I have an r52 cooper s with a 6 speed manual. Is it normal for the gearshift to not "glide" into gear that smoothly occasionally? I've noticed most of the time it glides in pretty nicely but every so often it seems a little rough and there's a little resistance. This happens more often when the engine is cold. Is this normal for these cars? A lot of my friends have hondas and I've noticed the gearshift is much more smooth and slides more easily than the one in my car, but that's a honda shifter ig. So is this normal? Or is there something potentially wrong with my car?

 

I don't know that it's normal but I've experienced similar conditions on cold wet winter days, kind of like my arthritis. ~60K on the clock here but I noticed the same thing back at 18K when I bought the car. I'd be more concerned if you couldn't get it into some or all gears at times, it slips out of gear, or you're hearing strange noises, especially grinding or metallic ones.

In general you're right not to compare these gearboxes to Hondas or other well-built, bullet-proof reliable (and boring) cars, because "BMW," but the manual Gertrags do seem to be one of the (few) more reliable components on these cars. Can try changing the gear box oil and see if that helps (I plan to myself soon, many others here do it with ~50K periodicity). Good DIY vid on Mod MINI's YooToob channel.

 

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I'll soon be installing a CravenSpeed short shifter and will be getting new shift cables as well so I've been looking into what all I need...

...came across the weight which I was unaware could be a potential problem,
Detroit Tuned has a nice write-up on it:

https://www.detroittuned.com/mini-co...ission-weight/

So,
I'll inspect mine and replace if necessary.

Just adding this because it's an area that may need attention in relation to smooth shifting so I thought it may be relevant here in this thread.

 

Mine was like that before I put a new clutch in it, and it was worse in the winter. I changed the gearbox oil and couldn't tell a difference at all, but now that I have a new clutch, it's silky smooth. (though I haven't driven it in cold months yet) Mine has 103,000 miles on it currently, changed the clutch at 102,000.

 

I actually changed the transmission oil 10k miles ago, I have nearly 70k miles on the car. Sounds like its normal then, maybe the quirkiness of the shifter sometimes is a BMW thing. Haven't had any issues with grinding or it popping out of gear.

 

I hope it's not the clutch :( The car barely has 70k miles on it, though I bought the car at 52k miles so I don't know how the previous owner treated the car.

 

This, what it all comes down to. If it's a worn clutch, would think you'd be seeing slipping by now. At 70K miles, wouldn't be out of the question.

Found this little gem with some other ideas given your symptoms. As always with these cars it could be more than one thing:
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...all-gears.html

 

can we buy just those solid aluminum 4x bushing things that go into the shifter box corners to replace the 4x rubber ones ?
I have the EXACT same issue. Some times its butter smooth sometimes its chunky as if its bumping into the guides that are in-between the gears ( though I know my throw is perfect and always the same )

 

I don't know why I've only felt this issue with the gearbox in these cars, literally all my friend's cars have smooth shifters all the time. :(

 

My buddies r56 is exact same too like my r53 with the occasional chunkyness
I lubed up all my shifter cables under the intake box and the lever arm and that did help some.

 

So I bought mine with 55k miles on it. My first R53 went 155,000 miles on the original clutch with no slipping. My current R53 slipped once or twice, but definitely not consistently slipping. I started struggling to get into gear when it was cold around 65k-70k miles, so I changed the gearbox fluid to redline mtl and couldn't tell a difference at all. It got worse around 90k miles and it seemed like every morning it was kind of hard to get into first gear until the gearbox warmed up.

I don't think I'd change the clutch just for that, but between the occasional slipping, the struggling for gear, and having the time and money to do the clutch, I decided to go ahead and swap mine out. I'm glad I did, between the single mass flywheel clutch, the limited slip diff, and full front suspension bushing replacement with powerflex, it's like a brand new car.

It definitely could be the shifter cables, or maybe even something like a leaky clutch slave cylinder, or possibly even worn engine mounts that are making it harder to shift.

 

I had this issue once when I had mine sitting a few months. Really had to force it in, hasn't happened since.

I'm about to change all my engine mounts to powerflex. I noticed mine were torn when I was down there last. That clunky shift drives me nuts. I'll update after I do to see if it helps at all.
Kinda hoped the fluid swap would fix it