'08 Transmission Malfunction
 

Good afternoon from VA,

I've searched the forums and frankly am still new to them. However, I understand this is a reoccurring issue but was hoping to see if anyone had updated information. Apparently this is relatively common, but I digress.

I have a 2008 528i with 50,000 miles on it. I just bought it and thankfully have a 50% warranty that the dealer gave for a year's time. I was just looking for my daily driver and wanted to sell my SL500 which is plagued with minor issues. With this issue, I'm going to hold out on it.

While driving between Virginia and DC, going ~60 MPH in fifth gear the car wanted to downshift going up an incline in freeway traffic, the car gave the "Transmission Malfunction, Drive Moderately" message and downshifted to a low gear. I've read from older forums that this issue is pretty common. However, they're old forums and was hoping to hear if anyone had updated information.

-The advice I've read is to either have:
a) Replace the battery due to the amount of electrical systems (Going to do that anyways)
b) Have a transmission flush
c) Update software from BMW
d) About a ~1K dollar part swap
e) Full transmission replacement

With the bevy of suggestions, I was hoping there was better direction on this issue. Thank you for future comments and I will update as the issue progresses.

-JT

a) unlikely to have any effect. But if you're due, then yes do it
b) You should be changing your gearbox fluid every 50Kish miles per ZF, so yes you're due
c) band-aid fix employed by BMW, not a long term solution to anything
d) shift solenoids are the achilles heel of these transmissions.
e) shotgun blast approach that your dealer will likely recommend, they seem to be good at that sort of thing.

good luck.

I haven't had the exact problem but a problem which is closely related to what you are experiencing. Mine was a thump from 2nd to 1st when coming to a stop, plus a surge around 60kph. A full transmission flush 12l of oil (they do it twice, about 200km apart - they can only get 6l of fluid out at a time as the other 6l sits "above" the gearbox and won't drain in the pan - doing it twice means the first flush allows the old 6l of liquid to mix with the new 6l for about a 200km drive, then the second flush improves the quality of the liquid yet again) and an adaptations reset cured it.