BMW and M Power Owners

Gibbo said:
Came across this on Evolve's page, E46 M3 in VLN series, engines stock apart from remap/ecu tuning. Car is now entering Britcar series and hence why Evolve have it as they have put some cam's in it and more tuning:-



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Amazing, that guy is nuts lol, why did he get himself all wound up a bit of the way through lap one heading up the hill? Shame it wasn't a better quality camera, some stunning racing there
 
So I was talking to the dealer to try and understand why I had a coil failure on my 325i. It was only £300 to repair in the end. Not as bad as I thought it was going to be. We talked about the condition of the spark plugs and that they were in a bad state.

I think he mentioned that they get serviced every 3rd oil service. Does sound correct? I had a look through my receipts including the ones from the purchase via AUC. After 78k miles, from what I can see, it has only had 2 oil services. One with the previous owner, and one with me. Another one is due in 8k. It sounds to me like an oil service has been missed somewhere. Either by the previous owner or the Dealer I bought from not making up for the missed service.

According to my dealer, if the plugs had been serviced, the coil most likely wouldn't have failed. So going by that, the plugs would have been done when I did my first oil service as the new owner of the car.

I'm trying to work out if I have some sort of come back to the Dealer i bought the car from. Should I be able to get hold of the records of what they did service wise before they delivered it to me?
 
Nonsense in my completely unqualified opinion.

All a coil actually does is provide current to the spark plug - whether they were 2k miles old or 200k miles old I cannot see how it would make the blindest bit of difference, unless of course they were incorrectly gapped or so old in terms of age that the coil was having to work many times harder than it should.

I just can't see this happening in reality though

Check the service schedule and see when they were done vs when they should have been. Plug intervals tend to be quite long, though I never really leave them more than a couple of years
 
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[TW]Fox;26245996 said:
Just looks like an internet 'LOOK AT ME' post. We are supposed to think he's awesome subconsciously because his time is so profitable I'd imagine :p
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not at all, but a 30% markup isn't all that much for a business to charge?
 
Bradmax57 said:
not at all, but a 30% markup isn't all that much for a business to charge?
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No, not at all. It's about average but it's still annoying to think how much we could save if we didn't have to pay it :p

At least you can bring your own oil in the UK. I once asked in Belgium and I was told, "No sir. Oil is to us like wine is to restaurants."
I guess they hadn't heard of BYOB :o
 
mjt said:
No, not at all. It's about average but it's still annoying to think how much we could save if we didn't have to pay it :p

At least you can bring your own oil in the UK. I once asked in Belgium and I was told, "No sir. Oil is to us like wine is to restaurants."
I guess they hadn't heard of BYOB :o
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I guess they wanted a corkage charge then :)
 
i'm not entirely sure tbh, seems to vary, when I took my 330d in for an oil service last year I was quoted £190 inc vat, when I came to pay the bill they only charged me £125.....

I'm guessing £40-50 of that would be oil, £15 or so for the oil filter? so that leaves around £60 for labour at a guess, but another dealer quoted me £225 for the same job, I'm phoning them up tomorrow as I need a break fluid change so might just ask that question :)
 
Bradmax57 said:
not at all, but a 30% markup isn't all that much for a business to charge?
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Thats only the markup on parts, enormous markups on finished products which are simply bought and resold are hardly common. The larger margins can be found elsewhere, ie the service department hourly rates.

I bet somewhere like Tesco would love a 30% margin ;)
 
[TW]Fox;26246235 said:
Thats only the markup on parts, enormous markups on finished products which are simply bought and resold are hardly common. The larger margins can be found elsewhere, ie the service department hourly rates.

I bet somewhere like Tesco would love a 30% margin ;)
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I bet they have a lot more on certain products :D
 
Doubt they have it on much that they sell, their cost base will be huge and the food industry work on notoriously tight margins ( single digits)
 
My new car ready for summer:

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53 plate 330ci m-sport, 6 speed manual vert, with harmon kardon, tv (albeit redundant!) and electric everything. Cost me £5k on the nose with 95k on the clock, slightly higher miles than desired but felt this was reflected in the price, it has been well looked after and serviced. Been looking for quite a while and this was the best example from a nice previous owner so snapped it up.

The engine is sublime, loving the power and burble from the straight 6. Carried out some small jobs so far, golf tee modded the exhaust - the butterfly valve was completely ceased shut, this was persuaded open with some wd40 and some harsh language, dropped in a new panel filter, treated the leather, hood etc. Looking to carry out some preventative maintenance next month, replace vanos seals which are not giving any issues but due to be done and give it a full service.

My wife and I have recently gone from never owning a BMW to owning 2, she also purchased an 08 120d m-sport auto, clearly the 2 are completely different machines but loving the quality of both!
 
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Looks stunning - always had a soft spot for a facelift vert, with the hard top on they look utterly sublime. Would absolutely love one in the darker metallic grey the facelifts come in - would even give up my beloved Individual Velvet Blue for one :)
 
Thats a beautiful E46 Joe, perfect spec as well by the sounds of it. Hope you enjoy, and look forward to hearing your experiences :)
 
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