Re: <e36>Transmission - progress report

["Jerry A. Cohen" <cohen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I originally posted this issue of tranmission stiffness in the lower 
gears yesterday and have had several replies that I promised to 
update folks on.  On the issue of finding out exactly what causes 
it, BMW NA will take back the original transmission and evaluate it, 
but is unlikely to report back to the technician.  This according to 
the local service rep.  As to what they will replace it with, this 
will be a remanufactured transmission.  Apparently BMW doesn't put 
new transmissions in as replacement parts.  This also according to 
the local service rep.  

Apparently BMW prefers its engineeres to take the thing apart to see 
why it failed, and/or, they really don't want anyone else to find out 
why its failing, the first of which would make good sense and the 
second would be understandable.

I have a few new questions based on the above: 

1.  Do I have any grounds or need to demand a new transmission or 
will I be just fine with the remanufactured one?  At the very least, 
the remanufactured one had to be gone over by a real person pretty 
well to eliminate any defects ( as opposed to being made by robots, 
or at least not evaluated as critically with the presumption that 
everything was fine when first made). 

2.  Is a transmission  remanufactured by BMW likely to be better 
than one taken apart and fixed by the local BMW technician; even by a 
good technician who does not spend his entire working day rebuilding 
transmissions?  

3.  Does BMW outsource the remanufacturing process and if so to whom?
Are there outsources to be avoided and if so, how?

Thanks for the help and good luck to the several of you who also 
reported low milage stiff transmissions in getting them 
fixed/replaced.  The concept of a stiff stick may be good in some 
contexts, but transmissions aren't one of them and I'm glad BMW NA 
agrees.

Jerry Cohen
1998 328 is 

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