Aftermarket shifter carrier bushings melted! (Fixed)

[M3BrianG]

Some background: Bought an E92 M3 June of 2025 was told it had an Autosolutions short shifter kit with 50A carrier bushings installed in 2020. Previous owner had car for about 8 years. Under my ownership and from my understanding PO ownership, car was never tracked. Since initial purchase car had a very sloppy shifter and very notchy. Did not feel good like everyone’s review of the shifter had stated. Put it off as bad trans mounts or maybe bad driveshaft since I had the cowbell noise and some vibrations at freeway speeds.

Well I went to swap out center support bearing,guibo, and trans mounts, after taking everything apart I noticed some brown rubberized goop sitting on the inside of the trans cover and it appeared to drip all around the output shaft flange. Thought it was some adhesive or something until I took a look at the front carrier bushings when I had the DS off which were absent with the areas coated in brown goop. Reached out to Ronald at Autosolutions after I confirmed parts were from him who told me his 50a bushings (which were brown) were prototypes which have since been discontinued, only a total of 2-3 were sold per Ronald. Said he has seen 1 other bushing failure in the past with one of the 80a bushings but nothing to this extent. He doesn’t believe failure was related to heat as all his bushings are heat tested to 400 degrees. Believes it was likely combination of subpar prototype 50a material and chemical degradation of the bushing either from salt/roadgrime considering car was from Chicago area, also noticed my shift shaft seal was sweating a bit but no drip but I doubt this was the major contributer but who knows.

I will attach pictures of what it looked like followed by the refresh.

This post is mostly a shoutout to Autosolutions for customer service because he offered to perform a full refresh of the shifter kit. Basically only charged me shipping which I chose 2 day so I paid like $25 for all new 80a bushings with bronze insert and replacement of every single clip, screw, selector joint bushing, etc. I did have to send everything back to him for the refresh. Took exactly 1 week to get my shifter back including shipping time.

My shifter now feels amazing. I did change the sweaty shift shaft seal. I upgraded the rear carrier bushing to the Turner Motorsports 70A poly bushing (pain in the ass to install by the way) and I also fixed the cowbell noise and vibrations!