4.8 transmission woes

Has anyone out there experienced any weird behavior from their 6 speed auto tranny in the 4.8? Mine has never shifted right. Always seems to shift from 1st to 4th, then you have to kick down just to get in the right gear. it is always hunting around for gears. it alwys seems to bog the engine. approaching a stop sign, it will shift down to 2nd and then 1st while the car is still going too fast for that low of a gear. Switching to sports mode is even worse. It puts the shift points higher in the rpm range, but it still seems to function like it is intended for a torque band that this engine doesn't have. The dealer says this is normal, but I can't hardly believe that. the only way I can drive the car is manually.

I get the breaking problem also, rapid deceleration from gear switching, but no problems accelerating. Not as much control as a stick shift, but I always take off smoothly when I floor it. I have adjusted my driving when breaking to eliminate the sudden down shift, most of the time. Somewhat of a pain in the butt for such a pricey vehicle. Still I enjoy it

This sounds very similar to the problem I recently had with my 2002 4.6. It would downshift and then struggle to upshift whether in steptronic or automatic. I took it to the dealer a couple of times and their answer was that a firmware update didn't hold and needed to be reapplied... this was the only answer BMW has as of recent for this sort of behaviour. Well, as expected it kept happening so I took it in again and they kept it for the week before finally figuring out that the temperature sensor in the transmission was faulty. They replaced or adjusted it (I believe replaced) and voila! Been running great since. And thank goodness because it felt like I was driving an absolute beater on the road, it would downshift inappropriately and then struggle to upshift, very jerky, and performance was non-existant.

The behaviour you are describing is not appropriate for an X5 of any calibur. I would demand at the very minimum that they replace the temperature sensor in the tranny on a car that new.

Joe's response is correct, it should be a bit jerky especially on downshifting which is to serve as a "close to feel as possible" replacement for a manual transmission without the pain in the a** clutch which would be a nightmare in ATL traffic. I drive in steptronic mode 99% of the time.

Let us know the verdict!

There is a fix that your BMW dealer will have that reprograms the downshifting problem in both the regular and sport modes.


Has anyone out there experienced any weird behavior from their 6 speed auto tranny in the 4.8? Mine has never shifted right. Always seems to shift from 1st to 4th, then you have to kick down just to get in the right gear. it is always hunting around for gears. it alwys seems to bog the engine. approaching a stop sign, it will shift down to 2nd and then 1st while the car is still going too fast for that low of a gear. Switching to sports mode is even worse. It puts the shift points higher in the rpm range, but it still seems to function like it is intended for a torque band that this engine doesn't have. The dealer says this is normal, but I can't hardly believe that. the only way I can drive the car is manually.