The Automatic Gearbox And Its Failings
Discussion
Clivey said:
I only have a 170ps 320i (2003, E46, manual) but can spin the rears (255 wide!) through 2nd in the wet if I want to. In the dry, it's like a limpet unless you're acting like a hooligan.
That's interesting, I'm trying to recall a drive that I did back in the wet one night in winter when I was trying to provoke the back a little. It took a lot of effort and the right radius of corner to get the chassis set up to even get the back moving, let alone getting the wheels spinning in a straight line.Interesting that you can use it in a hooligan manner and get spin whereas I get no spin at all throughout 1st gear in a car with another 80hp. I tried a few things last night like holding both pedals down and lifting off the brake. It felt brutal to do, but didn't feel any different to pulling away going from brake to throttle and gave no wheelspin. I tried dropping the car from neutral into drive with some meaningful revs showing, but the 'box won't let me select drive if the revs are much higher than at tickover, so I had to put my foot on the foot brake again and wait for the revs to die down before selecting drive. The car feels like it's been intentionally shot in the foot by BMW. It won't dance in the dry whatever I try.
Clivey said:
bennyboysvuk said:
That's interesting, I'm trying to recall a drive that I did back in the wet one night in winter when I was trying to provoke the back a little. It took a lot of effort and the right radius of corner to get the chassis set up to even get the back moving, let alone getting the wheels spinning in a straight line.
So you're saying you can't slide the tail (out of a second gear corner, for example) either? 256BHP should be enough even with wide tyres. Can you do a doughnut in it (obviously off the public highway for any professionally-offended dorks that may be reading)? I'm certain that you can do this in a manual 330i. Have a look at this for a quick example (that's a 325i).I guess I can paint lines, but with the front wheels instead of the rear. It reminds me of driving a Metro, except I had a manual Metro so it was more fun.
E65Ross said:
There's a difference between having enough power to do it, and actually doing it. You don't see any racing drivers doing that.
Secondly, what's that got to do with the gearbox? My mate can easily smoke the rears in his C63 AMG with its automatic gearbox.
Loads of F1 drivers spin up their wheels just as they're forming for the grid. They also spin the wheels at the start too (unintentionally though).Secondly, what's that got to do with the gearbox? My mate can easily smoke the rears in his C63 AMG with its automatic gearbox.
It's frustrating that a 320 manual can smoke its tyres yet my 330 auto with around 80hp more can't.
jamieduff1981 said:
Why not buy a better car then?
Because I've only had it 6 months and the missus thinks it's the best thing since sliced bread. She's getting a company car in a couple of months time though (not sure what the options will be yet) and we discussed selling the 330 at that stage. If the company car is large enough, then the 330 will go and I will drive the 120D that we have instead, which is a much, much more involving car to drive than the 330. If the company car ends up being a 1 series then we'll keep the 330 and I will no doubt start a thread discussing the merits of fitting M3 suspension arms and bushes to it, plus amendment of the coding using edibas since the warning gong in the 330 is an awful noise. I'd still have to live with the auto though, but I'd hope that it can be mapped to release full torque in 1st and 2nd (somebody mentioned on this thread that it might be limited).jamieduff1981 said:
Why not get rid of both and get something decent? The 120d is a nice chassis but the engine is s
t and really lets the car down. It's so peaky and slow to respond to pedal inputs that you just can't enjoy that chassis properly without overcommitting to corners like an idiot.
Ditch both and get something that's actually driving focused - a 1M, M135, M3 or perhaps even something from another manufacturer!
We do need an estate car for family duties and my perfect solution would be an E46 M3 Touring, but that doesn't exist. I know what I want though:t and really lets the car down. It's so peaky and slow to respond to pedal inputs that you just can't enjoy that chassis properly without overcommitting to corners like an idiot.Ditch both and get something that's actually driving focused - a 1M, M135, M3 or perhaps even something from another manufacturer!
Estate car
RWD
Few driver aids
LSD
Manual gearbox
Edited to add that the 1 series chassis is indeed excellent. I find the engine a means to an end in it though, but at the time of purchase, the diesel made sense. I would consider PX-ing it for a 130i though.
Edited by bennyboysvuk on Friday 25th July 10:50
DonkeyApple said:
Go to Ebay and buy a set of 318 or 320 wheels. Your tyres will then be half the price and the right ones for the car.
That's not a bad idea. I've considered replacing the rear Michelins once they wear out with some ditchfinders to restore some sort of handling balance.Clivey said:
What tyres are on it (make/model/sizes)? I don't know about the E90 but the E46 is very sensitive to them and if you drive one on the "wrong" rubber, you won't come away enamoured with it.
It's running Michelin PS2s 225 front, 255 rear. I've tried putting 40psi in the rears to increase oversteer and keeping the fronts at the regular pressure, but the front camber isn't enough to keep the tyres planted, so the top of the 'Michelin' logo is being slowly scrubbed from the sidewall.ORD said:
For me, the more heinous crime is the chronic understeer in the 3 series. Never mentioned by the fawning press but so bad it's almost dangerous. When I had a 320d for a few days, I explained to my wife that it will in fact go around a corner properly if you trail brake it in and then use a bit of throttle to balance it. Her perfectly sensible response was 'I'm hardly racing the thing! It should steer by the steering wheel'.
If I had reviewed it, I would have had a section in bold saying 'This car understeers like a pig unless you manage the weight transfers yourself' which I would have thought should be inconsistent with a 5 star rating.
Before someone shouts 'driving God', most of this driving was very sedate indeed. It will understeer at the kind of speeds a granny would drive it on A roads.
The understeer really is dreadful. The most similar handling car I've owned in the past was a £325 Volvo 460. Even my shed Mondeo was far more playful. I place the blame on the thickness of the ARBs and the new front suspension design that favours positive camber of the outside front wheel during cornering, ensuring that the front end loses loads of grip mid-corner. I assume that they put a wimp of a rear ARB on to reduce the lift on the inside rear wheel during cornering so that they didn't have to fit an LSD.If I had reviewed it, I would have had a section in bold saying 'This car understeers like a pig unless you manage the weight transfers yourself' which I would have thought should be inconsistent with a 5 star rating.
Before someone shouts 'driving God', most of this driving was very sedate indeed. It will understeer at the kind of speeds a granny would drive it on A roads.
Funnily enough, my wife said something similar about the cornering.
cerb4.5lee said:
I found the understeer on the V6 mondeos to be pretty bad at times and I remember once turning into a corner and nearly ended up in a front garden of a house because it just ploughed straight on and it gave me a bit of a fright.
I don't find the understeer bad at all in my 330 but I suppose that's because I get to drive an Audi TTS regular so compared to that the 3 series will feel pretty good!!
Have you had any decent drifts in your 330 though? I've tried and failed. Maybe you were lucky and someone fitted M3 suspension parts to your car before you purchased it. I don't find the understeer bad at all in my 330 but I suppose that's because I get to drive an Audi TTS regular so compared to that the 3 series will feel pretty good!!
Ozzie Osmond said:
In the days when I had a 3 series the back was keen to overtake the front at any opportunity and the cars were often criticised for this. Now people are complaining about the built-in safety understeer which is found in pretty much every modern car.
I loved my E30 325 Sport Touring and my E36 328 Sport. Both had LSDs and no traction control and were hugely entertaining. It felt like they had very sporty drivetrains in fairly normal cars. I thought the E91 330 would be similar at least, but it doesn't have anything like the character and playful handling of those cars.
E65Ross said:
Well if you're going around a hairpin, maybe.
There and roundabout exits and s bends and dual carriageway slips, most corners really.It should feel so much more rewarding than it does, with that feeling of all four tyres being hooked up and depending on whether you close or open the throttle the chassis and line the car takes changes. Instead I could apply full lock at 45 mph on a roundabout and steer the same course with the fronts scrubbing wide. Lifting off would stop the understeer, but the front shouldn't be that unbalanced in the first place. Of course changing all the bushes, suspension arms etc would help massively but this is so different from Sports of old. They've lost their verve.
E65Ross said:
I reckon there's something amiss, if I could get the wheels to spin on an E46 330i with an automatic gearbox, no reason the more powerful and similarly-tyred E90 wouldn't.
I finally had the opportunity to test it this morning in the wet. On decent tarmac, it wouldn't spin up. However, on that really glossy, muck coated kind of tarmac it will briefly spin up, but then get traction again as soon as the auto hits 2nd. This is with the rear tyres at nearly 40psi.E65Ross said:
Either way, this thread has gone way, way off topic. Basically, you've tried slating an automatic gearbox for somewhat daft reasons and one could very easily write a similar thread about manuals (as per my somewhat sarcastic post a while ago).
It went way O/T, but it was mildly interesting. I still hate the auto, but can better appreciate how it works for others and how to go about living with it now. i.e. treat it like an idiot and use manual mode as often as required. Welshbeef said:
Turn TC off
Like I hadn't thought of that. 
I tried it with both DTC on and off.
When off it actually didn't spin at all initially on decent soaking wet tarmac, but then the tarmac changed to that glossy, smooth stuff and it spun up as it went past 5k rpm.
The auto means that it's just uber-smooth the way that it goes from a standstill to maximum acceleration and therefore doesn't really trouble the traction very much at all...and that's in the wet!
DonkeyApple said:
bennyboysvuk said:
Like I hadn't thought of that.
I tried it with both DTC on and off.
When off it actually didn't spin at all initially on decent soaking wet tarmac, but then the tarmac changed to that glossy, smooth stuff and it spun up as it went past 5k rpm.
The auto means that it's just uber-smooth the way that it goes from a standstill to maximum acceleration and therefore doesn't really trouble the traction very much at all...and that's in the wet!
Is that pressing the DTC button or holding it for 5 seconds?I tried it with both DTC on and off.
When off it actually didn't spin at all initially on decent soaking wet tarmac, but then the tarmac changed to that glossy, smooth stuff and it spun up as it went past 5k rpm.
The auto means that it's just uber-smooth the way that it goes from a standstill to maximum acceleration and therefore doesn't really trouble the traction very much at all...and that's in the wet!
The latter turns everything off the former does something else. I think just pressing it keeps DSC on but allows a little bit of traction slip. Holding it down for 5 seconds should turn the lot off.
Sheepshanks said:
Well, it doesn't really matter - if you apply a lot of (rather than full) lock at some speed then, hey, guess what, it'll understeer. If it didn't, you'd get dramatic oversteer. If it gripped at both ends the centrifugal force would probably put you into the passenger seat!
Once it starts understeering it is possible to simultaneously apply more throttle and more lock until it gets to full lock, yet steering the same course. It's as easy to do in this car as many, many FWD cars I've owned over the years, but it's a terribly boring trait in a car. What I'm trying to highlight is how much the car understeers. It's far, far less neutral than pre-2005 3 series BMWs, to a ridiculous degree. There's no balancing the front and back end through a corner on the throttle and feeling the suspension load and unload front to rear as the weight transfer changes, there is only managing understeer. It will only steer even the slightest bit neutrally when trail braking from corner entry to exit, which is the opposite of all driving recommendations and feels dreadful. I know the 3 series used to have a reputation as being a little loose at the rear in the wet, but IMO BMW have gone way too far in trying to make it unbelievably safe for the average driver. I wouldn't be surprised if all crashes in 2006+ 3 series were all front end smashes.Congrats if you got this far, I hadn't realised how much I'd babbled on.
ORD said:
I was pretty amazed at the lack of turn in on the F30 that I drove recently. It has made me really question everything that Autocar says given that they rate that car as "sublime". It handles like an Audi.
That's a disturbing line to read. It's the thing that used to distinguish BMW from most other manufacturers (Audi do 4x4 understeer, Merc do comfort/GTs and BMW used to be capable of making an all rounder with driver involvement). Is it only the M cars that are any good any more?JagXJR said:
I applaud BMW for engineering out the ability to behave like a hooligan TBH.
Fine on the track but no place for it on the roads. If your wheels are spinning and you're upside down in a field then you were not in full control of the vehicle. So well done BMW, gone up (slightly) in my estimation
That's better. Fine on the track but no place for it on the roads. If your wheels are spinning and you're upside down in a field then you were not in full control of the vehicle. So well done BMW, gone up (slightly) in my estimation
JagXJR said:
It seems from the OP's post this is not true!
Both our cars are 3 litres so why does his drive so differently?
Mine is 4 wheel drive though so spinning the wheels is not possible for a different reason.
I think it's probably our differing expectations of the gearbox, but I realise that it's not brilliant for the type of commute I have, which is when the car gets used most/hardest. It's great for driving grandparents around in though, when you're trying to drive very gently and very smoothly, it's just a shame that it's not very good at the other end of the envelope - fun and feedback.Both our cars are 3 litres so why does his drive so differently?
Mine is 4 wheel drive though so spinning the wheels is not possible for a different reason.
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