Recently I bought a 1994 530i and absolutely love the car. About a week ago my car started acting strange though. When I accelerate from a stop it seems like my car skips across the gears and when it finally catches one it lurches forward. For this particular situation, it always seems to skip twice before finally starts to move (downshifting from 3rd?). Since about a week or two after I got the car it started leaking an oily substance. I know this is not oil because of the watery composition of it, not thick like oil. I believe the source of this is where the transmission is connected to the radiator; the bottom pipe going into the radiator? Seeing as this has been leaking for about 3-4 weeks, could this be part of the problem?

Another problem, which only happened this morning (38F outside), was when I started my car it seemed to start fine but then it acted like it was going to turn off before it picked up strong again. As I mentioned, this has only happened once but I hardly think the cold weather caused this since it has been cold every morning for a week.

Here are a few details about the car:
  • Engine has 140K miles on it, body has 200k (engine replaced in 1998)
  • All fluids seem to be full (except whatever is leaking)
  • Transmission was drained of fluid and had fluids replaced by Seller of car.
  • Automatic 5 spd transmission

As a side note, I do plan on taking it to a mechanic to find the leak but would be helpful to get him to take care of everything at once.

Hopefully this all made sense and maybe someone can shed some light on one or both of these problems.

Thanks in advance,
Patrick