last night - no more this morning
- Grease all over driveshaft & transaxle
- Missing cv boot ring - replaced with adjustable hose clamp which has now come off.

Questions:
- Should I be woried about the limp mode light last night? I read in the Max Ellery manual that it can also flash if the gearbox gets a bit hot. I was doing a little bit of "spirited" driving but nothing serious. (e.g. once or twice I put foot to floor and acceleratted to 60 or 80km speed limit etc). I checked the oil and its still pink and at the right level (not completely full but enough). Is there a seal somewhere that's leaking? Is the box on its way out?

- Is my driveshaft shot? Could it be causing the issues? I hear no click when turning so the CV joints seem fine. I do have some light shuddering at higher speeds - i.e. 90,100,110km etc. I beleive the shuddering could be to do with the wheels nuts - when I replaced the pads I forgot to fully tighten the nuts (:doh:) so when I drove at 70km it started to vibrate like mad - pulled over and tightened up the nuts and the shudder was gone so it could just be loose nuts as well. I'm going to try and retighten the hose clamp and see if will hold for a camping trip I'm going on next week. I can't get to mitsu during the day to buy a proper boot clip.

Appreciate any and every help with this! Appologies for the essay!

Thanks heaps folks,
TheKovac

Funnily enough I was reading the manual booklet that came with the magna yesterday, and I remember something about if you're in 'Drive' and the neutral light starts flashing, it means the auto transmission fluid is overheating and to pull over, leave the car running and check it out, or something along those lines, Don't really know if that helps, but maybe go and check if there's enough transmission fluid.

I brushed through my service manual as well and it did mention that if it was flashing twice every second then it means the gearbox is too hot and needs to cool down. I did not keep it running - instead I turned the engine off.

If it is that the gearbox got a bit too hot - then why has this occured? I've driven the car harder for a longer distance than I did last night and this has never occured before. I had the box fully flushed around 20,000km's ago.

Should I look into doing anouther flush again? If I don't have to then I won't because its not cheap to do. I'm going to check the levels again via the proper way - i.e. heat up gearbox, run through gears and then check when the car is on a flat surface. If its a bit low then I might just top up the oil and hope for the best?

Looking back under the car the gearbox has this grey loose matter on it - it sticks to the metal on the gearbox and is like very fine dust - is it just some dirt from the road lol ?

Silly qiestion, but have you checked the transmission fluid level as per the instructions? If you are running low on fluid, it will overheat. Are there any unusual noises? something else may be tightening up? (perish the thought)

I would suggest topping up the oil, and the loose grey matter seems like the CV boot is broken, so maybe you should get it checked out :P

Give it a full flush and while you're at it, install a tranny cooler. (In my opinion.. Tranny coolers are a MUST HAVE addition to the Magnas)

Thats the first stop before looking at replacements gearboxes.

Take the wheel off and have a look at your CVs (Boots, Joints etc.)

If the boot is split and spitting oil everywhere it will look fairly messy.

Other then that.. Take it to a reputable mechanic!

SuFz :ninja:

Possible broken CV boots? Maybe even an output shaft seal leading to low fluid resulting in the transmission pump cavitating and giving that "sudden in/out off neutral" you describe.

Check fluid.

Degrease. Check for leaks, cracks etc.

Get it to a transmission guru for a check up.

Thanks everyone for all the help! Really appreciate it :)

The clip on the cv boot is loose. I realised this about 2 weeks ago and replaced it with a adjustable hose clamp. At the time I cbf getting a socket set or wrench out so I just used a traditional flat screwdriver to tighten it. I checked the hose clamp and it had come off - leaving the end of the boot exposed. I figure a certain amount of grease must've been released but I was suprised to see the entire driveshaft covered in oil. Is there any other seals I should look at?

At this stage, It seems the most likely scenario is that the boot is torn, which will mean I will need to remove the hub & control arm. I'm wondering i'm not better off just replacing the entire driveshaft & CV joint? Am I right to assume that the only thing I risk damaging if I do not seal up the CV boot is the CV joint? Can the bearings get damaged? I recently had this replaced by a mechanic - probably the reason why my CV boot's clip was busted!

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but the proper procedure for checking the gearbox oil is heat the oil up to about 70-80 degrees, park the car on a flat surface and then run through the gears a few times. Leave it in neutral and then check fluid?

Dont muck around with shafts, just replace them. I have new and used ones here, it is common however for the inner boot to leak a bit, almost every Magna I have ever had here will have at least a little grease around the area of the shaft

The drive shaft and your other issue are not related, trans will not go into limp mode because of a drive shaft

Dont muck around with shafts, just replace them. I have new and used ones here, it is common however for the inner boot to leak a bit, almost every Magna I have ever had here will have at least a little grease around the area of the shaft

The drive shaft and your other issue are not related, trans will not go into limp mode because of a drive shaft

Could it be that enough oil has leaked out of the shaft seal to cause overheating in the tranny and causing the limp mode to be triggered?

My magna left a very significant amount of oil on the driveway when the right shaft seal was knackered

When I got home I looked under the car to find my entire driveshaft covered what I think was grease. The area around the transaxle seems to have some grease as well - speciailly on the end with the grease covered driveshaft. The ring & rubber had a light amount and the metal around the transaxle has a thin striip of grease in a circular motion :| could all this grease be coming from the CV joint? One loose end of the boot surely could cover the entire driveshaft and transaxle in grease could it?



hahaha on my first 2.6 magna the inner and outer boots split on a driveshaft. It sprayed the entire inside of the wheel in a thick layer of grease (which combined with dirt to form an almost tar like mess, took 4 or 5 spray/scrub/rinse cycles with wheel cleaner to remove most of it)
and I think there was grease all over the engine/trans and firewall too.