[flav]

ok, i got my new mini last week and was very surprised to find out how easily the reverse gear grinds and crunches. especially compared to my late mini cooper S. i figured out how to stop that by waiting 2 seconds before going into reverse. but once in awhile i forget and it gets a big healty crunch and grind. when it does crunch and grind hard going into reverse is it actually doing damage to the tranny or is it just a noise? it sounds very bad to me, but i would imagine there would be more action taken by BMW if these noises were in fact the sound of damage being done to our mini's tranny? what do you guys think? this is the ONLY car i have ever seen grind in reverse, even after driving a dozen other manual cars.....other than that the car has been perfect.

 

[Tigger Eeyore & Roo]

Can I assume that your car is a Cooper with the new 5 speed Getrag gearbox?

You will find a whole thread on this here (sorry, can't remember the title). It seems that there are a great many of them doing exactly the same thing. I suggest you make your dealer aware of the problem ASAP.

Sorry for the bad news.

Tigger.

 

[flav]

i assumed that there was no damage being done. so basicly you are telling me there is.
forgive me if i'm being over concerned here but what am i supposed to do. everytime a friend, a valet, a mechanic or anyone else get behind my wheel i have to go though a whole explaination on how to properly drive this car in reverese in order to not have any severe damage done to it..... and hope they listen. even when i took it into mini last week for something minor the mini mechanic crunched the heck out ot when he put it in reverse. then when i asked him about why they do that he said "they all do, its a new transmission".

also if i ever plan to resell. how do i explain to a buyer that nothing is wrong with the car after it grinds like crazy when they put it into reverse. these are things that SHOULD NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES be present in a new car. WHAT IS BMW DOING ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!

 

[Tigger Eeyore & Roo]

Sorry, I don't know if there is damage being done or not.

I do understand that if you wait for a few seconds that you should be able to engage reverse without a crunch and I understand that there are many people out there (from having read the forums here) with exactly the same problem.

A friend of mine, who lives locally, has exactly the same problem with an '05 Cooper he has recently bought after having traded in his '03 Cooper. The original '03 car has a different gearbox which didn't have this problem. He told me that having checked other cars at the dealership they were doing exactly the same thing. Hence my advice to make your dealer aware of the problem and present them with some evidence from this web site that this isn't an isolated incident. Let me know if you have a problem finding that thread and I will get you the title of it.

Please don't let it spoil your enjoyment of the rest of the car, because they are brilliant .

Tigger

 

[flav]

if it will cause a premature transmission failure i am very concered. and please point me to that thread.

 

[Tigger Eeyore & Roo]

Basically it sound like that gearbox needs sorting and I don't know that BMW has an answer yet.

However the thread is:


Noisy gearbox on 54 Reg Mini One or Cooper


Also, if you go into "Search" and enter "Getrag" (the manufacturer of this unit) you will get all sorts of references to it - including the above one.

Hope this helps.

Tigger

 

[Mini Lou]

Hey, I had the same thing, brought it up with my dealer and apparently it's the same on all manual MINI's some worse than others depending on the owners style of driving, the trick is to clutch twice, and only try to put your car in reverse from neutral. i.e. clutch once take the car out of gear clutch again, put it in reverse. Or, if your already in neutal and "taking off" you clucth once, so the car knows it's in neutral and again to put it in reverse. It took me a while but I do it without thinking now - hope that helps a bit

 

[L13 Cooper]

my 05 car does it, its been into BMW once and they said "no problem"

well its going back in, so lets hope they do something this time??!!!

 

[CNred]

I have the same problem. I brought it up with the dealer he told me becasue the gears in the tranny are not sycronized that it does that and he told me that by going to 3rd then to reverse it should not grind. But mine still grinds and shows a lot of resistance when going to reverse and even just shifting in gerneral sometimes i dont know what to do about that though.

 

[KooperCrazy]

ok, i got my new mini last week and was very surprised to find out how easily the reverse gear grinds and crunches. especially compared to my late mini cooper S. i figured out how to stop that by waiting 2 seconds before going into reverse. but once in awhile i forget and it gets a big healty crunch and grind. when it does crunch and grind hard going into reverse is it actually doing damage to the tranny or is it just a noise? it sounds very bad to me, but i would imagine there would be more action taken by BMW if these noises were in fact the sound of damage being done to our mini's tranny? what do you guys think? this is the ONLY car i have ever seen grind in reverse, even after driving a dozen other manual cars.....other than that the car has been perfect.

Yeah i have the same thing in my 04MC i took it to the dealer for my 10K oil change etc, and some minor things i wanted to fix up. The Crunching Reverse shift problem being one of them, they said thats normal...Tell you the truth, its the first time ive EVER bad mouthed anything about Mini. But the service center i took it to in NY City (theres only one so not hard to figure out). Sucked!!#$%@! One weekend & Two and a half hours wait for nothing, we'll leave the complaining for another thread.