Engine Drivetrain 1st Gen Cooper S Most liked posts in thread: Recalcitrant shifting when cold

How about adding some gutters behind the louvers to channel the water away!! :biggrin5::biggrin5:


Just a kidding. Hope it all turns out well.

 

Sounds like your car got herpes or something from that TR7 the louvers came off of. Typical. TR7's are just a cesspool of British car contagion... I know. I still have this awful rash I caught from mine, 25 years later.

 

I just did a set on an '02 Cooper S, they're relatively easy to change, but fiddly. You have to remove the exhaust - but only take it loose at the headpipe, you don't have to remove it from the car. Then you have to remove all the thin aluminum shielding, which is just a matter or undoing some screws and bolts. The hardest part for us was getting the cables off the balls on the shifter and on the transmission end, the best way turned out to be an open end wrench of the appropriate size to pop them off....

I had a similar problem with my '03 JCW, since my cars live outside, if it was below 25* in the am, either I had to just let it idle and warm up, or I had to force the lever to move, once it did it gradually got better till it was driveable, but it was a big PITA.

Something that would never happen in nice warm sunny Texas!

Hope you got the right cables, there are two different ones depending on which style of shifter stack you have.....

 

Maybe Gnat wants to become a CVT. :eek6:

 

And nobody commented on the fact that I called the problem......:confused5:

I tell you I get no respect (in his best Rodney Dangerfield voice)

Welding it like that (new fix) you might as well leave that one on Nathan, it will never come loose again, where the OEM one that's staked like your original probably will work loose at some point, just like yours did.

 

I would also recommend have the oil in the diff changed at this time. I was ready to reply to your post cables, but it was in the body of the post.

John & Anson will get you squared away.

Steve bought a clutch for his MINI only to discover once up on the lift it was cables.

 

I didn't know they still used cables. You mean the ECU doesn't do all that shifting stuff. :crazy:

Jim

 

This makes sense... hope that's all it is Nathan

 

No idea your gear oil was so minty fresh.

 

Those buggers can be a pain to pry off under the stick shift....I'm sure Mini has a special tool for it?

 

Yup...had to look up that word...

 

aha! I was working on an early '02 S.

See? Learn something every day and every time I come to M/A!

 

Yea....the 03's, you gotta know what month even. When I did my B&M short shifter, had to know what month build it was, because of the cables.

 

...........toward authority.

Perhaps Gnat just didn't want to go into the gear you wanted and you were becoming too authoritative. :lol:

Jim

 

I'll bet it was one of the ball studs on the transmission end that worked loose. They're just staked on and over time can work loose.

When I helped my buddy put the clutch in his '02 last month we had to replace his cables too, he lives in Dallas so he's never had the freezing problem that we in cold country get - but while we had the tranny out I found one of his loose, but didn't have a welder handy so I just re-staked it tight again.

If that's what it was it's a good thing that he saw it and fixed it......