VANOS Problem

[bread1981]

I am hoping someone can give me some decent advice here. I have 52 reg, SMG M3, it's covered nearly 80k, I've done 45k of those. When it was recently serviced my local BMW dealer said there was a problem with the VANOS unit, it's being investigated this week. The car does sound a bit rough but has done for about the last 15k. BMW are telling me the bill could be up to a £1000, what I want to know really is what other big bills can I anticapte over the next 20k, has anyone got any experience of running an M3 over 100k? Also when should I go to a specialist instead of BMW? My dealer offered me £11k for a trade in, I dimissed this as it's got pretty much every extra and believe it to be worth around £16k when I've compared to similar M3s.

I think I'll probably keep the car for another nine months or another 8000 miles, then buy another one. When is the best time to bail out of the one I own now? I don't think I can sell it privately in it's current state.

Thanks

[bread1981]

Who would you recommend then? I currently take it to Snows BMW in Portsmouth but as this is going to be so expensive what specialist would you take it to?

[bread1981]

It's interesting one. I think really the cost of the servicing is pretty good for a car of the performance the M3 has. But as you rightly say things go wrong. I had a massive job done on the gearbox at about 55k it cost £3.5k under warranty which is really why I kind of want to get rid of it, the type of M3 you can get for £25k is just such good value now.