335i or 650i?

Perywinkle

Perywinkle

Perywinkle

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Joined
23 Nov 2002
Posts
2,184
Location
Faygate, West Sussex
Looking for something with a bit of poke, but still reasonably comfy.
Commute is only about 20 miles a day so fuel economy not an issue.
Both of these in 05-08 flavour are easily in my price range.
Any other suggestions?

Cheers
 
Without knowing anything about your budget I'd go for the 650i. It's a far better, comfier, refined car than the 335i. The E90 build quality wasn't the best. The E63 divided opinion on looks. The facelift were a huge improvement in the 6 series.

I'd be looking for a 630i however.
 
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[TW]Fox;29744786 said:
I'd go for a 630i too. It's not slow and avoids the engine issues in the 650. The engine in the 630 is reliable.
Click to expand...

Is it not quite a lot slower than the 650 though?
 
Google 650i water feed pipe. It also affects the 645i and all BMW's with the N62 engine.
It's a water pipe that runs within the crank cases that starts to weep at the seal on the end. The official fix requires a complete engine teardown and it seems that it's not a case of 'if' it fails, it's a case of 'when'.
There is a sort of bodge fix that involves feeding a smaller pipe through the old one to make a seal but it's really rather a bodge.
It also suffers from PCV issues which (I believe) on the 6-series requires the engine out to fix. It makes the car hunt on idle and generally run rough.

The N62 is a great engine when it's running right but it really is a time bomb.
 
Rilot said:
Google 650i water feed pipe. It also affects the 645i and all BMW's with the N62 engine.
It's a water pipe that runs within the crank cases that starts to weep at the seal on the end. The official fix requires a complete engine teardown and it seems that it's not a case of 'if' it fails, it's a case of 'when'.
There is a sort of bodge fix that involves feeding a smaller pipe through the old one to make a seal but it's really rather a bodge.
It also suffers from PCV issues which (I believe) on the 6-series requires the engine out to fix. It makes the car hunt on idle and generally run rough.

The N62 is a great engine when it's running right but it really is a time bomb.
Click to expand...

Cool, thanks. German engineering at its finest then :p
 
Rilot said:
The N62 is a great engine when it's running right but it really is a time bomb.
Click to expand...

Can confirm time-bomb with my e65 :D (valve seals). Once fixed it's a lovely engine though and fortunately the OEM parts available now are of far superior quality than those during original manufacturing.
 
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Shame about the engine issues otherwise my choice would be 650i all day long.

The 630i is interesting, its only like under a second slower to 60 than the 335.

If I had the choice I'd go for the 6 series, as I'm a fan of the car.


in terms of maintenance with the 630, what's it like compared to the 335? Are BMW going down the route of "oh its our more luxury car CHARGE MORE!!!" even though its the same engine found in the e90
 
6-series is based on the 5-series so it a step above in terms of material quality. In fact, it's a step above the 5-series too as the E60 was pretty dire inside until the 2007 facelift and only then was it merely acceptable. The 6-series although looking very similar inside is using better quality materials such as leather on the centre console and dash.
Maintenance will be the same or similar to the 5-series of the same year.
I'd try to get an 09 if possible as it will have the much better i-drive system. The older version (although functional) looks very dated now.
 
[TW]Fox;29745350 said:
It's fast enough.
Click to expand...

You're making me consider one now. I've been looking at 650s for ages but have been put off by the reliability issues. I assumed the 630i was way slower, but looking at the stats it doesn't seem to bad. Quite economical for what it is as well.
 
Presumably it performs very similarly to an E60 530i? Tried one of those a while back and it was definitely not slow :)
 
Rilot said:
Google 650i water feed pipe. It also affects the 645i and all BMW's with the N62 engine.
It's a water pipe that runs within the crank cases that starts to weep at the seal on the end. The official fix requires a complete engine teardown and it seems that it's not a case of 'if' it fails, it's a case of 'when'.
There is a sort of bodge fix that involves feeding a smaller pipe through the old one to make a seal but it's really rather a bodge.
It also suffers from PCV issues which (I believe) on the 6-series requires the engine out to fix. It makes the car hunt on idle and generally run rough.

The N62 is a great engine when it's running right but it really is a time bomb.
Click to expand...

One other huge fundamental issue with the N62 is the stem valve seals. They almost always require attention on these engines as the car's age, they cause excessive oil consumption and therefore smoking.

It is a bad enough issue that a purpose built set of tools have been commissioned to make this large job a lot quicker to perform, however only very few specialists are likely to have this tooling.
 
geekman said:
You're making me consider one now. I've been looking at 650s for ages but have been put off by the reliability issues. I assumed the 630i was way slower, but looking at the stats it doesn't seem to bad. Quite economical for what it is as well.
Click to expand...

Don't do it, your Jag is far more interesting, and has a cool name... :D
 
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