Monday (yesterday) was interesting. Work and such was ok; it was the drive home that was of interest. Pulling out the parking lot, I noticed that my car was shifting a little funny. Then when I got into second gear it was making a new grindy-wakka-wakka noise. The last thing I wanted at that moment was to be stranded on the side of the freeway with a borked car, so once I got on the freeway and it into fourth, I left it there and drove home. Luckily, traffic was such that I didn’t need to downshift. The drive home was ok, but when I got into and was driving through Santa Cruz, it started making new noises. Bad noises.
This morning, I took the Cooper into a local auto shop that specializes in European cars to have them figure out what was wrong. I was hoping it was a CV joint or clutch and not an entire transmission. But alas, my fears proved true: this afternoon, the guy from the repair shop called me and told me that his tech was pulling bits of metal out of the fluid fill port with a magnet. Basically, the transmission “…was cratered”. He gave me the run-down on the work that needs to be done (refurb transmission, new clutch, various seals, labor, etc) and the pricetag… $4,700. Ye-ouch.
After Chel and I discussed it (along with a brief consult with my dad), I called the guy back and gave him the go-ahead to do the work. It looks like the work on my teeth are going to be pushed back a couple months and we’re going to be living extra-frugally this year if we want to get into a house.