Actually I'm not sure if it is the tranny or not, but there is a small tear in the shifter leather, and hot air somes out of it. Could be an exhaust leak, or maybe just hot air straight from the engine, but when I removed the leather to check out under it, I noticed an unusual thing. A shitload of melted rubber. I'm guessing this used to be the rubber boot. Quite a bit of direct heat was needed to melt that much rubber. I don't know what the hell the previous owner did to this thing, but he was pretty stupid in general. If anyone knows any way to check it out without having to drop the whole transmission that would be great... I gotta drive this thing everyday.

 

all 3 of the 7's I've owned blow really hot air thru that area, haven't had any melted ruber, but at times the metal ring on the shifter gets extremely hot. and like i said before, both 2nd gens and my 1st gen do that

 

Having the stock heat shields installed will minimize this. However with age the stock series of boots deterioates from the high exhaust heat of the engine

 

if the shifter boots are bad and the shifter housing leaks a little they do that



mike

 

mines leaky oil on it.....whats weird, yet normal, is lets say im driving for 20 mins and hten i park for 5 and go somewhere again, the **** will be hot, but its not hot ever when i drive



sdrawkcab

 

Yeah, I think the melted rubber is partly because this car was sitting for over a year outdoors, uncovered in nice hot Honolulu. A lot of the plastic parts inside the car are broken or brittle now too.



Glad to hear this is normal though. I'm moving to Oregon in November and I'm trying to decide if its worth it to ship my baby. (about $1000). Thats what I paid for it!