Was wondering if that happen to somebody else? On the yellow Mini Forum there is another member who got the same problem.

Got 16K so far all trouble free but something threw me off with the transmission. 1st time it happen about a month ago taking off from a light the car shifts thru first 3 gears the rpms go up to about 3500 and for about 2 to 4 seconds the car is searching for a gear than drops the rpm and shifts into 4 and so on with no problems. This happen about 5x over the last 3ooo miles anddoes not happen all the time just once in a while. I can bring it to the Dealer they can drive it for a 1k miles and nothing happens and than out of the blue it does it again.

Just to clear up things a little this only happens in "Drive not M/S and with a warm engine. It does not throw a code or a light shows on the dash. I have the F54 8 Speed All4. The Transmission does not slip I would call it a lazy shift. Thanks for your input.

 

Sounds like some sort of bad sensor input/output that is unfortunately intermittent. I know I can 'confuse' my tranny in certain situations, but yours is certainly not sounding like that. Until it happens more frequently it could be a real PIA to diagnose. I don't know if it is possible on our cars, but see if they can put a datalogger unit on your car to drive around with till the issue comes up, where then they can see all the data streams when the tranny f's up. I know these boxes are used on other makes, not sure if MINI/BMW have these as well. They are invaluable to a service shop that is dealing with an intermittent issue like yours.

 

Thank you for the quick response. I will give my Dealer a call. Keep the thoughts coming.

 

I feel for you, especially trying to get a MINI service department to deal with a "lazy shift". Could also be a programming error and nobody else is paying attention.

 

Maybe some 'glitch' in a firmware update at the last service? With how much programming our cars have, it is always a possibility.

Slightly unrelated, had a friend with an 07 Camry SE V6 with 6sp auto. He had an issue where it would skip 2nd and quickly progressed to skipping 2nd & 3rd, all while out of warranty. Brought it into a trusted local tranny shop for diagnosis/repair. They found that the activation solenoids for those gears crapped out, had to order from Japan as none in US...3 weeks. Gets the car back and on the way into work next day, now skipping 5th...doh! Brings it back in, sure enough 5th gear solenoid dead...3 weeks later gets car back and good for 2 days, then won't engage 1st. Shop now punts on touching it again and suggests getting assistance from Toyota. Brings it in, dealer service scratches their head and calls for corporate input, since they hadn't seen this kind of failure. Toyota sends out an engineer who spends 2 days going over the tranny with the service department and comes back with a solution...full rebuild on the tranny at Toyota's cost. Apparently that should have been the original fix, as because when one solenoid fails, it causes a cascading effect where complete failure will occur. Turns out all 6 clutch solenoids are to be replaced as a set, not individually and all clutch bands and associated components need to be replaced with the first solenoid failure. Toyota did not expect this type of failure till over 300K miles on the tranny, so they never published this repair requirement in their literature...really Toyota?!? My friend suspected this was the reason they paid for the tranny rebuild and offered up an extended warranty on the rebuild as well. He kept the car for a couple more years and never had another tranny problem, so their fix was good.