Community Forums

Johnontheroad · 03-06-2018, 05:54 PM

My new-to-me ‘15 Aspire has a strange transmission problem not noted before picking it up. Once you’ve been driving for an hour or two, the tranny would drop into a lower gear and give a “RANGE INHIBIT” error. Mostly on the freeway, just driving down the road at 67 MPH and the tranny would drop into 5th and give the error.

If you stopped the coach it would stay in 5th, and as long as the engine was running stay in 5th. Only after stopping and restarting the engine the tranny would be in Neutral. But then it wouldn’t switch into any gear, you’re stuck

Let the coach cool down for about half an hour and everything worked fine, for about another hour of driving. Then the error again. Anyone want a coach that can only go about 75 miles at a time?

Called Spartan, who had me call Allison, they had me take it to their main distributor in Dallas. They checked it out, found the error code, but couldn’t final anything wrong. They made sure all connections and so on were tight and sent me on my way. You guessed it, an hour down the road and the error reoccurred.

Took it back to the distributor and once again they couldn’t find anything wrong. So they replaced the shifting solenoids, the internal wiring harness, and the external wiring harness. All under warranty.

I am now in the Houston area with no tranny problems. Thanks to Spartan and Stewart & Stevenson for finally figuring out and fixing a most perplexing problem.

keymastr · 03-06-2018, 06:13 PM

Glad it's fixed, would be nice to know what the real issue was. Many have reported problems with the wiring harness, not just your brand but many others too.

Matt D · 03-06-2018, 07:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by keymastr

Glad it's fixed, would be nice to know what the real issue was. Many have reported problems with the wiring harness, not just your brand but many others too.

I haven’t heard of very many issues with the Allison 3000, and certainly not a plethora of issues like the OP had. Do you have some links, or other factual info that would help those of us who like to work on our coaches?

Thanks and congrats to you John on sorting things out. BTW, Cummins Southern Plains is pretty decent to deal with, should you have any other issues while in the Houston area.

-Matt

Cruzer · 03-07-2018, 06:53 AM

Allison 3000s are pretty much bullet-proof with no known major issues that I have ever heard of. I did have a similar situation on our '07 Allegro Bus though after about 5 years. It only happened once it warmed up. After it cooled it was fine. It was an output shaft speed sensor. This is inserted into the tailshaft housing of the transmission and detects the output shaft speed via a reluctor wheel. What happens is that the heat from the housing penetrates the sensor and it went crazy and gave different resistance readings once hot that confused the TCM and gave the range inhibit issues. Replacing that sensor corrected it.

jherrin99 · 03-07-2018, 02:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnontheroad

My new-to-me ‘15 Aspire has a strange transmission problem not noted before picking it up. Once you’ve been driving for an hour or two, the tranny would drop into a lower gear and give a “RANGE INHIBIT” error. Mostly on the freeway, just driving down the road at 67 MPH and the tranny would drop into 5th and give the error.

If you stopped the coach it would stay in 5th, and as long as the engine was running stay in 5th. Only after stopping and restarting the engine the tranny would be in Neutral. But then it wouldn’t switch into any gear, you’re stuck

Let the coach cool down for about half an hour and everything worked fine, for about another hour of driving. Then the error again. Anyone want a coach that can only go about 75 miles at a time?

Called Spartan, who had me call Allison, they had me take it to their main distributor in Dallas. They checked it out, found the error code, but couldn’t final anything wrong. They made sure all connections and so on were tight and sent me on my way. You guessed it, an hour down the road and the error reoccurred.

Took it back to the distributor and once again they couldn’t find anything wrong. So they replaced the shifting solenoids, the internal wiring harness, and the external wiring harness. All under warranty.

I am now in the Houston area with no tranny problems. Thanks to Spartan and Stewart & Stevenson for finally figuring out and fixing a most perplexing problem.

I had a similar transmission problem. It started out with a check transmission light. I called Spartan and we pulled the error code. They told me it was a known issue with the transmission temp. sensor and the fix was a software update. I took it by an Allison dealer and had the software updated. No more check transmission light. About a year or so later we were driving down the interstate at 65-70mph and the transmission downshifted to 4th gear, throwing us hard into our seat belts like we had hit something. There were no error codes or lights so we had no idea what was going on. It did it again a little later. I was unable to find an Allison dealer anywhere close, so we limped home at 50-55mph. At that speed at least when the transmission downshifted it did not throw us through the windshield. I was able to find a good tech at Stewart & Stevenson in Wichita Falls. They were unable to find anything wrong when checking for error codes. He hooked up his diagnostic computer and said lets take a drive and see if we can duplicate the problem. It only took about 5 minutes before it downshifted. The tech quickly identified the problem as the temp. sensor. The sensor was showing erratic temperatures that would jump from 170-200 down to 0. He said when the computer sees that really cold temperature, it downshifts in an attempt to warm the transmission back up to operating temperature. He also said there should have been an error code showing that. I explained about having the check engine light and software update. He checked and said the fix in the software update was to inhibit the error code so you did not keep getting a check transmission light. Unfortunately the temp. sensor is up inside the transmission and not easy to get to. It required pulling the pan and some disassembly to get to it.