Our hired man tried a mid 80's Chevy 350 transmission, it was pretty simple. Had a lot of similar results to El Jefe's buddy, but he was able to salvage it after a torque converter and a valve kit.

I'm not good for it but you may be. I wouldn't go anywhere near it without a manual and whatever computers the mini needs.

Those front drive cars really have their tranny jammed up in there. The clutch went out on my son's Prizm and I thought about changing it myself but changed my mind after reading the procedure in the shop manual. It pretty much involved pulling the motor.

The Mini Cooper s has the same transmission as the Ford Focus SVT (Gertag 6 speed). If you want to save some money, you could call around to junkards and see if they have any Cooper S or Focus SVT transmissions and just replace the whole thing as opposed to cracking it open and possibly ****ing everything up.

Awesome suggestion. Thank you very much.

It appears that is a manual transmission. I am looking for the automatic. Unless I am missing something.

What's the transmission doing that makes your buddy think it's going out?

It is a guy off of Craigslist actually. He said he just bought the damn thing and here is his quote online "took it to the shop and the computer said that the 4 gear does not kick in and it need a new transmission". Could possibly end up being something else but that just isn't my luck.

Said he just bought it for his daughter and hasn't even licensed it yet. Said his daughter is all pissed off but he just doesn't want to pay to fix it. He is asking around $5000 for it and from what I saw people are asking around 12000 to 13000 for this model this year. He has a little higher mileage though then the ones I could find.

I'm sorry meng... I thought all the Cooper S were manual. Obviously wont work then.

No biggie. Just thought maybe there was something else that might work with it.

I would still look at junkyards for a Cooper S auto tranny vs cracking it open.

I have been looking for some and they are wanting like $3500 for the transmission. I would still be getting a fairly good deal at around $8500. But that still doesn't include my time pulling the tranny and putting it back in. Plus any tools I might need to buy to get it done. Sounds like I might need to get a cherry picker to pull the engine but I can find a used one for a couple hundred on craigslist.

I believe the Aisin transmissions are supposed to be pretty good, so if it has failed it is probably through neglect or abuse, which would be a big red flag for me for the whole car (though I personally wouldn't buy an auto Mini).

However, it does look like they are kind of picky on the type of ATF used so you might get lucky and just need a fluid change and/or a reflash of the controller.

Yes, you have to use the ESSO EZL 799 Mini fluid.

I changed out the chain on my grandaughters bike the other day. Surely it can't be any harder than that.