330ci Gearbox problem

[saleen836]

Mrs Saleen has a problem, the gear lever wont sit in it's correct position when not in gear!
For example....when driving along in 5th and you pull it out of gear the lever sits below 5th so you have to move it back across to between 3 and 4 which is where it should sit when in neutral, because of this when you are changing from say 2nd to 3rd you have to hunt around the box for the gear you want.
Hopefully that will make sence and someone on here will have suffered the same problem?

Any ideas?

[TheEnd]

Yep, I think it has something to do with a spring in the box, it is fairly common too, but I can't remember if it was an easy fix (remove a cover plate, and swap a small spring without losing a ball bearing in there) or something horrible where the box needs to be stripped down.

[Vee]

My old car had this fixed under warranty. Replacement spring and/or bush.
A long time ago so can't remember how long it took them or what it would have cost.
Very annoying thing to live with

[cslwannabe]

Mine only did it when cold - after 5 or 10 minutes it operated normally. Ended up with a replacement gearbox as I had a BMW extended warranty at the time.

[saleen836]

Thanks for the replies, a 5min search on the net and it seems to be a common problem that can be fixed with a part costing around £15 (detent spring) hopefully the labour cost wont be too much!

[a_bread]

Mine did this but not all the time. I was told (perhaps wrongly) that it was a big expensive job so I never had anything done about it. It didn't bother me much, nor did it get remarked on by the guy who bought the car from me.

[Fox-]

I had this on my 530i. BMW's answer was to replace the entire transmission under warranty.

[dooosuk]

I had the problem on my last 330ci sport. Never gave me a problem and was never a problem when people were test driving it.

I'd leave it alone/as is.

[steve_n]

I had this fixed on my 330Ci when the gearbox was stripped to replace a couple of synchros. The linkages get dirty and clogged and springs etc. Not sure exactly how it was fixed but I was under the impression you do need to open up the gearbox. Labour was about £400 I think plus removal from the car.

[georgejoshington]

Yep, mine suffers from this too. Only really when cold so after ten minutes or so of driving it goes away. Have been told it's an expensive fix so I wouldn't bother.