Hey all,

I'm in the process of fixing up an R50 that my girlfriend bought as her first car of her own. I've noticed that it's not exhibiting the typical Mini CVT symptoms, and I was wondering if anyone else experienced this, and whether my hypotheses are correct.

Basically, when the car is put into any forward gear, the transmission will be seriously reluctant to engage. If it's cold, it will engage a LOT easier, but even so, you have to keep the revs around 3,000, and it will just barely creep on. After about 10 seconds of that, it violently jerks into gear, and then it's perfect for the rest of the drive; it shifts great and doesn't over-rev or anything funny. If you take it out of D, this will repeat, except it will REALLY not want to move when it's hot--but eventually, and with lots of cringing, it will; one huge clunk and she's back in gear. That's already kinda weird behaviour, but here's the real kicker: reverse works perfectly every time. It engages immediately and without slippage.

At first, I tried a few superficial fixes, like adding a bit of fluid on the off chance it was a bit low, and installing a new battery, since I've heard that can cause issues and it had a 6 year old one. Neither helped one bit. The transmission isn't throwing a CEL for this, so I decided to take the pan off.

The previous owner said he had the transmission serviced at a BMW mechanic ~500 km before selling it to me, and that it helped the issue a bit. I figured that meant they flushed it and changed the filter, but I took the pan off, and the magnet was about as dirty as you'd expect to see between a fluid change or two. The filter may or may not be the cause of this, and it will be replaced, but my main interests were in the solenoids. I think there should be 3--one to control the pressure, one for the variator, and one for the torque converter. It could probably be any of them, but my best guess is the variator, since it seems like this CVT uses a normal gear for R.

It just doesn't make a ton of sense to me that it will act fine once getting "into gear." The shift lever isn't improperly adjusted or anything. If the belt were bad or the variator solenoid were sticking, wouldn't this also be coupled with rough shifting or other slippage? If anyone here has experienced this exact combination of symptoms, please, let me know. I would love to have some light shined on this. I would rather replace a solenoid than pop in a secondhand transmission with unknown mileage.

Thanks!

 

Did you figure it out?

What was it?