E61 tailgate loom work - fair quote?

[misterduncan]

My 535D touring (06) is in with the dreaded wiring loom wear in the tailgate. Have a non-working and rear heater and intermittent battery drain over night.

The garage have quoted me £440 parts and labour to replace the left side loom (they need to remove the roof lining to do so). They said the part is £140.

Is this a fair quote?

They say there is nothing they can do to protect the loom against further wear - is this true?

Is it worth replacing both sides while they have the lining out?

Any opinions?

[peebee]

Depends on the hourly rate. Local main dealer around here charges £120 per hour (honestly!) and so you'd be talking just over two and a half hours plus parts if the quote of £140 is accurate. I'm guessing two and a half hours might be about right. They sound like they are replacing the full part of the loom rather than splicing in and so I think it sounds about right.

On the other hand if you are using a reasonable priced indie I would think they are talking around 4 hours which sound quite a long time to me.

More fundamentally I can't understand how BMW get away with selling estates with vulnerable wiring in the hinges. How long have estate cars been around? And BMW still haven't worked out how to wire the electrics in the lifting tailgate without them being liable to break in a few years. These are BMW's for which we pay a premium for 'quality'!

[E24man]

Having had the horrible experience or arsing around with both E34 and E39 Touring tailgates I'd say 3 hours to replace a loom, test it, clean up and fnish it all up is fairly reasonable - they are a pig of job but I would echo the previous post of the looms being of fairly dubious quality as to often not last five let alone 10 or 15 years without falure.

HTH

[misterduncan]

Thanks all!

Agreed, it's incredible that they got that part of the car so wrong.