Re: Auto Transmission Service

[Randy S Whitney <rsw@xxxxxx>]

On Thu, Aug 29, 2002 at 01:44:29PM -0500, alex.fadeev@domain.elided <alex.fadeev@domain.elided> wrote:
> Henri Baccouche <henrib@domain.elided> wrote:

> > The two 5HP30's at over 200,000 miles, these are the (never rebuilt)
> > original equipment units ?
> > Driven by conservative or "sporting" drivers ?
> 
> I've checked with two Lone Start service advisors and both confirm
> increasingly frequent sightings of 200+K mile GM/ZF slush boxes.
> Non-rebuild, non-babied and some not particularly well maintained.

Did you ask them about "5HP30" transimissions specifically, as Henri
had inquired, or just GM/ZF transmissions in general? Sounds to me like 
it was the latter. 

> Based on the information I've collected over the last two weeks, I'm forced
> to draw the following two conclusions:
> 1. Henry's claims of massively failing GM/ZM automatics in under 125K mils
> is unsubstantiated scare mongering. Most of the heavily driven E36 cars are
> crossing the 200K mile mark without any transmission issues.

I believe the thread started because a list member was asking about
problems with an _E34_540i_ transmission, NOT an E36, which uses an
entirely different transmission. As one who actually _owns_ a '94 540i,
I can assure you the 125K mile failure on _that_ transmission, the
5HP30, is a very REAL and very costly event. As a side note, the 5HP30
also went into most of the 7's and 8's of the day, but not the vehicles
with the sixes and fours (525is, 3-series), so the comment about the
E36s reaching 200K is not relevant.

> 2. There are a lot of insinuations originating from clueless BMW dealers
> and a few BMW-Digest posters on the subject of partially or completely
> flushing lifetime fluid out of GM/ZM slush boxes. "All or nothing" and
> "your transmission will fail if you touch it" rumours are bullshit. Filling
> these boxes with RedLine D4 ATF is the recommended course of action for
> anyone who wants to have his/her slush-box shift well past 200K miles.

Perhaps you could cut out the cursing and inflammatory rhetoric in your 
posts, which just makes people dislike you and skip over your posts. 
Instead, try to contribute REAL content to the list by 1/ taking the 
time to determine the actual problem space being discussed (ie 5HP30 
failures vs ALL ZF/GM trannys) and 2/ reading through the archives (or 
at least the complete thread) before posting your response. If you had
done so in this case, you would have learned that there was a design
flaw in the early-model 5HP30s that caused the premature failures, thus
this problem is a real and well-documented event.
- --
Randy.
'94 540i (Block Replaced @72K, Tranny Replaced @125K)
'87 325is (No major problems and sorely missed)

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