XSeries-forum

Hope someone can help here....

Driving along this morning - all well. Started to notice that the car was making jolted / jarred gear changes - particularly going from 1st - 2nd if accelerating away from junctions and 2nd - 3rd when say going round a tight bend and accelerating out.
This went on for about 10 mins - then got the error message on dash. Car drives but feels like 1st, 2nd and 3rd are not available (when pulling away feels like the car is in 4th)

It's a 4.4i Sport, high mileage (88k) - so my heart sank when I got this error - as I read a lot of gearbox failures on higher mileage car.

Anyone have experience of this or can offer advice (start saving your pennies now isn't advice by the way !)

Ro.

If the Failsafe has kicked in then depending upon the box type, it will lock in one gear, or possibly two.  I think the 5 speed locks in third and the 6 speed either third and/or fifth.

If it is in that state then avoid driving it if at all possible and get a Dealer or specialist to do a fault code readout.  Getting the vehicle recovered somewhere could prevent further damage and save on the repair bill.

Once the codes are read then that will at least tell you what it's not happy about, and what the repairs needed will be.  Do not bother asking BMW to do a repair as they only offer replacements at silly money (£7k in my case)!

Sorry, but that is the likely worst case, and 88k is not high mileage really.  Mine went at 38k!

Richard