BMW: Problem with 89 325i

Just an update for anyone following this saga...

The transmission is now sitting on the floor of my garage. Needless to
say, after the horrible experience of pulling this sucker, I will be
fully rebuilding it (new clutches, seals, etc) and most likely
replacing the torque converter. ZF certainly doesn't want the
bellhousing to fall off the tranny, there are 18 bolts holding it on!
They have bolts holding the tranny to the engine block that are a
serious pain to access. Even worse, the starter is bolted to the
tranny and the bolts nearly difficult to get to. With no knowledge of
the normal procedures of removing this unit, I was able to do it in
under 6 hours (vehicle on jackstands, me on my back, limited tools).
Local shop wanted $1400 just to pull (and reinstall) the tranny. They
did offer me a freshly rebuilt tranny and a drop off today, pick up
tomorrow deal for only $3100. Really irritates me what they want to
charge as a friend of mine works in a tranny shop and he said that
with the lift and tools they have it's a 2 hour job to pull it...

On Mon, 25 Aug 2003 23:56:59 GMT, there wrote:
 

there wrote:
 

$3100 for an E30 automatic tranny? A factory rebuilt from the
BMW Dealer is way cheaper than that, and even more so with
the BMW CCA clulb discount. Last year a local member paid
something like $2500 for one and had an independent shop
install it for about $500 labor.

The dealer has some catchy name for their factory rebuilt
parts program, like "Value Line" or something like that.
You might want to call them and discuss it with the parts
manager (who would be more knowledgeable about it).

As for your original tranny failure - how many miles were on
it when it blew? Has anyone been revving the engine in Park
or Neutral, like at a repair shop or during a static smog test?
Doing this will almost always terminally damage the clutch packs
in BMW automatics (and most other European cars).

You might want to check out the E30 Sport dot Net message forums too:

http://www.e30sport.net/index.php

Randy
89 325is
http://home.earthlink.net/~randylwalters/

On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 14:09:28 GMT, net (Randy
Walters) wrote:
 

Well, the car has over 200k on it. The transmission has a tag on it
that indicates it's been reconditioned somewhere down the line. The
fluid smelled a touch burnt but I've seen far worse. I'll be tearing
into it in a few hours (with some knowledgeable assistance) and hope
to have a handle on what happened then. As for revving, no one has
even driven the car in the past year and a half but me. No revving in
park or neutral in that time frame. So long as it's not too bad, I can
get all of the parts here locally and should have it back together by
the end of the weekend. When I got it out yesterday, the torque
converter felt a bit sloppy, might be that simple (but I'm going
through it anyways). Wish me luck...