Sorento

[argonaut]

I will never buy a car with DMF for towing again.

I also had a Frontera (assume they no longer sell them) they had a good low ratio ....

[Carl]

They stopped making them back in 2004 .... and replaced it with the absolutely awful "Antera"

[_Ed_]

The ONLY symptom was severe smell of burning every time I recovered boat or reversed up drive.

Yep exactly as I thought. The friction disc overheated. Two reasons - the dual mass has a much smaller over all mass than a single so heats up much quicker, and also by the sounds of it the fiction disc was too small for the job, and thus itself was overloaded/heated up to fast.

You were right to avoid since it was probably wearing at 10-20x its normal rate when working that hot. You can kill them in short order.

[argonaut]

Its a pity as other than that I really like Sorento ... towed perfectly apart form the 2 issues ... great on normals roads, engine had loads of torque.

JEEP, Range Rover & LandRover both made sensible choice and installed the 9 Speed ZF ..... and all the 'luxury' brands are also installing this box.

If KIA had done so I would have stayed with KIA.

[Ianfs]

Interestingly enough a lot of Discovery 2 auto owners have changed their gearboxes after failure to an Ashcroft conversion which has a heavt duty torque converter. The difference is actually quite surprising and you'd wonder why LR didn't fit it in the first place.

[_Ed_]

This is all why I love my shogun, drives like a normal car built like a tank where it matters. Transmission is one thing (touch wood) that I'll never have to be concerned about.

[betty boop]

excuse my silly question but is that on auto's only? only I had the same on the passat 6 speed TDi manual and wondered what is was

[argonaut]

If you want more details of the problem ... and the investigations take a look here:
http://www.kiaownersclub.co.uk/forum/sorento-burning-clutch-towing_topic18960_page1&SID=861245215f918ff4fd42a22df57ca5204861111.html

[Ianfs]

excuse my silly question but is that on auto's only? only I had the same on the passat 6 speed TDi manual and wondered what is was

Not sure what you're referring to Ian?

[_Ed_]

excuse my silly question but is that on auto's only? only I had the same on the passat 6 speed TDi manual and wondered what is was

Dual mass flywheels are manual only. And much more common in diesels.