What do you think the BMW logic was forcing higher rpm upshifts during warm up

[Xproplayer]

So I've dealt with this issue for a long time, the car goes into warm up mode and in addition to driving like its in sport mode+ and with my exhaust means I'm waking up the whole neighborhood. Anyways for the longest time I've simply used manual mode toggled on and off or manually shifting to prevent this. I've wondered recently if this is an issue where BMW forced these shifts in order to prevent lots of shifts while the transmission is warming up. What are your thoughts on the thoughts at BMW when they made this, perhaps to get the car to warm up faster?

[SergeBMW]

I'd say yes. There are many poeple saying its bad seals and filter etc... but i've also read many new BMWs doing this as well. There is a great article from BMW I believe: http://www.meeknet.co.uk/e64/Gearbox..._gearboxes.pdf

Page 24
​

Engine Warm Up Cycle: Based on the monitored transmission oil temperature (system specific), or engine coolant temperature (CAN), the TCM raises the shift points to that of the
Sport program when driving just after initial cold start. This is implemented to raise the engine RPM which speeds up the warm up cycle of the catalytic converter.

This function is terminated if:
• The vehicle exceeds 37 MPH,
• Transmission oil or engine coolant temperature exceeds 60 C.
• A maximum of three minutes is exceeded.

[Qsilver7]

Ditto what SergeBMW said...the concept is to warm up the engine faster as well as the cats ...which helps with emissions:

[tmaxx445]

Its simply to warm up the motor and cats quicker for less emissions

[Xproplayer]

Interesting. I've always felt it makes the car not super fun to drive because of how noisy it is. However BMW wouldn't have built the car with custom exhaust factored in. But the car feels so aggressive and jumpy... but I digress. Glad to hear I'm not hurting much by manually upshifting, however I might stop doing it unless needed to avoid bad emissions.

[Qsilver7]

If there's no one behind me when this occurs...I usually let the engine warm up cycle do its thing. I keep it below 2K RPM and let the tranny stay in 1st gear. Only if neighbors or other traffic is behind me and moving faster do I either press through the cycle or slip into SPORT mode (which prevents the abrupt 1st to 2nd tranny shift).

Doing this also helps the heater start blowing warm air sooner to. On these cold fall/winter days...warm air starts blowing out approx 1 miles down the road after pulling out of my addition onto the main road...and this is after starting the car and within 15-20 seconds putting it in gear and backing out of the garage...or out of the parking lot at work at the end of the day.

[Jamos]

Pretty sure just about every car does this. . .

I mean it used to be that cars would run rich for the first 30 seconds to get things going, which is why it was always so bad to start and stop a car multiple times in short succession. Much easier to flood the engine.

Then when all of these auto-stop cars started coming around my first thoughts were, "idiots they're ruining the engines" but quickly realized the computer must obviously know when it was last on, let alone temperature etc haha.

Point is, it helps warms things up faster, improves emissions, and . . . yeah makes your car slightly louder =D

[shenofjo]

while it is true that the program is in place to heat up the car and make emissions less of an issue, i think there are also other factors that may contribute to symptoms being exacerbated. with the supercharger, i always thought the car was way aggressive at first but then mellow out once its heated up. I have since fixed a few things along the way and felt some improvements. the stainless steel throttle cable nuts made the throttle more precise without the flex of the oem plastic. New OEM MAF sensor (perhaps also eliminated some minor vacuum leaks) completely resolved the issue of the acceleration surge after cold start. while the old MAF never threw a code, I did run into occasional misfires on WOT to redline. switching to new MAF made the car run consistent. ive done redlines on 3rd gear multiple times and the pull is linear, no misfires, no cold start acceleration surge. just a thought