Multiple gearbox failure

[johnlummis]

Hi everybody,has anyone else had more than one gearbox fail,tomorrow(27/1/2005)I am having my 6th,i'll repeat that,sixth gearbox put in.The car has done 86500 miles and is an instructors car (I've never had a pupil fail on gears in 15 years,so its not them).The original was replaced on 9/01/04 due to it slipping out of gear a lot,that lasted until 5/7/04 when synchro went in 3rd.the next one lasted 34 days and was replaced on 16/8/04 for the same reason as no.2,that was replaced on 29/12/04 for a rattling noise in 1st and that totally failed today(26/01/05) reason not known.The questions are a) Am I unlucky b)Are the gearboxes faulty c)Are the people at the garage not fitting them correctly and d) Am I entitled to compensation for all my time off the road ( 1 day for each gearbox on average).Advice needed and views much appreciated,thanks ,john

[TallAndy]

Thats terrible 6 gearboxes? Sounds to me like something else is causing the problems and simply replacing the gearbox fixes it temporarily.

It is a lot of miles 86k but still maybe one gearbox change at the most. Definately complain and seek some form of compensation its totally unacceptable.

[Paul]

Do they put a new midland unit in each time, or do you get a new Getrag box now.

[johnlummis]

No Idea paul,I'm thinking of speaking to BMW customer service about it,the dealers attitude is ''It's just one of those things'.For every day I'm off the road it costs me £130 in lost earnings.I've had power steering pump failure,clutch failure,heated mirror failure,it was going in tomorrow because the wiper motor packed in and needs replacing and the 6th gearbox.Either the garage is not fitting it correctly or they haven't diagnosed the problem or all the replacement boxes are substandard.I had a clio before this and didn't have 1 box replaced and that had done 88k,the previous clio to that(R reg) my ex still has and thats still on its 1st box and thats done 96k now.I didn't go through boxes until this car.john

[dmholmes]

Eek! I thought mine was bad. They should be fitting my third one tomorrow. The first two Midlands boxes only lasted 3500 and 15000 miles respectively. I'm hoping they replace with the newer Getrag this time, although I've been reading of problems for those too recently.

[GTmini]

I'm only scheduled for my 2nd replacement, so soon my MINI will have seen 3 gearboxes. Hopefully, I don't catch up! That's pretty insane.

The best thing is that a few minutes ago, I just realized that with the first replacement (a little over 2 months ago) I went ahead and paid my dealer to put in a new clutch for me since it's such an expensive job otherwise (it still had a tad too much material on to be counted as a warranty claim). Well, apparently if I just waited I probably would have had a free clutch replacement. OK, now I'm kinda ticked.

Why have just injury when you can have some insult too...

[GTmini]

My grand total was 5 transmissions (including two replacements in one visit). However, after the 5th one (which was finally a *new* non-remfr unit), most of the problems went away and stayed gone up until MINI finally took the vehicle back.

I think the oddest phenomena is that the remfr units they put in would fail almost the exact same way after almost the exact same amount of time. In less than two months, each would start getting stuck in 1st/2nd gear. I never got to drive the car with the 3rd replacement since I was on vacation, but my dealer told me that it was "worse than the old one" after they put it in and that's when MINI finally authorized putting a *new* transmission in the car.

Major bummer since I had bought my MINI with the intent of it being a "keeper" and planned to buy second/third vehicles to compliment it. Oh well...