The dealer SA just called me back. He said that he was just called by BMW NA, responding to the call he made on Monday. They are sending out a NEW transmission as soon as they can. When it arrives, they'll give me a loaner car for the duration of the repair.
TWEET227:
Here's the quick as possible version:
On a cold start, put the car in reverse, backup 20 - 40 feet, put it in drive. Step on the gas and the engine will rev up to 2000 rpm and gradually start pulling after 3 - 7 seconds. It only does it the first time on a cold start. It goes away until it is cold for at least 10 hours, like something is draining down that shouldn't.
Via this board, we have identified at least 3 others with the same problem. One of those trannys was replaced about a month ago.
The dealer had no info about the problem. BMW NA sent out a technician to work on it twice. On mine they played around with reprogramming the transmission, telling the dealer that it was a cold low hydraulic pressure problem. They boosted the cold startup pressure. This fixed it for 2 weeks and the problem came back.
When they thought they had fixed it, the dealer said that the reprogramming was to be issued as a recall or service advisory. It's not clear to me if this was issued as an actual recall as of yet, but it appears to be a bigger problem than just software. I have a lot of hands on experience debugging software that controls electrical/mechanical/hydraulic industrial equipment, and this just seemed like a hardware problem to me. I had told the dealer previously that I was doubtful that it was software, unfortunately, it looks I was right.
I'll post updates as I know more.
![[:D]](/images/smilies/biggrin.png "Big Grin [:D]")
