BMW's are crap and unreliable.

BMW's are crap and unreliable.

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Discussion

dudleybloke

19,717 posts

185 months

Sunday 12th July 2009
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how many 318i owners try to drive them like its an m3? im guessing over 60%!

dave_gt

45 posts

183 months

Sunday 12th July 2009
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Someone said:
Second Focus ( 03 Elle ) Was replaced with a Bmw E46....Bmw are still a crap drive and still really unreliable.
I bought my wife the same model of Focus that 'someone' had in really stunning condition. It is a cracking little car - looks smart, leather heated seats, air con, CD player, handles so sweetly. Nippy for a 1.6 too. Really good car. Unfortunately it is having a misfire in cylinder 4 at 31,000 miles which I need to get looked at.


My sister has an E46 330ci. Great though the Focus is, the 330ci is quite simply in a different league in almost every respect. Not gone wrong yet at 60,000 miles. I also have a BMW which has done 175,000 miles without going wrong at all and is much, much better than the Focus to drive. Sure, some BMWs are dogs but if you choose them right, they can be brilliant cars.

wishforaTVR

235 posts

180 months

Sunday 12th July 2009
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The only problem I've ever had with a BMW was that fuel filler cap wont open on dad's E36 325ie

LeightonBuzzard

463 posts

177 months

Sunday 12th July 2009
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dudleybloke said:
how many 318i owners try to drive them like its an m3? im guessing over 60%!
I get 45mpg in mine, so not me. I never liked ford. This is a 25'000 mile 1.4 (04 reg) fiesta which the core plugs in the head corroded through. It needed a new cylinder head. And Ford admitted it wasnt the 1st time this has happened. You just wouldnt get that with BMW.






jamoor

14,506 posts

214 months

Sunday 12th July 2009
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LeightonBuzzard said:
dudleybloke said:
how many 318i owners try to drive them like its an m3? im guessing over 60%!
I get 45mpg in mine, so not me. I never liked ford. This is a 25'000 mile 1.4 (04 reg) fiesta which the core plugs in the head corroded through. It needed a new cylinder head. And Ford admitted it wasnt the 1st time this has happened. You just wouldnt get that with BMW.

Ever heard of swirl flaps, engine breathers and noreverse?

a_bloke

35,724 posts

196 months

Sunday 12th July 2009
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jamoor said:
Alfa_75_Steve said:
jamoor said:
I think ford and BMW are on par.

Ford are excellent value for money though.
You think so?

£18.5k for a poverty spec Focus diesel is 'excellent value'?
You can buy that for thousands off list, you can't buy the BMW for thousands off list.
Yes you can

www.broadspeed.com. 8-10% off list is easily attainable.

80quattro

1,724 posts

194 months

Sunday 12th July 2009
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I had a 57 plate 320d SE 177 Efficient Dynamics as a company car last year and was extremly put off when a spring inside the turbo actuator failed on the M1, when the car had a mighty 3000 miles on the clock. It was rendered useless on the hard shoulder and wouldnt rev past about 2000 rpm.

After waiting for BMW Emergency Service for two and a half hours I was told it was a known fault!! I was somewhat alarmed by this comment, as the car was one of the very first with the *new* 177 engine in the UK.

NoelWatson

11,710 posts

241 months

Sunday 12th July 2009
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80quattro said:
I had a 57 plate 320d SE 177 Efficient Dynamics as a company car last year and was extremly put off when a spring inside the turbo actuator failed on the M1, when the car had a mighty 3000 miles on the clock. It was rendered useless on the hard shoulder and wouldnt rev past about 2000 rpm.

After waiting for BMW Emergency Service for two and a half hours I was told it was a known fault!! I was somewhat alarmed by this comment, as the car was one of the very first with the *new* 177 engine in the UK.
We have an 2008 ED 330i and recently had to have the high pressure injectors, fuel pump and ECU changed. Would have been 2.5k if out of warranty.

LeightonBuzzard

463 posts

177 months

Sunday 12th July 2009
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jamoor said:
LeightonBuzzard said:
dudleybloke said:
how many 318i owners try to drive them like its an m3? im guessing over 60%!
I get 45mpg in mine, so not me. I never liked ford. This is a 25'000 mile 1.4 (04 reg) fiesta which the core plugs in the head corroded through. It needed a new cylinder head. And Ford admitted it wasnt the 1st time this has happened. You just wouldnt get that with BMW.

Ever heard of swirl flaps, engine breathers and noreverse?
The coolant was seeping through the core plugs....

80quattro

1,724 posts

194 months

Sunday 12th July 2009
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NoelWatson said:
80quattro said:
I had a 57 plate 320d SE 177 Efficient Dynamics as a company car last year and was extremly put off when a spring inside the turbo actuator failed on the M1, when the car had a mighty 3000 miles on the clock. It was rendered useless on the hard shoulder and wouldnt rev past about 2000 rpm.

After waiting for BMW Emergency Service for two and a half hours I was told it was a known fault!! I was somewhat alarmed by this comment, as the car was one of the very first with the *new* 177 engine in the UK.
We have an 2008 ED 330i and recently had to have the high pressure injectors, fuel pump and ECU changed. Would have been 2.5k if out of warranty.
I had an E92 330i MS pre ED, with a manual gearbox - if I remember rightly was 265 bhp - it was a fantastic drive, loved the whole package, and no reliability issues at all. However, I would be a little dubious of owning one of these out of warranty.

jamoor

14,506 posts

214 months

Sunday 12th July 2009
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a_bloke said:
jamoor said:
Alfa_75_Steve said:
jamoor said:
I think ford and BMW are on par.

Ford are excellent value for money though.
You think so?

£18.5k for a poverty spec Focus diesel is 'excellent value'?
You can buy that for thousands off list, you can't buy the BMW for thousands off list.
Yes you can

www.broadspeed.com. 8-10% off list is easily attainable.
Cool, what percentage is ford?

finlo

3,731 posts

202 months

Sunday 12th July 2009
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Timberwolf said:
I think premium cars in general suffer from two things.

The first is higher expectations of owners.

The second is that they tend to adopt new technology much, much earlier than the mainstream.

These two things do not sit easily together. Being an early adopter of a technology often brings with it some pain, and if your owners aren't expecting it, then they get upset.

Take, say, autoboxes. (A popular failure point on early-'00s BMWs, if http://www.noreverse.org/ is to be believed.) At the point when the premium brands would sell you an adaptive-shift, five-speed auto with torque converter lockup in almost every gear, Ford were still throwing in a clunky old transaxle that didn't offer T/C lockup at all, let alone any of the advanced variations of it.

As a result, they got to sit by while the early-adopting premium brands found out the hard way that they needed valve bodies that could cope with the occasional buildup of crud around the valves, gearbox internals that could cope with hard shifts, and that if you didn't put regular fluid changes on the schedule (and stopped your dealers pouring in any old drum of Dexron III!) then the box was on borrowed time from about 60k miles onward.

In short, by the time Ford or Vauxhall get around to adopting a technology, the problems are already ironed out. Unfortunately, they've been ironed out by umpteen thousand BMW/Mercedes/etc. owners taking their cars back to the dealership with a very disappointed look on their face.

(Interestingly, the reputation for reliability and build quality of certainly the German premium brands comes from the 1980s, before they did so much leading by technology. Under the bonnet of a late model W126 Mercedes, say, is surprising not so much for how well built and over-engineered it is, but for how dated the basic layout of engine and ancillaries is compared to its contemporaries.)

Edited by Timberwolf on Sunday 12th July 00:31
Sorry to piss on your chips but MK3 grannys had TC lockup back in 1985!;)

wolf1

3,081 posts

249 months

Sunday 12th July 2009
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LeightonBuzzard said:
jamoor said:
LeightonBuzzard said:
dudleybloke said:
how many 318i owners try to drive them like its an m3? im guessing over 60%!
I get 45mpg in mine, so not me. I never liked ford. This is a 25'000 mile 1.4 (04 reg) fiesta which the core plugs in the head corroded through. It needed a new cylinder head. And Ford admitted it wasnt the 1st time this has happened. You just wouldnt get that with BMW.

Ever heard of swirl flaps, engine breathers and noreverse?
The coolant was seeping through the core plugs....
This is common on the 16 valve fords, we usually see them when the plugs have rotted that much that the ceramic core of the plugs parts company from the steel thread and the engine sounds very much like a indoor go kart. The water that gets in there isn't coolant just whatever has run off the car body. Pity they still haven't engineered a drain into the head yet.

Timberwolf

5,340 posts

217 months

Sunday 12th July 2009
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finlo said:
Sorry to piss on your chips but MK3 grannys had TC lockup back in 1985!;)
Yep, the RWDs had... I was chatting to a Mondeo owner who was most upset having switched from an old Mk3 Granada to a 2002-ish Mondeo, only to find his "new" car didn't have lockup on the transaxle!

Edited by Timberwolf on Sunday 12th July 23:43

whitechief

4,419 posts

194 months

Sunday 12th July 2009
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I have owned a number of BMW cars over the years. I still have my 323ci that I bought 8 years ago. On top of servicing and MOT, tyres etc. The running costs have been minimal - a few hundred pounds.



Edited by whitechief on Sunday 12th July 23:53

dockertrigger

206 posts

199 months

Monday 13th July 2009
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My BMW 1602 broke down the day i got it, Mind you i did drive it 180 miles home, And it is 34 years old and had only done 9000 miles in the last 20 years...

P.s it only broke down because of crap in the carb from lack of use, (It's only done 69000 miles since 1975.) biggrin

Edited by dockertrigger on Monday 13th July 00:44

ClintonB

4,721 posts

212 months

Monday 13th July 2009
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LeightonBuzzard said:
dudleybloke said:
how many 318i owners try to drive them like its an m3? im guessing over 60%!
I get 45mpg in mine, so not me. I never liked ford. This is a 25'000 mile 1.4 (04 reg) fiesta which the core plugs in the head corroded through. It needed a new cylinder head. And Ford admitted it wasnt the 1st time this has happened. You just wouldnt get that with BMW.
What, you mean Ford wouldn't admit something like that whereas BMW wouldn't.
C'mon, that's kinda like the myth that no Honda VTEC has ever failed. Right and wholly wrong at the same time.
Vanos & Nikasil are just a couple of less than perfect issues.

Not trying to fan the flames (as I don't do brand st) but a bit of realism is necessary, don't ya think!
The days of all German brands being beyond reproach and the 'non-premium' brands being hopeless have probably gone forever. Anyway, it's the Volvos that last forever smile

Colonial

13,553 posts

204 months

Monday 13th July 2009
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Had a 95 318is with 260 on the clock when I traded it in. Had to replace one power window switch in that time.

Still ahve a 94 318i with 252 on the clock that needed a new radiator at ~200k and that has been the only drama

Great cars. Tough as nails. The M42 engine (chain driven) is virtually unkillable.

Timberwolf

5,340 posts

217 months

Monday 13th July 2009
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ClintonB said:
Anyway, it's the Volvos that last forever smile
Only if you're prepared to spend a small fortune making the blighters do so! hehe

(Mind you, I was impressed by the 850 I borrowed last week... 181k on the clock and the only thing to really give it away was the amount of wear on the steering wheel.)

Kawasicki

13,041 posts

234 months

Monday 13th July 2009
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Colonial said:
Had a 95 318is with 260 on the clock when I traded it in. Had to replace one power window switch in that time.

Still ahve a 94 318i with 252 on the clock that needed a new radiator at ~200k and that has been the only drama

Great cars. Tough as nails. The M42 engine (chain driven) is virtually unkillable.
I've done 1000's of miles with an M42 engine bouncing of the rev limiter in fifth, never had so much as a misfire. A friend of mine wrung a standard M42 rev to 8000rpm AGAIN and AGAIN at the ring, for many many laps over years, until it actually did blow up. Seriously good engines!