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I take care of both cars equally as meticulously since my parents are not as familiar with cars as I am. Still, I take care of mine (the 90 740) because this forum is such a wonderful resource.
Sometime recently (not sure exactly when) the Bimmer's transmission went out. A chime sounded and a message came on on the admittedly better computer of the 525i: TRANS PROGRAM. At the time, I was doing about 60MPH. I tried to accelerate, it was very slow and very weak. It was in limp home mode. I pulled over and stopped the car at a bus stop and shut it off. The manual said that this error means something is wrong with the "Transmission Control Module." The car started up 5 minutes later just fine, and the message was no longer there. It accelerated just as well as it always did and there did not appear to be any problems.
I thought to myself that this sounded like a tiny little box that does transmission control and that it would not be too expensive to replace and do it myself. I was wrong.
The very next day, Saturday, I brought the 525i to my mechanic as well as my 740 to have some work done. My 740 was getting the cat and front muffler replaced as well as the swaybar end links. The 525i I wanted to check out just in case. Furthermore, the 525i was having a fault "coolant level" message showing up even though coolant was obviously fine.
The mechanic checked the Bimmer's tranny fluid, and told us he'd replace it just because we had never done it in the 3 years of owning the vehicle. They dropped the pan down just to take a look, and lo and behold, a little orange ring/seal was sitting in the pan.
At this point in time, I was at the movie theater in line getting tickets for X2. I called my father to check up on him and as he related the situation to me, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
I went and picked them up in my trusty 740. Right now, the BMW is sitting in the shop as they figure out exactly what happened.
The 740 had taken a LOT more abuse than the BMW ever did. The only major job I've had to do on the 740 is when I blew out my rear differential while accidentally doing a neutral drop at 5000RPM. Prior to that, it took even more abuse when I was 17 and in the "stupid" phase and doing neutral drops from 3000RPM. And still, today, the tranny is holding up very very strong, and takes my "manual shifting" of it very well. I've never done any sort of thing like that to the Bimmer when I took it out.
In conclusion,
Volvo: 1
BMW: 0
:) Thanks for reading, and please, take this post with a grain of salt, it is meant for entertainment purposes, but all content contained within is true. ;)
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Kenric Tam
1990 Volvo 740 base sedan (B230F)
My Volvo 'Project'
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