smart fortwo transmission problem

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Permalink Reply by Jim McDonough on May 11, 2010 at 12:09pm

Rebecca - there are two problems. My wife has had both.

1. Shifter stuck, takes extreme force to move it at all.

2. Shifter not stuck, but the car doesn't really go into gear. The display is blank.

Either is a serious problem, disabling the car.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Becvar on May 11, 2010 at 12:13pm

There are at least two problems associated with the shifters.

The shifter won't move. The car gets stuck in park.

The shifter moves but does not engage when moved to reverse.

I had both of them...

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Permalink Reply by Rebecca Sawyer on May 11, 2010 at 4:56pm

Mike and Jim: your problem could be mechanical. Whereas mine seems to be entirely software. Just today it happened again: I pulled up in front of my house, braked, put it in Park, checked my closeness to the neighbor's driveway, then put it back into Drive (intending to pull a little bit farther forward.) But the gear would not engage. Reverse also did not work. But I have no problem moving the stick into gear and the display shows that it is in gear.
THis has happen twice now in less than a week, previously it had only happened 5-6 times in 20 months. The first few times it happened, I could fix it by turning the car OFF, then back on. Today and last week, that trick did not work. At least not right away. Today I tried turning the car back on after about 10 minutes, and it was fixed. Seems like a software issue: turning the car off "clears" the computer memory, maybe......
So I called the 800 number and they wrote this all down and promised me that even when my warranty expires in August, this continuing problem would be covered. They also said I'd be one of the first they contact, when/if they come up with a solution to this problem. So now I just have to hope this never happens in traffic.....

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Permalink Reply by Jim McDonough on May 11, 2010 at 5:38pm

It sounds like the clutch problem. I would encourage you to bring it in to be fixed as soon as possible. It is a safety issue.

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Permalink Reply by Rebecca Sawyer on May 11, 2010 at 6:14pm

I just dropped it off at SF Smart Car and "Frank" is going to check it out. I'll be amazed if he can fix it, but that would be great! I'll let you know what they come up with.

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Permalink Reply by Andrew D. Clauss on May 22, 2010 at 10:05pm

I am just under 20,000 miles and one week over 2 years old and the car trans went to neutral after rounding a turn up hill. 3 bars in indicator window of instrument cluster. I turned off the car thinking that it would reset its self. Dumb move Not only would it not start noe I could not get it in neutral toback the car down the hill.
It finally went into neutral with many atemps and got it parked in a gas station lot.Tryed to start and it did after 30 min of sitting in the road ( a serius safety hazard).I drove the car home 1.5 miles and it acted up again But I made it into my driveway.
Now I have no reverse.and check engine light on.
I have bought cars with 100,000 miles on them and got more than 20,000 miles of driving out of them with out problems for less than $5,000 invested.

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Permalink Reply by Rebecca Sawyer on May 23, 2010 at 12:32am

VERY scary, Andrew !
SF Smart Car completely checked out my transmission and couldn't find any way to explain my problem. They suggested that perhaps I had shifted from Drive to Reverse too fast. It's hard to remember, so I can't be sure. Now I'm being very careful when I shift. But your experience clearly had nothing to do with speed of shifting. I'd like to here what the dealership finds when they repair your transmission. Assuming they find anything!

Permalink Reply by Rebecca Sawyer on May 23, 2010 at 3:18pm

My Smart transmission problem just happened again! This time I started up the car, shifted into Reverse, no power, just as if it was in neutral. Tried turning it off, letting it "reset". Started up again. Same result. Tried Drive: also no power. Tried turning it off and removing the key. Still no power. Let it reset for a good five minutes: still no power. Finally I tried turning it off and instead of putting it directly into Reverse, I put it into Drive: SUCCESS! Power. The gear engaged! Reverse then also worked. Of course it might have nothing to do with going first to Drive, it might have been the time it took for me to try that idea, gave the car the requisite time to "fix" itself.
So this has GOT to be a software bug. Anybody else have similar stories?

Permalink Reply by Brabus007 1 day ago

Rebecca,... Take it to the Dealer and get your New Clutch or Shifter... Smarts do not Heal themselves up... It will happen again...<:-((

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Permalink Reply by Rebecca Sawyer 1 day ago

Understandably, you did not read all my previous postings. I did take it to the dealer last week and they looked at everything and could find nothing.

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Permalink Reply by MoonTrout 23 hours ago

I know I've posted about this before. I have danced the same dance that Rebecca has. S.F. dealership just shakes their head. They are LIARS!!!!!! I repeat. LIARS!!!!! They have seen this problem over and over and over again and they just wish it would go away. The only way to have them look deeper at the problem is to contact the 800 number for Smart which gives them the verification to dismantle the transmission and put it back together. This was done for me. They had my car for over a week. The problem IMPROVED but did not go away. Frankly, I am (sort of) happy with improvement (it doesn't occur nearly as often) but this is a major snafu and should be a recall issue or a class action suit. This problem is dangerous in many ways.

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Permalink Reply by Rebecca Sawyer 23 hours ago

They DID dismantle the entire transmission and couldn't find anything. They reported that there was no significant wear on the clutch plate (I think that's what Frank said.) But it's happened again since then. It's CLEARLY a software issue, which I bet none of the "mechanics" at the repair facility know anything about. (Similar to Toyota's problems???)

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