Consumer rights - Dead BMW within 6 years

tomstickland

All oils fill up with debris though and that forms a gridning paste. There's no substitute for regular changes. This was the conclusion of a university expert on gear lubrication too.

Apples2

I was on the verge of buying a 53 plate 320D until I scoured forums for likely faults.

I decided against it for precisely this reason, although the £1K the OP paid is less than I read about (£3-£3.5K).

I decided to wait until a 54 plate was within my budget.

AdrianHi

sdpoo wrote: »

Any advice? Has anyone ever dealt with BMW "goodwill"?

If you only paid £1000 for the repair you've already had the goodwill with BMW picking up more than half of the more usual £2500 bill. They should have advised about the other engine damage before progressing the work though, you might have made a different decision about what to do.
Someone mentioned BMWLand, that's my other online haunt.
More information than you probably want to know ( 99 pages, about 2000 posts, better put the kettle on) about your turbo failure can be found here:
http://www.bmwland.co.uk/talker/viewtopic.php?t=53451&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

These problems are resolved in the newer cars, haven't heard anything about the latest model going bang.

dieselhead

tomstickland wrote: »

All oils fill up with debris though and that forms a gridning paste. There's no substitute for regular changes. This was the conclusion of a university expert on gear lubrication too.

Absolutely especially on turbo diesels, turbos need clean oil, both diesel cars I have owned have recommended an oil change every 6000 miles, not a big deal I learned to do it myself! (and I'm a girl)

harveybobbles

Apples2 wrote: »

I was on the verge of buying a 53 plate 320D until I scoured forums for likely faults.

If you read up on every car on the market you'd never buy anything...!!

Pew_Pew_Pew_Lasers!

tomstickland wrote: »

All oils fill up with debris though and that forms a gridning paste. There's no substitute for regular changes. This was the conclusion of a university expert on gear lubrication too.

Regular changes at 6,000 on anything other than a mineral oil is just silly. Modern synthetic oils are good for 20,000 miles, no problem.

vikingaero

Pew_Pew_Pew_Lasers! wrote: »

Modern synthetic oils are good for 20,000 miles, no problem.

Modern synthetic oils for 20k are a response to demand from fleet operators based on motorway reprobates. For the private motorist with shorter journeys where the engine may not reach operating temperature and enduring traffic then changing the oil at 10k is good for the engine.

In the States they are far more anal than the UK on oil changes and many still have quick-lubes on their cars every 6k and even send samples of oil to analysis companies for reports.

Apples2

harveybobbles wrote: »

If you read up on every car on the market you'd never buy anything...!!

Fair comment, but this Turbo problem isn't like the standard forum complaints.

Mondeo (my old car) Forums are broken down into pretty much every single component as there are so many failures and niggles.

There simply aren't many common faults with any cars which cost in the region of £3,000+ to correct. Perhaps in an extreme cases maybe, but this Turbo problem on the 320D is widespread and VERY common.

I ended up buying a Saab and now frequent Saab Forums with my own gripes, failures and niggles but the most common significant fault (EGR Valve) is a couple of hundred quid to put right.

I wouldn't normally get put off by forum complaints, as we all know, people simply dont post about reliable cars, only when they fail, so all forums are biased toward the lemons.

I considered the BMW problem one that is LIKELY to occur. At least, likely enough to turn me away until I could afford a later model where the turbo system had been redesigned.

sdpoo

Hi chaps,

Thanks for all of the replies, it's appreciated.

To clarify what actually happened, BMW did the initial diagnosis that the turbo had failed but wanted another 3 hours labour to investigate if there was any knock on damage. I was informed by some people with a lot of experience with diesel engines that it would be very unlucky for further damage to have been caused, so it would be wise to just change the turbo.

The car was moved to a local garage as the 3rd party warranty I had wouldn't pay BMW rates (they ended up refusing the claim anyway). So I shopped around and sourced the turbo and had the local garage fit it.

After that fiasco it then ended up going back to BMW to do the full engine test where they discovered it needed replacing.

Regarding the services - the first 5 were BMW main dealer, the 6th was a local garage, and it would've been due another one in 1-2k, so it was close to having its 7th. The service intervals are very long on these cars (and many others these days) 15k-20k isn't unheard of.

Anyway, just heard back from BMW "goodwill". It wasn't very "good", nor "willing". They're refusing to help at all (not even a percentage) dispite it being related to the breather problem. They cited two reasons - firstly that I had a 3rd party warranty (which didn't pay because they claim it's BMW's fault!) and secondly because I had the turbo work done somewhere else.

Bullsh**

Inactive

Apples2 wrote: »

I wouldn't normally get put off by forum complaints, as we all know, people simply dont post about reliable cars, only when they fail, so all forums are biased toward the lemons.

I often sing the praises of the cars that I have owned over the years, none of them have ever suffered any kind of mechanical defect.


Honda's, Nissan's and Mazda's.

( Notice a common theme? )..