liquid6908

Let me start off by saying that I absolutely love this car and that in the 3.5 years and almost 68k miles I've driven it, it's given me ZERO issues, until now. (By the way, I baby it, do all the scheduled maintenance at my dealer and do not push the car nearly as much as I'm sure some others here do.)

I recently noticed a low grinding noise while coasting between 25 and 35mph. No other symptoms though - no jerkiness in changing gears or any other weird behavior. I took it in to get checked out at my dealer and they came back with this: while their diagnostics system didn't throw any flags, they're fairly confident the transmission is going and needs to be replaced. While they're in there, might as well replace the flywheel too. Total cost: $11,000 plus tax.

I'm going to get the car checked out by an independent shop that specializes in BMWs and Audis soon to get a second opinion, but in the meantime I was wondering if you folks had any experiences with this or a similar issue. Is the price appropriate? I'm hoping it would be a chunk less at an independent shop - am I deluding myself? Could it possibly be something other than the transmission, or could it be repaired rather than replaced?

I'm also weighing other options. Rather than getting it replaced, should I just take the hit, sell the car to the dealer at a reduced value and get into a new car? I have about $15,000 left on the loan, and the car is valued at about $22k on KBB (not accounting for the busted transmission) so I'm assuming after everything I have just about 0 equity in it. If it comes down to it, I CAN afford the replacement, but would rather not put 12k into this car if I can help it.

Any advice on any of this would be greatly appreciated!

turbojb

Well, that sucks. Being out of warranty, I'd definitely have the other shop check it out, as I would expect the same service should be cheaper than the dealer. Maybe you luck out and it's something else, who knows. But having to pay that out of pocket, it's a huge investment. You're basically paying half the value left on the car to repair it. What would be the warranty after that, 12 months on the transmission?

Before I got my 2016 S3, I had a 2012 Mitsubishi Evo MR, also had a dual clutch transmission. At around 30k miles, leaving from a light, the odd gears 1-3-5 were gone, it would only shift 2-4-6. Turned it off, and it was back to normal. Reported it to the dealer, found no issue. Move ahead a couple of years...on cold startup, it would make some soft banging, grunting/grinding noises. Reported it to the dealer, found nothing...this went on for a few oil change appts. I had a 100k extended warranty on the car and was at about 93k miles so only had a few months left. I left the car overnight, told them take it to park it inside and start it in the morning, when it's quiet. They called me a few hours later and said, yea...something's not right and recorded the noise. They called Mitsubishi, who confirmed transmission is going. Luckily, since I was religious with service and also had reported earlier skipping issue, they didn't give me any trouble and picked up the cost...total bill almost $13,000. I got the car back and a couple of months later traded it in on the S3. Even though it never stranded me or gave me an issue other than that noise, I lost confidence in it. If it broke again after 100K, I'd basically be spending what it's worth to repair it and didn't want to take that risk.

Good luck, keep us posted, I'm interested in how this turns out and what decision you make.

FBO 335i

Sorry to hear about your issue, this really sucks, did your car have a tune? I'm surprised your transmission is having issues with only 68k miles and seems like you take care of this car really well. I agree go get it checked at a indy shop and see what they say. Good luck.

rynrynryn

oh god please don't let there be a rash of transmission issues with this car--i planned on keeping it a long time. My allroad's went out at 120k. i can live with that, but not in the 60k's. So sorry to hear about this.

Spinnetti

Get another trans from the junkyard, and swap yourself... Should be cheap, and its not that hard.