I just got a 2009 mini cooper s and was loving it until today. Have had the car for exactly a week now and prior to today was shifting so smoothly a blind person would have guessed it was an automatic.

today, any shift after first was jerky after in gear. I've been driving stick for many years so it has nothing to do with lack of experience.

My car when purchased only had 5,800k miles and now almost 6,500.....not sure if that has any to do with anything.....but just fyi.

after reading some threads on here am getting nervous about my purchase.....

any advice or ideas on what it could be, or am i just being paranoid?

 

I never knew how screwed up stuff I owned was until I started reading forums on the internets.

 

Ha... Yeah, what he said! Too true...

Okay, as for the problem; does it feel like the jerkiness is in the clutch or the engine itself?

Spridget

 

Is there any appreciable difference in temp? It seems to me that when cold, mine acts similar regardless of if it is in or out of sport mode. However, when it is warmer out, the shift seems smoother. Could be in my head tho.

 

MooshiMini, if you're talking about the actual shifting, I had the same problem. I bought mine new and it shifted like a dream, or at least I never noticed a problem in the first month or two of ownership. One day I was driving and found myself thinking this was the worst MT car I ever owned... irregular, unpredictable engagement. I found the clutch releasing too early or too late, sometimes stalling it, though I was doing basically the same thing every shift. I kind of thought it may have something to do with the non-linear, turbo power delivery since this is my first turbo (and hopefully last unless its a Porsche).

Anyway, the clutch pedal assembly was bad. The fourth complete assembly finally fixed it, eliminating the unpredictable engagement. It now shifts almost as well as my Miata, and much better than most of my other cars.