I would really like to get to the bottom of this – dropping into 2nd gear / safe mode

[Hogster]

Unfortunately the problem occurred again this morning

I shifted the gears around on Tuesday morning before I went for a drive and it was fine (despite it being as cold as it is today), but this morning the gear number started flashing after changing gear once or twice with the ignition on. It then later dropped me down into 2nd whilst driving

I will take the car to Smart Car Specialist in Guildford next week for the appointment where hopefully they can diagnose the root cause of this problem. It seemed that re-teaching the gearbox fixed the problem temporarily, but as the gearbox / clutch "learned" more whilst I've been driving the problem came back.

I really hope it's not the gear-change motors at fault as I believe they are not cheap to replace

Many thanks for any further ideas as to what might be causing this problem.

David

PS. The PO914 error code came up on my diagnostics tool again so it still seems to be related to the gear change motor(s).

[Hogster]

No definite diagnosis from Smart Car Specialist as it's such an intermittent problem. They said they've had problems with gear change motors failing in the past (although it's not a common problem, they last saw it on a car with 60k miles on the clock) so I'll be having a new set of motors fitted next Thursday ... for £411

I really hope that cures the problem for good!!

David

PS. Can't fault the service I received from Sasha and the team today though, really nice bunch of guys (and gal!)

[tolsen]

Hang on to the old gear change motors. Perhaps test output signal on an oscilloscope.

[mac999]

I'll be having a new set of motors fitted next Thursday ... for £411

Bloody hell they must be charging about £180 for labour!!!

[Hogster]

£136 for 2 hours labour as the part is around £275. They've also waived many of the diagnostic fees for me which was kind of them.

C'est la vie!

David

[tolsen]

I am convinced this is a wiring issue.

[Hogster]

Ah yes I forgot to double check the wiring when I was under the car the last weekend ... although it seems strange that re-teaching the transmission would have such a profound (and positive) effect when Mac did it for me last week? Also during the re-teaching process Mac said it looked like one of the motors needed considerably more adjustment than the other – is that right Mac? All these things make me think it's a hardware fault with the motors ... but I'm no expert!

Cheers,

David

[Hogster]

Well the gear motors have now been replaced by Smart Car Specialist ... I will report back on how successful this has been at eliminating my problems!

Fingers crossed

David

[Hogster]

Just to bring this thread to a happy conclusion, it would seem that replacing the gear-change motors has completely fixed this problem! Alleluia!

Thanks again for all your help in diagnosing it, and I'm so grateful it's behind me now.

Cheers

David

[Thrumbleux]

Just to bring this thread to a happy conclusion, it would seem that replacing the gear-change motors has completely fixed this problem! Alleluia!

Thanks again for all your help in diagnosing it, and I'm so grateful it's behind me now.

Cheers

David

Good news then. Thanks for coming back with the final result (may be a help to another in future. And for this.....

[Thrumbleux]

.........

. I might be selling the car soon and I really don't want the next owner to have to suffer with this same problem ...

Commendable.

[Hogster]

.........
Commendable.

Thanks! I wouldn't like to buy a car if the owner knew there was a problem with it but didn't tell me about it ... fix it and then sell it, or admit there is a problem and negotiate a lower price are the two options in my mind!

Oh and I've decided to keep the car for now ... until affordable electric cars have a realistic ~120 mile range I don't think we're far off that actually!

David

[Thrumbleux]

Thanks! I wouldn't like to buy a car if the owner knew there was a problem with it but didn't tell me about it ... fix it and then sell it, or admit there is a problem and negotiate a lower price are the two options in my mind!

That's how it should be. Rarely is though.

Oh and I've decided to keep the car for now ...

Makes sense - get some value from the money you have just lavished on it.

until affordable electric cars have a realistic ~120 mile range I don't think we're far off that actually!

David

Already there if you include the BMW i3 with the range extender option. 80 miles (at best) on battery alone though. There's the Tesla, but as you say, affordable is part of the brief. Their time will come and if the Western world had any gumption at all it would - while oil is cheap - be progressing generation facilities and infrastructure to enable electric cars to become a storage network for the national grid. Alas, they will wait until it is an imperative (when the oil price is astronomical) and implement a half baked solution claiming it's too expensive ignoring completely how cheaply it could have been done when oil was cheap.