Aaron Bakos
07-12-2007, 04:11 PM
I'll try to sum things up as best I can, in the event that someone has advice other than "find another one."
Had a bearing that was making noise, a guy in the local BMWCCA Chapter was factory trained on servicing transmissions so I gave him a shot. When I got the transmission out we tried to take it apart and we had hell with it. Found out that someone had been in there before and replaces one of the bearings with a Japanese bearing and the ID was undersized. They smashed the thing back together. It's possible that this is how it's supposed to be, but I was told that this would be considered...irregular.
Tech got the tranny apart, but it did involve beating the hell out of the input shaft. He replaced the main bearings and got it back together. I reinstalled it and learned that the input shaft was a bit mushroomed, roughly 0.015 (~.4mm). I had hell getting it back on but after the screws were started I didn't know the difference. Curse my inexperience...
Put it all back together and there was a slight clunking/clacking sound coming from the transmission. It goes away when you disengage the clutch, but not immediately, it spins down with the transmission. Talked to my tech and he thought that the difficulty I had reinstalling the transmission could be putting pressure back through via the pilot bearing, so I replaced the pilot bearing and it does the same thing.
Now the tech has bailed on me due to health reasons and I'm kinda stuck with a noisy transmission. Went from the frying pan into the fire so far...
It seems at this point the worst I'm out is the $900 it would cost me to buy a transmission from Bavarian Auto Recycling, but for that much I do get a 1yr warranty. How generous... Ideally I'd like to find a shop to fix it for me. I found some guys on www.BIMRS.org and one of them got back to me and told me that if it's been opened up in the past I'm better off to just replace it.
In summary, I either need a shop or a transmission. Help either way is appreciated!
Edit: Forgot to mention, the clunk/clack sound is roughly 25% the speed of the engine, and it's consistent.
Had a bearing that was making noise, a guy in the local BMWCCA Chapter was factory trained on servicing transmissions so I gave him a shot. When I got the transmission out we tried to take it apart and we had hell with it. Found out that someone had been in there before and replaces one of the bearings with a Japanese bearing and the ID was undersized. They smashed the thing back together. It's possible that this is how it's supposed to be, but I was told that this would be considered...irregular.
Tech got the tranny apart, but it did involve beating the hell out of the input shaft. He replaced the main bearings and got it back together. I reinstalled it and learned that the input shaft was a bit mushroomed, roughly 0.015 (~.4mm). I had hell getting it back on but after the screws were started I didn't know the difference. Curse my inexperience...
Put it all back together and there was a slight clunking/clacking sound coming from the transmission. It goes away when you disengage the clutch, but not immediately, it spins down with the transmission. Talked to my tech and he thought that the difficulty I had reinstalling the transmission could be putting pressure back through via the pilot bearing, so I replaced the pilot bearing and it does the same thing.
Now the tech has bailed on me due to health reasons and I'm kinda stuck with a noisy transmission. Went from the frying pan into the fire so far...
It seems at this point the worst I'm out is the $900 it would cost me to buy a transmission from Bavarian Auto Recycling, but for that much I do get a 1yr warranty. How generous... Ideally I'd like to find a shop to fix it for me. I found some guys on www.BIMRS.org and one of them got back to me and told me that if it's been opened up in the past I'm better off to just replace it.
In summary, I either need a shop or a transmission. Help either way is appreciated!
Edit: Forgot to mention, the clunk/clack sound is roughly 25% the speed of the engine, and it's consistent.