I have a 1986 BMW 325E, saloon, automatic, lemons car. Runs great and ran a race in lemons with it and never did a thing to the engine. However, during the race a driver hit the wall which somehow snapped the tranny accelerator cable. This in turn causes the tranny to never up shift until the engine red lines. The Bently manual actually indicates that I should go to the local BMW repair shop to replace this cable!?
Anyone got any clever ideas to repair this cable? Can I simply knock off the plastic wrap on the cable and then reconnect the broken pieces? It seems to be a really tight location at its entry into the tranny.
In reply to scrowner:
Sorry man the only way I know to fix an e30 automatic is to replace it with a manual
Wait, it wont shift until redline? Is that somehow different than how you were driving it beforehand? This is the way to win races right here. Cut the brakes and youll be unstoppable.
Someone here must have worked with this cable. I figured I would get a few clever responses but I would like to make the repair. I do not have the budget to replace the tranny - the lemon budget that is. Why replace the whole tranny because of a broken cable. Do I need to drop the tranny to make this repair? I am really hoping to simply reconnect the snapped cable and then adjust the accelerator body.....just looking for a push from E30 experienced help.
The issue is you have no way of monitoring the pressure internally in the transmission while adjusting the TV pressure.
If you continue to leave it unadjusted you will pop the transmission so a manual swap will still be in your future.
Since this remotely may interest someone who has and E30 automatic, the cable simply became unattached in the transmission. It can be re-attached by removing the pan of the tranny and looking near the shift entry spot of the tranny. We were able to reconnect the cable using a dental tool and a small flat head screw driver. The connection spot for the cable end is circular and has a groove on the circumference. This "valve" end rotates clockwise when the accelerator is pressed. You can rotate this valve using the screw driver and it will "lock" into a spot which allows the cable to be maneuvered into place on the valve. The end of the cable has a cylinder of metal which slides into a hole on this valve. We gave slack on the cable by loosening (not disconnecting) it on the top of the engine. Once the cable is in place, and this is a struggle to get the cable onto the circumference and get the cable end cylinder into the hole of the valve, we move the valve to become unlocked.
If the cable is busted the procedure is the same but you will have the fiddle with removing the old cable and inserting and screwing in the new cable at the entry point of the tranny. I did not need to do this but I had purchased a cable just in case we needed one and by looking at the cable it seemed straight forward to do except for the tight spot to work in.
There is a specification for the cable on top of the engine. There is a "stop" on the cable that will come close to hitting the adjustable sleeve that is nutted on to the engine bracket. This adjustable mount should be set to about .5mm of gap between the stop and the mounting sleeve. When the accelerator is pressed to the floor the gap should be about 42mm. Check the Bently manual as I may have these wrong off the top of my head.
I have read that people can adjust for a bigger gap and force the tranny to shift at a higher RPM, but I have not tested this but it seems like it would work.
