1994 BMW 325i Automatic transmission woes

[jblackman]

Well I purchased a used 1994 BMW 325i a few weeks ago from a private party who kept very good care of his vehicles. I love my Bimmer.........ONLY

the other day while driving out of my work parking lot I noticed the automaticappeared to be slipping out of gear?? The tach would go up to 4500 rpm without pulling the car anywhere but when I let off the accelerator a bit it would downshift and start working again. This stopped after happening twice and now the car doesn't shift into 4th gear. As I drive down the road the transmission shifts flawlessly into 1St, 2nd, 3rd then just stays in third gear until she hits about 4000 rpm and the (!) light on the dash illuminates. This light will stay on until the ignition is turned off and restarted. It then repeats the same problem. The battery is brand new in the car....no pulsing lights on the dash...everything about the car seems to be tight and working correctly except the shift to 4th.

Any clues out there.....I'm probably heading to the dealer that has been doing all the servicing on the car since I purchased it locally.

Car has 138700 miles and has been serviced regularly in at least the past couple years. I haven't check the trans. fluid yet....could that be the culprit??


Thanks much...Great board!

 

[jcblaschke]

Transmission fluid could cause this, if i were you, i would definatley get it checked by a good BMW mechanic. If you want, you could check your error codes and see what is registering.

 

[jblackman]

Forgot to mention that I took the vehicle into an independent shop who looked at the codes and came back and said there were none for the transmission...only a knock code..probably from bad gas. Then he started discussing the inspection II that was required because my insp. lights were on. He said that after the inspection II..hopefully everything would be fixed. Well I was unsure of spending $462.00 I didn't want to find out the transmission still wouldn't shift into 4th and was curious at the same time why the mechanic lost focus on the automatic tranny problem and wanted to replace my plugs, air filter, etc. instead of tackling the problem I had. He said he would focus on the transmission only if I wanted. This is what I had wanted. When I asked him if he'd seen this problem before....he said yes! When I point blank asked what the heck is probably wrong with my car...he answered 50% of the time it needs a fluid flush.

I'm hoping that he is correct and it's just fluid. Is the transmission in this car that sensitive?? I owned a SAAB 9000 Turbo for years and gotta admit only changed the tranny fluid once in it during 120,000 miles. Tranny had 189,000 when I stopped using the car and the tranny worked perfectly.

 

[Tom]

Inspection II might help since they are supposed to inspect your transmission for leaks and change the fluid. However, I would take it to a BMW mechanic rather than any ordinary shop. These guys work on BMW's all the time, so they can diagnose the problem fairly easy.

The car does have a lot of miles so it may require some tranny work done.

 

[Kenny2g]

Brotha i think your car needs transmission fluid. I changed my Radiator about 3 months ago and during the change, i happened to lost a lot of Transmission fluid. Not know that it was transmission fluid, i though it was just engine oil. My car was doing the same thing that you just explained. I added 4 pints of fluid in the tranny and it was fine. However adding the fluid is the biggest problem. Your car has to be jacked up in the air. I mean jacked up all four wheels and then with a pump you pump in the fluid into the tranny. This was a big headace. I finally got it done but i think i'll take my car to Braverian Auto here in the spring and have them open the tranny and clean it and then add more fluid to it. But i think that's what your problem is. I hope this helps you.
Kenny

 

[andreyiv]

Yeah, the tranny is really sensitive. I noticed that when I break hard and then step on the gas, the tranny slips and grips only after about a second which gives the engine enough time to reach about 3k rpm. I lived with the problem for a few weeks after which I read a short write up on www.pelicanparts.com on how to change tranny fluid. The guy changed the fluid because the car was doing the same as mine and he knew it was low tranny fluid. I decided to just add some ATF, bought the special pump, stands and the fluid, jacked the car up and made it was in level, and didn't get anywhere because I didn't have the right size metric wrench, after trying a similar imperial wrench with no luck I called a few tranny shops. Most of them wanted to take the car in the morning, do a lot of checks and then maybe even change the tranny. I told them that all I want is to add ATF and usually got a pretty rude answer in the lines of, "I'm the specialist, I know what to do". Then I got lucky and this tranny shop agreed to take the car. Long story short, after about ten minutes, ten dollars and very little (less than a cup) amount of ATF, the tranny ran perfectly fine. That was in September and I haven't experienced anything like it. Sorry for the long story, but the moral of it is, it's not worth it to add the ATF yourself if you find a tranny shop (only a tranny shop will do it, others say it's just too hard, they don't have the right "tool" or will honestly say they don't know the precedure(has to be the right temp, engine on and in neutral)) that agrees to do it and that the tranny is VERY sensitive. Well, wish you all the best and sorry for the long post.