I'm new to the forum and decided to join for help on troubleshooting some problems with my Mini. I'm looking for some background info before I take it back to the dealer, trying to see if anyone else has had this problem. Considering I'm a female, these guys tend to walk all over me

Ok. So I have an '02 Mini (non S). I bought it with 64k miles and it now has 69k. The entire time I've had the car, I've had this weird transmission problem that comes and goes regularly. Majority of the time, when I accelerate from a dead stop it revs to 3k rpms and then drops to 2k rpms and will hold there for about 30 seconds to a minute, even with the accelerator floored. When I click the accelerator down, it will upshift and begin to accelerate at an extremely slow rate. This doesn't always happen. Sometimes the car will run just fine accelerating at a normal rate. At first I thought the transmission was just shifting too soon, but it still does it when put in autostick.

Recently within the passed few weeks, the transmission has really been acting up. It holds the 2k rpms and when it finally gets up to speed it acts like it's trying to downshift with the rpms fluctuating. The EP (I know that means transmission problem) and the check engine light comes on. Then it will hold at just under 3k rpms and will not accelerate. It "acts" as if it's stuck in 6th gear at low speed.

Today, the car started up only reaching 1k rpms and not going over 10 mph. I thought I could just ride it out like normal. I drove about 2 miles (on a back road) with no luck. After about another mile it reached just under 3k rpms and about 35 mph, I reached a stop sign, and was back to wear I started at 1k rpms and 10 mph. After checking everything I could possibly think of and having the car sitting in my driveway all day, I decided to take the car out again to see if it had passed like it normally does. She was running great, shifting normally, no problems at all. The engine light cleared, and the computer didn't display the EP code anymore.

Thanks for reading my book of an explanation. Any suggestions?

 

The bottom description of trouble is called "limp mode" It's to get you to the dealer .
Sounds like whatever was acting up finally died