Friend is looking at the car for her soon to be 16 year old son. Error message says Transmission Malfunction. Don't know if that means rebuild, replace, reset? Is this still a good car or do we back away slowly?
Friend is looking at the car for her soon to be 16 year old son. Error message says Transmission Malfunction. Don't know if that means rebuild, replace, reset? Is this still a good car or do we back away slowly?
If it's bad enough to be throwing errors it is probably rebuild territory. Pass. It probably has one of the GM transmissions if that's any consolation, but my dad's did 224k on the original GM tranny with nothing but fluid changes until it died in an accident. When we bought it it was over 100k on the original fluid and just felt a little "rough" which was cured by a few drain-and-fills, never any errors.
Generally speaking they can be good cars if they have received good maintenance. For a 16 year old I would put them in something more appliance-like.
That warning is about as generic as an MIL. Could be a hundred different things.
Plan for a new/rebuilt transmission if they're not going to have it diagnosed before purchasing.
Thanks, talked to a local high end import mechanic and he encouraged me to encourage her to run away!
That car has a ZF 6HP26. The last GM transmission they used was the 4L30E in a 5 series was 1999. Last one in a BMW was the 2000 Z3
Expect a rebuild on that ZF to be either $6000 at a normal shop and they won't have a clue how to build it (translated; it will be worse when they're done with it) or $10,000 to replace it with a BMW reman.
I ran 13 Transmission shops over 7 years. There are two transmissions we hated touching: ZF and Jatco. A close third would be any of the VW automatics that were descendants of the Renault years; 01M, 01A, 018.
ZFs are finicky and very complex and require incredible precision to build. Easy to get one of a thousand things off by the slightest bit and the next thing you know you're paying your techs dozens of hours for in/out, teardown/build again.
curtis73 wrote: That car has a ZF 6HP26. The last GM transmission they used was the 4L30E in a 5 series was 1999. Last one in a BMW was the 2000 Z3
D'oh, I was looking at this post on my phone and saw "2000", not 2008! Really need to wear my glasses more often these days...
pointofdeparture wrote:curtis73 wrote: That car has a ZF 6HP26. The last GM transmission they used was the 4L30E in a 5 series was 1999. Last one in a BMW was the 2000 Z3D'oh, I was looking at this post on my phone and saw "2000", not 2008! Really need to wear my glasses more often these days...
No judging here... I just got my first set of bifocals the other day. 
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