[Ken Mendip]

Looking at the posts on this forum there are many discussing the Mini’s gearbox, well it’s time for one more. I’m a novice when it comes to car mechanics so I’d be grateful for any help and advice. My Mini has done 72,000 miles, I got it 3 ½ years ago with 9000 on the clock.

The bottom line is that the gearbox has been replaced and my AA mechanical warranty will not pay out as they are claiming the damage is down to driver abuse. The nominated repair garage claimed to have never seen this type of problem before and obviously I’m disputing the claim of driver abuse. Driver abuse is cobblers and just their way of getting out of having to pay the claim. They claim that the damage is as a result of me going from 1st to reverse without stopping fully and vice versa.

Anyhow take and look at the picture and if you can offer any help, thoughts I’d be grateful to hear from you.

[Randall Raines]

Sorry! I can't really help you.

It just sounds like the normal scenario, when your paying, your covered for everything, but when your claiming your actually covered for nothing as it's always put down to driver error, wear & tear or undue wear & tear because of bigger wheels etc... etc... .

Although some people will have some good stories, how they paid £70 for a warranty and something went wrong the next week saving them a fortune £££ , my view is that they are not normally worth the paper they're written on and some traders see them as a money earner (the unscrupulous ones) .

[GTT 280]

Contact either BMW or Getrag and get them to comment. Don't expect any help from BMW though - as with insurance, they try to get out of paying for most things !!!

If you are 100% certain you have never recurringly 'crunched' the gears then i'd say there was some flaw in the mechanism responsible for enaging the gears.

As proof that the gear box is fine as a unit - there are 100's of modified cars out there with high bhp and torque, used on and off track that have no issues.

This is fact.

I'd say that they have totally no proof of your ability to change gears smoothly or otherwise.

Interesting to know how you fair against the usual customer facing teams we all enjoy !!! ...usually some gimp without any techy experience or understanding.

Good luck !

PS. If you were in the USA you could probably take them to court for character assasination !!! ha ha.

Cheers,
K.

[Randall Raines]

I was at a friends garage the other day, just before Christmas and he had a similar issue, a regular customer dropped of a car with a gearbox fault under warranty from whoever he bought the car from, so he (the customer) was expecting any bills to be paid for by whoever was covering the claim, my friend (the mechanic) removed the gearbox and removed the casing as instructed ready for inspection (in my friends opinion & mine, who I have every faith in even if it may be biased , the box was faulty due to no fault of the present keeper, but you can never be 100% sure ), the inspector walked in looked at it and said it's not covered due to, wear and tear / miss-use , so basically the owner of the car is now left without a car facing a bill that he thought he was covered, not nice just before Christmas, in fact not nice at anytime .