I've had my '03 MCS JB/JB for a year now and I am still in major love with her.

She keeps surprising me. However, I'am a little concerned for her well being.
Over the last week temperatures have dropped to well under 32 degrees here in the Poconos. Last week I started her, waited a couple of minutes and attempted to put her in gear. Much to my surprise the shifter would not engage any gear. This did not appear to be a case of frozen oil/grease. It was as if there was a metal bolt preventing me to engage it. Running late for work I took my SUV (Ugh!). I had my wife (who I might add was more than willing) start her and she had the same results. She then decided t leave it running for a couple of minutes to see if the shifter would engage. Well, within minutes the shifter engaged and the wife took it for a 25 mile ride to assure that all was well ( Yea, I know...she planned that ).

My question: Is this normal or a common occurence or a built-in feature?

TY

 

You may wanna check to insure you have the proper amount of lubrication in the transmission, I know that on one of my older cars durring the winter there was not enough trans oil in there to let it move freely at a cold start.

 

HI sounds like the famous clutch slave cylinder these cars are noturious for have it checked out.

 

Thanks for the input.

 

Hi, I did a little search on your behalf and among the results was this thread:

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...tuck+gear+cold

I did a quick perusal and it looks like frozen cables might be the culprit, and it looks like Mini had a TSB/solution that replaced the orginal cables with insulated ones. If that is the case and the cause of your problem perhaps they will cover it under warranty.

Anyway, you might find more/better info in that thread or from another search, I hope I helped a bit though. Best of luck

 

Actually, this is relatively common. More searching will find quite a few threads around here about this. I'm in north-central jersey and have noticed same thing now that we're getting down below 25degF at night. I think of it as more of a "slight character flaw" versus a problem. Some folks leave their car in reverse when parking at night just to avoid a tough shift in the morning. When the car warms up the problem seems to take care of itself. This morning I had to run 5th - 3rd - 1st pattern to get into reverse, but I didn't wait for the warm-up, I just wiggled it in. When I got to the parking lot 20mins later it was perfectly normal shifting into R.

 

This is news to me...This is my second winter with my MINI and it has seen temps close to 0, with only slight resistance to engaging a gear (what one would expect on any manual tranny on a cold day).

TY, give us an update once you have it diagnosed. And where are you in the Poconos? Do you go to Prestige in Mahwah for service or one of the Philly dealers? Just curious.