9/22 mod EDIT: preferred method is to use heat-shrink tubing, read entire thread. Unless you know your way around a soldering iron and electronics stick to heat-shrink tubing. People have damaged the sensor before - no you cannot buy a new one from BMW (you can buy a new trans tho!) - you've been warned.
As many of us already know, a common cause of SMG failure in our cars is the gear indicator sensor / sensor strip where the insulation on the wires between the sensor and the main SMG harness deteriorates and crumbles away. This exposes bare wires which will eventually short out. This will cause all sorts of intermittent faults and many times a vehicle that won't start. NOT GOOD!!
The root of the problem is in the manufacturing of the sensor itself. The wires used are the issue, the rest of the assembly is quite robust. It's simply a double sided PCB with hall effect sensors which is potted/encapsulated into a plastic housing.
The sensor (brand new) cannot be purchased separately, you have to buy the whole hydraulic unit for nearly a third of what the car is worth now :|
I've successfully rebuilt mine (if I was to do this again, I know I'll get a much cleaner result as I now know where to cut. I went into this one blind so I spend a lot of time probing the potting compound to make sure I didn't damage something underneath.
As many of us already know, a common cause of SMG failure in our cars is the gear indicator sensor / sensor strip where the insulation on the wires between the sensor and the main SMG harness deteriorates and crumbles away. This exposes bare wires which will eventually short out. This will cause all sorts of intermittent faults and many times a vehicle that won't start. NOT GOOD!!
The root of the problem is in the manufacturing of the sensor itself. The wires used are the issue, the rest of the assembly is quite robust. It's simply a double sided PCB with hall effect sensors which is potted/encapsulated into a plastic housing.
The sensor (brand new) cannot be purchased separately, you have to buy the whole hydraulic unit for nearly a third of what the car is worth now :|
I've successfully rebuilt mine (if I was to do this again, I know I'll get a much cleaner result as I now know where to cut. I went into this one blind so I spend a lot of time probing the potting compound to make sure I didn't damage something underneath.