[Russbmw]

Have no idea what gearboxes they use on the manuals these days, but I had a ZF box on my old e39 528 that was a manual, and that developed gear chatter at about 60k miles, so after much arguing with BMW, had it replaced under goodwill by BMW and I just had to pay labour.

At about 110k, the new one was starting to chatter as well. It was quite a common annoyance apparently.

Presumably BMW are still using effectively ATF fluid, which is thin as piss, and doesn't help matters. Redline used to do a thicker oil which did help.

Anyway, not sure if it's the same problem to be honest, but sounds very familiar. Mine would would behave almost exactly the same:

- no rattling when cold, getting worse the more the car warmed up
- no noise with the clutch depressed (I initially thought it was as simple as a knackered thrust bearing, but unfortunately not)
- used to stop chattering if you pushed forward slightly on the gearstick without pressing the clutch.

If it's gear chatter, you can (if you have money to burn) have the box rebuilt and they shim all the gears to stop the chatter - but even that isn't a guaranteed permanent fix unfortunately.

I investigated all this years back with mine, obviously, and spent a lot of time talking to a reputable and well known guy back in the day, called Neil from All Gears. It's not suddenly going to fail and splatter lumps of gearing down the road or anything, it's just fucking annoying - especially when it all gets hot in summer.