E60 Lurching Auto Gearbox

David

My E60 holds first gear for slightly longer than you would think when cold, as all automatic cars do.  This is to warm the cat or cats up.  This does cause a bit of a rough shift from 1st to 2nd.

Is your problem when pulling away with a cold engine, i.e. you start the car and drive off and you have the problem?

Problem is that BMW are clueless when it comes to autoboxes.  All they will do is press the switch on and switch off buttons or Ctrl, Alt and Delete Keys.

I'm not sure if the gearbox management software is one and the same with the engine management software, years ago fuel injected auto cars had a black box for the engine and a black box for the gearbox.  So tweaking the engine management system might not be much use if they are two different systems, although they will 'talk' to each other.

Car is still under warranty so I would hang off from sending it to an Automatic Transmission Specialist, I would take it back to a different BMW dealer and say you are not happy with it.

Autobox faults are very difficult to diagnose correctly without taking it to someone who knows what they are doing with autoboxes I'm afraid.

There isn't too many E60 owners on here to help, I didn't notice your post yesterday.

Keep us posted.

Andrew

bmwcare wrote: "ugly" BMW's

By that you mean current 3, 5 and 7?

I like my 5.  The E60 grew on me during the years of E39 ownership.  I still think that a dark blue 2003 E39 Sport is the dogs dangly bits.

I'm noticing all the subtle differences between the E60's.  You can still spot the 520d owners who have de-badged it to hide the fact that it is a 4 pot oil burner.  They have black grills and a single tail pipe.

....anyway back on topic, Eddie has obviously summed it up better than I could in terms of the engine/autobox management systems.

It's all interesting stuff

Andrew

David

Have you just bought this car?

The autoboxes fitted to the more modern BMW's 'learn' how to change gear by monitoring what the driving is doing with the throttle and what speed the car is doing.  They are AGS autoboxes which stands for I think Adaptive Gearshifts or something which means that they learn.

If you have just bought the car you may find the car is still learning how to change gear with a new driver at the wheel.

I have owned my E60 for nearly 6 weeks now and the gear change is definitely smoother than when I first bought it.  The previous owner and the garage it sat at for 2-3 months before I bought it must have driven it differently from me so the car tried to change gear differently from when I first drove it.

My E39 also did this, every time I put it into BMW for a service,the car would come back with the tranny wanting to change gear differently, i.e. harsher, probably due to the fact that the mechanic who test drove it probably thrashed it on the test drive.

Just after buying my E39 I was driving along a country road or rather crawling along with my wife hanging out the window taking pictures.  As I was only moving at a crawl the car never got out of 1st gear so when she had finished taking pictures and I drove off, the tranny held onto first gear too long for my liking and I manually shifted into 2nd.  During this length of time the autobox had learnt a new driving style and thought I wanted to stay in first gear so hung onto first for longer than my liking.

The problem will be more noticeable when cold for the reasons outlined in one of my earlier posts and your wife will notice it worse because she will drive the car differently from you and from the previous owner from whom the car learnt its gearshift pattern from.

If it is a new car to you, give it a couple of weeks and see how you get on.  If you still think it is wrong just take it back to the dealer and explain that you are not happy with it.  Even try and get them to sit in the passenger seat to experience what you are finding.

Keep us posted

Andrew

Andrew Rolland wrote: You must have a manual!

Yep - my car was never specced with an auto.

Andrew Rolland wrote:  People spec autoboxes on the big posh cars when new,

So that makes mine non-posh

BB

That is some good info regarding why the autobox holds the gear and it makes sense, it's just I didn't like having the engine rev so high before it would shift into 2nd so I did it myself.  O.k. yes the engine didn't reach the red line or anything, I just thought it was totally unnecessary to have it rev its guts out when it could shift into 2nd gear.  Stoopid computers!

I'm pretty sure the handbooks call it AGS and not ATC.

Andrew

Sorry, got it wrong...

The gearbox rules out first gear and keeps the car in second gear when stuck in traffic. Been some time since I read this...

This is for the early boxes and not the E60, but I only imagine it gets better...and makes for good reading...

http://www.unofficialbmw.com/e34/specs/all_adaptive_trans.ht ml

BB