Today was the day. Transmission started slipping terribly. I made it home and opened the hood. There was trans fluid(reddish color) and looks to have been coming from the hose, possibly from where the trans oil goes to the the cooler to cool it in the top radiator. I am hoping the hose just needs repair or a mechanic can seal the leak, replenish fluid and get the trans working enough to trade the car in or give me time to se other trans options.

Here are a couple of pix

 

Hopefully its just that hose. Then you can just service it and go.

 

anyone seen something like this be fixable without a whole trans swap?

 

Yea I would think so. Do you have a bentley manual?

 

Yes, just don't make any attempts to drive the car.

When you get the leak repaired, make sure to change that CVT transmission fluid every 25K miles.

 

car is being towed tonight to a NAM suggested Mini repair shop (The Rover/Mini Shop, Lake Villa , IL). My fingers are crossed.

 

UPDATE (positive one)

Thankfully, I do not need a new trans!!!!!! The bill is going to be about $800 but thats fine with me since its $4-7K to replace the trans. Per shop tech, the transmission oil cooler was cracked and leaked transmission oil which caused the trans to stop. I had the car towed and did not continue driving , this may have saved the problem form being worse or the belt breaking. Anyways , it was suggested that I change out the transmission lines with the trans oil cooler change. They filled the trans with new fluid and runs perfect. I recommend The Rover Shop/Mini shop., they were honest and worth it for me to have the car towed over an hour to get there.

 

Now I understand what is in my pictures. For those who are not so familiar with the cvt maybe this will help explain the pix. In the first pic at the top of this thread you can see two black hoses that look like they are wet from the leak. The bottom hose brings hot trans oil to the trans oil cooler (which actually looks like a a small radiator on top of the regular radiator). The black hose above brings the cooled trans fluid back to the trans.

I hope this thread can help someone in the future.