Hi All,
I bought my wifes car about 2 years ago and she loves it, but I'm having a few problems with the tranny. Wife does not know much about cars or dealers so I said "take it to the dealer watch what happens" They charged her around 3 hundred to look at it and change the oil. Quoted her about 5k for stupid crap like seat sensor, radiator fan, engine mount, spark plugs, wishbone bushings etc etc and couldn't really advise her on what was up with the tranny. They said they need to pull it off to investigate. Well anyway I said no for anything except change the oil because I don't fancy trying to find somewhere to dump that crap. I'm kinda enviromently friendly in that respect. Although looking at BP's disaster 4/5 quarts is nothing. Anyway I repaired my wifes car for about 1200 dollars from various parts off the web and all is good except she still has a transmission issue. There appears to be a rattle noise coming from it which might just be the thrust bearing or pressure plate and it's difficult to get into gear at junctions. But I've been looking through fourms and seeing people change out quaifes and bearing seals behind the flywheel transmission seals, gaskets , but looks to be the older ones. My question is would there be a problem in the actual transmission or do you think I can get away with just changing out the pressure plate/thrust bearing? It's a 2006 cooper with 80k miles on it.

 

At 80K it's very possible that it needs a clutch, since you're having trouble getting it into gear at stops (if I read your post correctly). However, it's also not unusual for the dual mass flywheels they use to make a rattling noise at idle. If that's the case there's nothing wrong that needs to be fixed right away.

BTW, if you change your own oil, all you need to do is take it to your nearby parts house, they'll add it to their own and it will get recycled properly - no environmental consequences unless you spill it!

 

I think the clutch was serviced around 40 thousand miles by mini I have a service report somewhere. Bought the car at 52k. It looks like I need to drop the subframe to replace the clutch. I just don't want to drop it and find out I have to rebuild a tranny. Preperation is the main dealeo. Thanks for the info on the oil change. Actually thanks for the info on everything. Hopefully I can get this fixed and one less nag..ya know how that goes lol.