I was making the 200 mile drive from Burlington, VT to MINI of Peabody to get my engine software updated (trying to fix the cold engine stalling problem) and to diagnose a noise. There had been something that sounded like plastic dragging under the car coming from someplace up front, but nothing was dragging. I was afraid that I would get to the dealership and not have the noise show up there. Well, I didn't have that problem. Cruising down the interstate with the cruise control set at 70mph, and the car starts slowing down. Thinking the cruise control had a hiccup, I turn the cruise off and hit the gas. RPMs rise, but I'm still slowing down. Hazards. Breakdown lane. Try fourth gear - it works. Speed up a little and try fifth. The shifter goes to where fifth should be, but there's no gear there. I had the first four gears, no fifth, and no reverse.

Luckily, I was near an exit, and that exit had civilization off it. If you have ever driven route 89 from Concord NH to Burlington VT you'd know that that's not always the case. I stopped at a Tire Kingdom, called roadside assistance, waited a little over an hour, then made the rest of the trip to Peabody on the flatbed.

MINI of Peabody was awesome (as usual). I didn't make it there until sometime after noon, and they put a new transmission in and had me back on the road by 5:00.

I had just over 8000 miles when the transmission gave up. It had been very cold for the last month (hasn't gotten above freezing all month, I've driven in -24F, and the car has sat in -30F). The noise I had been heearing happened mose in 2nd and 3rd gear. Sounded like something plastic dragging on the ground or against a tire. It went away when the clutch was engaged. There was no noise when cruising at highway speeds, even just before 5th gear went away. It sounds like the service guys hadn't heard of this happening before, and it didn't make much sense to anyone.

As a software engineer, I was impressed that the cruise control computer didn't try to rev the engine through the redline when the transmission gave up. That's something that would be easy to overlook.

I made the drive back to Vermont with no problems (other than a new gearbox that is much stiffer than the old, broken in one). I'll see if the cold engine stall is gone when I head off to work.

Much thanks to MINI of Peabody!

 

velVeT, that's a great story with a thus-far happy ending! Thanks for sharing. It makes me glad that I too use MINI of Peabody. Relative to some of the horror stories posted here about uncooperative dealers and lame-brained service depts, it's great to find a place that quickly and effectively diagnoses problems.

Do you know why they happened to have a new 5-speed tranny laying around? Also, did they give you any info (assuming you asked) as to what specifically in the transmission failed? In my experience, dealers virtually NEVER want to replace transmissions and instead want to rebuild. Once I managed to get one replaced, but it took about a month of diagnosing (and sending someone from Belgium to look at it...it was a V70 AWD volvo and they use a gertag auto I believe) to get to the point of replacement.

Anyway, good for you, and I hope that this is the end of the problem. :smile:

 

I'm curious as to the nature of the problem. If you find out exactly what went wrong, please post. Very impressive dealer service, btw! Go Peabody!

 

Just dredging this one up in case anyone else is searching and comes across it. My 5-speed Cooper had exactly the same kind of noise as a symptom, and is currently having the tranny replaced. thread here

velvet, if you happen to read this, I'd be interested to know when your car was built. Mine was 9/6/02, and I saw a post by someone on MINI2 whose Cooper 5-speed had the same failure - built 9/13/02. If yours was within the same time frame, I wonder if we might be able to warn others to get this checked out.

This also happened to me after a stretch of extremely cold, subzero weather, like it did for you - how's your luck been this winter? This really worries me for the future of the car. There's at least one good deep freeze every winter here.

The "dragging" noise you heard was unhappy ball bearings. I described the sound in almost exactly the same way to Peabody.
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I read through both threads and do not accept the cause of the problem being extreme cold. Our '03 - January 3 2003 build, had a transmission seal fail within 1500 miles. This happened to a car that had not been out of the southern California and Arizona warmth. On our car the wheel bearing was also damaged.

 

I just recently had the transmission replaced in my '02 for a different noise. They installed what they said was a reman tranny with the 'fix' implemented. I'd be interested to know if people who have this 'dragging plastic' noise hear it at idle, in neutral, with the clutch out. I'm hearing it, and it definitely goes away when I push the clutch in. I was thinking that it was lubricant related as it only seems to be at low temperature. My first consideration was to go to a synthetic gear lube like Redline, but I haven't got that far with it yet.

Steve

 

O4 Non S five speed failed at 42,xxx miles. Bad bearings. Mini Mania had all parts needed and car is back on road at less cost than replacement transmission.

How many other Midlands 5 speeds have failed? At what mileage? How long from the time a noise was noticed to failure?

Nation's Warranty Group, Automobile Consurmer Service Corp. and Vehicular Service Insurance Company denied the cliam, even though it was well past the 30 days and 1000 miles initial policy no-claim time.