Also known as: tg-81sc, tg81sc, aw tg-81sc, awf8f45, aisin 8-speed volvo, tg-81, tg-81sd
Aisin's transverse eight-speed for Volvo — in the S60, V60, S80, V70, V40, S90, XC40 and C40.
It is effectively Volvo's only modern automatic, so almost any Volvo of the last decade that is not a manual has one, and advice about a Volvo automatic from that period is advice about this gearbox.
Its dominant complaint is a jerk or a hesitation at low speed, particularly on the change into second and when rolling back onto the throttle in traffic. It is very often adaptation rather than damage — these gearboxes learn, and a relearn after a battery disconnection or a software update resolves a great deal of it.
Where it is not adaptation it is fluid. Volvo presented these as filled for life and they are not; the mechatronic unit's solenoids are what worn fluid damages first, and their failure presents electrically — a gear refused, a limp mode, a solenoid code — rather than by slipping.
It is not the AWF8F35. Aisin's other transverse eight-speed is in the BMWs, MINIs and Peugeots on this site; the two are different sizes for different torque, share no parts, and a Volvo owner reading about the EAT8 has found the wrong gearbox.
Cars fitted with this gearbox
8 generations. Only where a source names the model and the generation together — a gearbox is documented as a product far more often than as a fitment, so this list is deliberately shorter than the truth.
Information, not instruction
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