I recently purchased two 2012 Ypsilon twinair with dualogic, one each for wifey and me. One had gearbox issues just two weeks after purchase, this was repaired under the used car warranty - apparently requiring the replacement of the gearbox actuator. After a year of ownership, the second car started having the same problems. As it is out of warranty and the cost of the repair on the other car was about £1500 I thought I would see if I could repair it. Success (details below), I know there are not many dualogic Ypsilons in the UK, but if this post helps one other owner it will of been worth it. :-)
Symptoms: Gears unavailable message when stationary and stuck in neutral, randomly getting stuck in gear under braking with no throttle and then gears unavailable message and stuck in neutral when stopped. This mostly happened from a cold start and when the car had been running for less than 30 minutes, dependent on outside temperature.
DTCs: P060A, P2917, P2916, P1742 in various combinations.
Cause: There is a small aluminium piston in a bore behind the black cover at the back of the actuator (near the bulkhead). It needs to be able to move backwards and forwards freely as this motion is the same as moving the gearstick in a manual car from side to side to align to 1st or 2nd, 3rd or 4th, 5th or reverse. If there is dirt in the bore, movement is not free resulting in incorrect location of the piston and hence the failure.
Solution: I flushed it out with a can of brake cleaner and then regreased the pins before closing it up again. I also removed the solenoid from the side of the bore and cleaned that, if you do this be careful not to lose the little spring from inside.
Considerations: My car is almost 5 years old and started having this problem a couple of months ago. My wife has the same car and had the same issue just after she purchased it at just over 3 years old and 13,000 miles. The actuator on my wife's car was replaced under warranty, but it probably just needed cleaning. I don't believe a drop of oil in the bore would cause an issue, but there was a lot of aluminium sludge caused by wear from the back and forth movement. It is a simple job to do and so for me, I will just check / clean / regrease as required once a year.
