RE: Opinion on 87 528e ZF Autotrans ...

[michael_kohlbrenner@xxxxxxxxxx]

- -----Original Message-----
From: Aaron and Aimee Ness [mailto:aaness@domain.elided]

> I'm interested in seeing responses to this as well - we
> have about 175,000 miles on our 528eA.  I changed the
> fluid and filter at 150,000.  I have heard from several
> people that this is a very reliable transmission, and
> that it is common to see 250,000+ miles without problems.

I also know of one guy who has around 300K miles on one of
these automatics in his '87 535i.  My '88 535is had about
150K miles on it when I sold it and the automatic was still
fine.  However, from what I've been reading on these lists,
250K milers are the exception and a large percentage of
folks experience problems in the 100K-150K mile range.

I forget all the details, but apparently the clutch pack(s)
are failure prone.  Supposedly, you could walk out to your
car right now and after driving forward, put it into
neutral and rev it up.  After a relatively short period of
time (like less than a minute), your clutch pack would be
dead.  With this sort of failure mode, I would not call the
design robust.

> I haven't experienced problems at this point.

Count yourself as one of the lucky ones.  Hopefully your
luck will hold out.  The bottom line is that these
automatics have a known failure mode that happens fairly
frequently and when it does, it costs over $2000 to fix,
unless you take the risk of installing a junkyard box.

> The owner of the Import parts shop that I frequented
> before I moved said he doesn't really hear of problems
> with this transmission, and I would say the majoity of
> his customers are buying parts for German cars.

Regardless of what he is aware of, these transmissions are
well known to have this failure mode.  Being on various BMW
lists for two years made me quite happy I was able to sell
my E28 automatic while it still worked.

I truly hope your luck holds out.

Regards,
Mike Kohlbrenner

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