Anyone have any experience with this remanufactured valve body?

[cohny]

If I have no evidence that the check balls were ever addressed in my transmission I should go ahead and rebuild or replace the valve body correct? I just got an E32 740i and the transmission does not shift smoothly.

I have been looking into rebuild kits etc. for the 5HP30 and I came across this listing on ebay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/P1597401-ZF...S!-1:rk:3:pf:0

Does anyone have any experience with this unit? I have been doing lots of searching but in 2018 now 90% of the threads are old and link to pages that no longer exist.

[unity]

Right off the bat I can look at that and not call it remanufactured. That harness is a little expensive, hard to find, but available. And a remanufactured one would not come with a clearly used one like that. Its a known failure point, that its it becomes rather brittle and can cause issues on install. So that makes me wary that they did much else to it.

Honestly rebuilding the valve body is not difficult or expensive. Its just a matter of dropping the pan and clearly documenting all the bolts you remove. They ARE different lengths! A cardboard cutout "map" with holes to place the bolts works wonders. You want a nice clean work bench to perform the rebuild on. And there is not much to a valve body. Check balls, solenoids and a gasket or two. The check balls will be the wear item. You need to source these ahead. Maybe you will have better luck than myself. I ended up using, of all things, metal beebees. They were the exact size I needed and should hold up fine.

So you could perform the rebuild yourself and take the "gamble". Or you can get the $125 eBay special and also take a "gamble". If you do it yourself and it works out, you are better for the knowledge and saved some cash to put towards other project. If you get that rebuild.. well you dont really know what will happen.

Side note: While I can not say the valve body is your issue, I was having trans issues that caused me to rebuild mine. In the end, the transmission was not the actual issue at all. But my valve body was loaded up good with clutch sludge. It was pretty bad. I was surprised I did not have actual issue with the trans. So rebuilding it was a good move nonetheless for me.

[shogun]

That is definitely not a reman valve body for that price, it comes from a recycler which cleaned it a bit and that is all. A valve body repair kit cost already more/double than this cpl. valve body, example from ebay is a ZF5HP30-BMW-OEM-Valve-Body-Kit-ZF-Life and that costs abt. $300, although not all the parts like the springs are necessary.
You could buy that cheap used valve body and then start disassembling and repairing it with a valve body repair kit. So you have your original one and the new used one.
Basically you do not need this expensive VB repair kit for $300, the gasket and the balls are usually enough, even the gasket on the 5HP30 usually can be re-used, whole on the 4HP22/24 the gasket between the plates is usually baked on the plates and is damaged when disassembling.
Just last Saturday we did a 5HP30 VB overhaul on a 1993 E32 740, the only things new I needed were the balls, brake cleaner to clean the valves body and solenoids, new ATF, new pan gasket, new ATF filter.

Maybe you first try to change the ATF and the filter and see if that helps.

[cohny]

I figured the unit I linked to probably wasn't any good but you never know. Right now the transmission whines, shifts hard, and is generally slow to respond. I just bought the car off of a 70 year old man who claimed he couldn't hear the whine when I pointed it out. I haven't dropped the pan yet but I'm kind of dreading it / holding my breath. He did tell me he replaced the fluid and filter but couldn't point to a specific fluid. I have a feeling that he didn't seat the filter properly and air is causing the whine.

I've been doing some more research and it sounds like the telltale sign of bad check balls is when the car won't go into reverse, correct? My car doesn't have any trouble shifting into reverse so mine may not be too bad.

[shogun]

whining points to air suction or/and too low fluid level. I would first just check the filter with new o-ring and the ATF and pan gaskets, maybe that solves the problem.