Transmission Malfunction, Transmission park position P may not be possible

naschine

Lurker
May 2, 2019
14
11
0
Ride
135i N55 DCT
Hi there!

Since it seems that a lot of very knowledgeable people are roaming these boards, I hope that someone can help me.

I have a 2012 135i N55 with DCT and the following error occasionally comes up since like a year:
"Transmission Malfunction, Transmission park position P may not be possible"

The car was brought to the dealer last year and they tested the DCT's parking position... eg. "hook test" (whatever that is... probably pulling the mechanism manually). Everything was ok and they couldn't really reproduce it. What I noticed is, that if the DCT's temperature is below a certain threshold, the error won't come up or only very sporadically. Once the temperature is around 85-90 °C, the error will almost always come up once I try to park.

Last weekend though, I parked the car after some longer drive and the error popped up, just as I was expecting... But I had to go again rather quickly, so I hopped in my car after like 5 minutes and tried to back up... popped into R aaaaaaand... I couldn't move! It seemed to be blocked... so I returned to N and P. Error once again, waited a short time and back to R. Now I could drive again... pretty strange... and it's bothering me, since I'm rather clueless what to do.

If anyone has an idea what I can do to fix it properly, that would be awesome!


Kind regards,

Chris
 

aus335iguy

Colonel
Nov 18, 2017
2,248
803
0
Down under
Ride
335i DCT 2009
Its hard to tell without any error codes scanned and recorded. Id start there. Do you have a code scanner ? If they are GWS related codes then there are things you could do.
GWS (shifter)units aren’t too hard to find on eBay cheaply. They’re the bit that has the logic for shifting and the solenoid that activates the park lock. It sits inside the cabin and can be replaced by a mechanic and flashed with the correct ZB easily.