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

["Aaron and Aimee Ness" <aaness@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Looking on AllData, I saw a series of TSBs referring to this transmission.
It's hard to tell just looking at the titles, but it looks like they are
pointing to clutch pack failures as well.  The car has spent its whole life
in Indiana and Ohio, in areas that don't require emissions testing.  I don't
know about all of Ohio, but a friend who grew up in Cincy tells me that
inspection there (at least when my car lived in Ohio) consists of checking
to see that the emissions equipment is in place.

Is there anything else besides the clutch packs that tends to go bad?  Does
a rebuild basically consist of replacing these and cleaning things up?  I'm
not afraid to get deep into mechanical systems - I'm an engineer with
responsibility for maintenance activities in a fairly heavily automated
injection molding operation, and I'm equipped with a good selection of
tools, including an engine hoist and a Bentley.  If mine does die
eventually, maybe I could put it back on the road for a reasonable cost.  I
wouldn't mind tackling a 5-speed swap if the need arose, but my wife wants
an automatic.

Thanks in advance,
Aaron
'87 528e
'88 325is?
'70 Beetle
'82 GPz550

- ----- Original Message -----
From: <michael_kohlbrenner@domain.elided>
To: <bmw-digest@domain.elided>
Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2002 3:31 PM
Subject: RE: Opinion on 87 528e ZF Autotrans ...


> -----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.

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