hey all,

i picked up my royal grey 2006 MC on saturday and have been grinning ever since.

it seems, however, that reverse might be a bit wonky. it's a manual BTW.

i park the car in my carport, which, of course, has a flat floor. it sits at the bottom of my very short, fairly steep driveway (when reversing out of the garage, i go ~40ft in reverse to get to the street, with a rise of ~8-10ft). The car is somewhat reluctant to make it up the hill, sometimes doing a jerking-about-to-stall dance. it also whines loudly when reversing at any speed and on any terrain. are these behaviors normal?

also, especially when the car is cold, putting it into reverse garners a small but noticeable 'crunch'. not a loud noise or anything, but an audible sound and some resistance at the stick.

if both of these are completely normal, you won't hurt my feelings any by pointing that out - it's been a while since i had a stickshift as a primary car (my better half has a manual '97 accord which i drive regularly, but i don't think that would a reasonable benchmark. those of you who have driven similar cars will understand why )

in case it's important to considering this, the car has just under 32k. it is still within the 3/36 maintenance program, the original warranty, and has an additional MINI Next warranty, so do let me know if it sounds like it needs a trip to the dealer - after the XJR i traded on this, it would almost be a pleasant feeling to get a repair under warranty

 

The first one almost sounds like you are lugging the engine. How many RPMs are you at when you are doing this?

The second part is normal. The reverse gear is a straight cut gear (where as the rest of the transmission uses helical gears), which mean it is noisy when it is working. My dads 08 accord has even louder reverse than the MINI fwiw.

 

I'm not sure if this would work for a MC's Midlands, but with the MCS's Getrag, you can move the shifter from 1st to 2nd to 'line up' the transmission before going into reverse. I'm sure others will attest that it works. Perhaps you can try something similar by going from 4th to 5th or 3rd to 4th before entering reverse.

Furthermore, sometimes this 'lining up' doesn't work and reverse still has resistance to it. Not the normal resistance you have to slap past to get into the reverse gate, but resistance forward from that point. Rather than forcing it farther, I apply slight pressure forward, then let the clutch out ever so slightly until the lever is pulled into reverse and I imidiately push the pedal back down. Then just set off normally. This might work for your Midlands.

 

MC manual transmissions were changed from Midlands to 5 spd Getrag starting from '05.

In my '06 MC cabrio, sometimes the reverse won't engage completely when I try to shift into it. It's like the gears aren't lined up well enough to let them fit together. The shifter feels vague and in fact the shift lever doesn't quite go all the way to the correct position. At this point if I started to let in the clutch, there would be a brief grind, then the reverse engages and I actually see the shift lever move by itself the final half inch into the full position. If I notice the condition when I initially shift in reverse, I put it back in neutral and either let the car roll an inch or pull forward a tiny bit. Then when I shift into reverse again, the gears do engage, which I can tell by the feeling and position of the shift lever.

 

rkw, my '06 cabrio does that too. I was wondering about that, and was going to be another thing to bring up when I bring it in for Inspection I soon.