The invention discloses a gearbox fault detection method based on flexible time-domain averaging. The gearbox fault detection method comprises the steps of: 1, adsorbing an acceleration transducer on a bearing end cover of a gearbox to be detected; 2, acquiring vibration signals of the gearbox through data acquisition equipment to solve a frequency-domain discrete sampling value of the vibration signals; 3, calculating a continuous time expression of time-domain averaging; 4, converting the continuous time expression into a trigonometric function expansion form; 5, weighting ak to realize filtering, de-noising and order information extracting for the time-domain averaging; 6, carrying out discrete sampling to obtain average sequences of discrete time domains; and 7, observing periodical impacts occurring in the sequences obtained in 6, and judging the type and the severity of a gearbox fault. According to the invention, truncation errors are inhibited effectively, and the advantages of increasing the resolution ratio of the signals and increasing the detection efficiency for the gearbox are achieved while a de-noising effect is achieved.