XSeries-forum

Am I right in thinking that the facelift e53 from late 53 reg on has a 6 speed auto box that is different to the earlier models ?

If so, is it any less prone to failure or are all ages of gearbox just a ticking time bomb!?

You're correct, 04 on has the later ZF box and the general opinion is that it is less prone to catastrophic failure. Not sure we have any scientific evidence of this but I'm at 114k now with fingers firmly crossed!

Thanks, read so much on here the mind boggles sometimes!

I know what you mean.... sometimes I think you can "read yourself out" of any project or prospective purchase!!

Any gearbox can cause issues.
Especially if not treated correctly / well...

The main killer is the "Sealed For Life" fluid, without specifying what "life" meant...
Therefore nobody would touch them as they thought it meant for "LIFE"
However BMW had its own view and was along the lines of "life of the vehicle" and was put at ~ 60k miles..... (so depreciation of ~£1 per mile of ownership!!)

This is where yours, mine and probably everyone elses view of "life" differs from BMW!!!

There are cases for and against maintenance and failures pre, during and post maintenance..
At the end of the day it is up to you to assess the risk of failure against cost etc....
At the end of the day if the box is going to give up then no simple maintenance will save it, nor will simple maintenance kill a good box..  A lot of failures deemed from maintenance are probably issues from a worn box being shown for what they are, and have been masked in the past by the friction material in suspension with the fluid.  You add new clean fluid and it wil highlight the weaknesses.

There are people on here who have had both the GM and the ZF boxes fail, with some impressively similar symptoms, but with varying underlying causes...
On the flip side there are people on here that have not had failures and have got decent miles out of them (equating to more like the meaning of "Life" we would consider correct (and i dont mean Monty Python))

The best advise i remember was don't worry excessively about it, but plan in a contingency just in case....
You cant drive on the edge of your seat all teh time thinking "that noise is the box going" etc..
The reality is it may not show emerging signs and just fail for the sake of it....

As they advertised them as "..Driving machine" then just drive it..