Crap!!! I Think My Transmission is DEAD! HELP!

Hi everyone. I got a 93 318i auto. ~95000 miles. I think my transmission is fukced.. where is what happened.....

I was coming home on the freeway. There was a bit of traffic but it started to move when I was nearing my exit. I entered the off-ramp and was stuck behind some cars until the light turned green. When I accelerated, my car was moving soooooooo slowly, it was like the auto tranny didn't downshift and I was still in fourth or third gear. That light yellow in the middle of the instrument panel is lighted up now. The one with the exclamation point inside of a circle or something.

So I make it home and I drive around the block. I put it in the "M mode" and try downshifting into 2 and 1. It does not downshift. I think the gear is stuck in 3 or 4. I put it in "A mode" and floor it. Still does not downshift. I dunno what to do?!?

I'm gonna take it to a mechanic tomorrow and check this all out. Is there any hope for my tranny? Or will I need to get a new one? If I need a new one, do u guys know the cost difference between a normal 318ia tranny and an M3 tranny. Or maybe I can go manual, finally! Would that cost much more??

Please, any help and/or comments are greatly appreciated.

Thanks

best thing is to get it hooked up to a computer to see what the fault code says for the transmission

we can guess and guess but its not a replacement for seeing what the computer says

I was just reading some posts that quoted the life expectancy of BMW auto boxes at 100-125K miles. I was looking for info as I am contemplating a 330i to replace an Audi. I hope this is not the case for you, but it looks like it is not totally unexpected for your mileage. Hope everything works out for you.

thanks guys....

i got back int he car and decided to take it for a spin again...

WTF it works! No problems at all. Im still gonna have to checked out tomarrow but it works fine as of right now.

I have to go somehwere tomarrow early in the morning... hopefully the stupid slushbox wont crap out on me..;)

Probably just a glitch, but it wouldn't hurt to change fluid & filter, replace the dumped fluid with Redline, make sure the level is correct when hot, check all the trans connections (i.e. cables and wires), and have you spilled anything down the shifter hole which might have gotten on your electrics? Could be an electric connection got coated, so the trans still thought you were in say, manual 3 or 4.....

Originally posted by Jahkesh
Crap!!! I Think My Transmission is DEAD! HELP!

Hi everyone. I got a 93 318i auto. ~95000 miles. I think my transmission is fukced.. where is what happened.....

I was coming home on the freeway. There was a bit of traffic but it started to move when I was nearing my exit. I entered the off-ramp and was stuck behind some cars until the light turned green. When I accelerated, my car was moving soooooooo slowly, it was like the auto tranny didn't downshift and I was still in fourth or third gear. That light yellow in the middle of the instrument panel is lighted up now. The one with the exclamation point inside of a circle or something.

So I make it home and I drive around the block. I put it in the "M mode" and try downshifting into 2 and 1. It does not downshift. I think the gear is stuck in 3 or 4. I put it in "A mode" and floor it. Still does not downshift. I dunno what to do?!?

I'm gonna take it to a mechanic tomorrow and check this all out. Is there any hope for my tranny? Or will I need to get a new one? If I need a new one, do u guys know the cost difference between a normal 318ia tranny and an M3 tranny. Or maybe I can go manual, finally! Would that cost much more??

Please, any help and/or comments are greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Ah Ha! SO you too have had the glitch thingy eh? Let me get this thing correct, lets say your car is stuck on that 3rd or 4th gear, its sluggish on acceleration and you can like go 0-70+ without shifting! Also that yellow light to be exact is in the bottom middle of the dashboard, its yellow, has a exclamation point, and a type of toothed gear around the exclamation point correct? If so, I had the same problem with my car, I have a Auto 92' 325i, here's was I did. Drove the car a little, park at the side, turn off at neutral, While the car is off, I shifted it to park, shifted to 1, then shifted to neutral and started the car up. The yellow light would come on as it would normally when you start the car, then it normally goes off and I put my car on D and it drives normally again. I think it was more of a glitch as it would happen probably 2-3 months and never thought anything about it. Normally happens on a cold day for me or if I havent ran the car for 2-3 hours. But nonetheless I did change the atf fluid and such and that problem hasnt come up as a problem for a while! Let me know what you think.


Rich
325i 92' Glacier Blue Auto 126k going strong!
(I just beat that statistic about how long auto boxes last!....knocking on wood)

Just a little added note:
Change filter and atf fluid (when I did this the problem hasnt risen up for 4 months now)...I left the car off for 1-2 min before doing the shifting thing, and also at 115k I did change the flex disk on my transmission.


Buying a new tranny would cost you an arm and a leg, were talking 4 digits here, and even if you got a deal on one, labor will kill you in order to swap it. Your tranny is fine IMO. :D

More proof that there is no such thing as "lifetime" fluids.

Change to mobile 1... supossedly redline only lasts about a year -- what I have read here about it

Sounds like no one quite understands what's going on. The transmission is going into "limp home" mode - it's detecting a fault (thus the light on the dash), and automatically locks into 3rd (or was it 4th? I don't remember...) gear. When you shut down the car and restarted it, the fault must not have been there any more, so the tranny went back into normal mode. Could have been something like overheating, so when the tranny cooled off, it was OK again. Or it could have been something like an electronics glitch.

What you should do is get the code scanned and see what it was. Maybe it's a one-time thing and you don't have to worry about it. Or maybe it's something really bad. But you won't know until you have it scanned...

Jim