BMW and M Power Owners

[DJMK4]

The filter is built into the sump so it's a new sump and fluid. BMW will say it's sealed for life, ZF themselves say 8 years or 60,000 miles. I got mine done in August 2023 for £350+VAT.

I'm going to need to service that then as I would probably be buying a car on 50-60k, if it's had it done or not I would have no idea . Probably not

I asked a garage to change the gearbox oil in my 120d before using the right product and I'm not sure if it made it worse .

 

[MrRockliffe]

But if I took you for a spin in my car I'm confident you wouldn't notice it. I am pretty fussy about these things and it's really very smooth.

I'm not saying the gearbox can't have problems or inconsistencies, but you make it sound far, far worse than it is. Unless there are differences between the ZF8's in a 3 Series and 5/7/8 Series.

I’m test driving more 3 series this weekend on behalf of a friend. I’ll check if they have the same problem.


I wouldn’t want to take yours out and ruin the experience for you. Ignorance is bliss

 

[Bear]

I agree with @MrRockliffe on this one, the ZF8 speed is good, but not great. At low speed it's not the smoothest, and it can be easily confused when you're, for example, coasting/slowing for a roundabout then put your foot down to go through when a gap appears and you're still doing 10-20mph. Then it seems to pause to figure out what's happening before gives you drive again. A small thing, but really affects how the car drives. Sport+ mode generally sorts this out, but at the cost of smoothness.

This is my first BMW experience so not sure if it's common with the brand, but I never had anything like that with previous Mercs or Audis I've driven.

It does happen on other brands (VW and Jaguar that I’ve driven) but it’s most noticeable on diesels, on petrols it seems to be much better. On diesels the delay can almost be dangerous if you are shooting for a gap

 

[Dangerous Dave]

I’ve experienced the less smooth changes being talked about. It’s more to do if it’s attached to an engine with less torque low down the revs.

I can’t quite remember what engines every one has/had but the folk praising it are likely to have experienced it with the 6 cylinder petrol/diesel.

The ZF box is better on the 6 cylinder cars as they tend to hold 3rd gear at low speeds so you don’t get the shifting between 2nd/3rd for example on a small roundabout or the gearbox deciding when you want to nip in a gap it doesn’t need to downshift due to having a load of low down torque where on the 4 cylinder cars it will drop one or sometimes two gears.

The x40/35d with the small turbo are superb as in normal traffic they can pull comfortably from only 1000-1200 revs with no lag so the car will happily accelerate on the wave of torque rather than change down a gear.

Even the x40/35i has to do downshifts in certain circumstances the diesels wouldn’t but still significantly less than a 320d. My sister has one and the box is always shuffling through the gears. On the motorway the big diesels hold 8th as you ride the torque the 320d will instantly drop a gear or two. The 320i is even worse for changing gear a lot.

 

[GravyMonster]

I can’t quite remember what engines every one has/had but the folk praising it are likely to have experienced it with the 6 cylinder petrol/diesel.

My experience has been on an 6cyl M240i. 95% of the time it's fine, changes are smooth as you accelerate or decelerate. It's just that 5% where it's a bit dim-witted and seems as if it doesn't know if it wants to coast or engage for a second or two.

 

[[TW]Fox]

I’ve experienced the less smooth changes being talked about. It’s more to do if it’s attached to an engine with less torque low down the revs.

I can’t quite remember what engines every one has/had but the folk praising it are likely to have experienced it with the 6 cylinder petrol/diesel.

I think this is probably true. I think it is an excellent gearbox and do not recognise most of the complaints on the cars I've owned with it - 2 530d and an M340i. It is always in the right gear, it always shifts smoothly and seamlessly and it genuinelly is such an excellent gearbox it single headedly changed me from refusing to buy an auto to refusing to buy a manual. I am sure many of you remember quite how anti automatic I used to be until this gearbox was released. It changed everything and I now do not understand why you'd ever want a manual instead - although I have always owned them under warranty and therefore reliability concerns (It's not that it's unreliable, but more that I imagine that in the rare event of an issue it won't be cheap) on older used purchases might be a reasonable reason to think carefully.

When I bought my first one I spent ages ensuring I got one with Sport Automatic so I could have the paddle shifters. Which I then never, ever used as you simply don't need to.

 

[MissChief]

4 cylinder 2.0 turbo.

 

[Logsi]

The M135i popped up saying it needed rear pads checking so got it booked in with my local BMW dealership Ocean Falmouth. I also pushed with them to finally get the door seals done under warranty due to them dropping. They wouldn't do it initially but forced it under goodwill. Was told that the rear pads don't need doing as they look to have been replaced before but the light not reset so they will do that, someone has put Delphi pads in before I owned the car. Didn't think much more of it.

Didn't have a courtesy as I wanted to get this all done ASAP and waited in their business lounge all day for it to be done, cracked on with work so all good.

Got home later on and as soon as I turned the car off the rear pad change warning light dinged...so this wasn't reset and I checked the job on the door seals and they'd hacked parts out instead of replacing the entire seal and bodged in new bits. Poorly. They even left the 3M tape I put in to tied me over until they could be done under warranty. So safe to say it was a waste of time and now I'm going to be wasting more time chasing them...called them 2 times thus far and can't get through to anyone. I think an email to the dealer manager is in order.

Would anyone else find this acceptable on a 3/4 year old car?

They're even worse in person and wish I never took it there and did the seals myself. £80 per seal and a lot of labour would have saved me the headache this is now going to cause.

 

[Draeger]

'Little and Large'

Got my E85 out of hibernation for a very brief run this weekend. Roads still a bit salty yet, looking forward to the Spring

 

[jpaul]

Would anyone else find this acceptable on a 3/4 year old car?

they've grafted multiple sections of seal in because they didn't want to unglue full perimeter ? had it dropped in multiple places as opposed to uniformly across lower edge - looks weird;
they did genuinely accept it under warranty though (you see people painfully opening non-gummifledged doors in the frost - I thought seals could be wear & tear)

 

[Robbo]

They're even worse in person and wish I never took it there and did the seals myself. £80 per seal and a lot of labour would have saved me the headache this is now going to cause.

Unacceptable. Tell them to stop bodging it and replace the entire section of rubber, as they should have done in the first place.

 

[ShivP]

The M135i popped up saying it needed rear pads checking so got it booked in with my local BMW dealership Ocean Falmouth. I also pushed with them to finally get the door seals done under warranty due to them dropping. They wouldn't do it initially but forced it under goodwill. Was told that the rear pads don't need doing as they look to have been replaced before but the light not reset so they will do that, someone has put Delphi pads in before I owned the car. Didn't think much more of it.

Didn't have a courtesy as I wanted to get this all done ASAP and waited in their business lounge all day for it to be done, cracked on with work so all good.

Got home later on and as soon as I turned the car off the rear pad change warning light dinged...so this wasn't reset and I checked the job on the door seals and they'd hacked parts out instead of replacing the entire seal and bodged in new bits. Poorly. They even left the 3M tape I put in to tied me over until they could be done under warranty. So safe to say it was a waste of time and now I'm going to be wasting more time chasing them...called them 2 times thus far and can't get through to anyone. I think an email to the dealer manager is in order.

Would anyone else find this acceptable on a 3/4 year old car?

They're even worse in person and wish I never took it there and did the seals myself. £80 per seal and a lot of labour would have saved me the headache this is now going to cause.

I would do a BMW UK email as well

 

[jpaul]

on the automatic/zf's - as well as the roundabout 3rd-2nd issue, how is the control when you want inconspicuous 6th-5th/4th engine braking, preparing for an upcoming bend and would make a manual, slow, down-shift,
or, reliably hanging onto a gear as you take a bend/manouver (to avoid drive discontinuity) ... all said, you have to change you driving style like driving an ev.

 

[MrRockliffe]

on the automatic/zf's - as well as the roundabout 3rd-2nd issue, how is the control when you want inconspicuous 6th-5th/4th engine braking, preparing for an upcoming bend and would make a manual, slow, down-shift,
or, reliably hanging onto a gear as you take a bend/manouver (to avoid drive discontinuity) ... all said, you have to change you driving style like driving an ev.

I really don’t mean this to sound offensive, but I literally can’t understand what you’re saying.

I recognise each word, but it’s like when I read it, my brain has a stroke.



If you're asking about how the ZF box is when generally driving, it’s fine. On a twisty road in sports mode it hangs onto gears in the way I’d expect and the shifts are snappy for a torque converter (though it does feel like they add a bit of drivetrain shock into the changes on purpose to make it feel sportier - not a fan of that)

 

[Robbo]

It's not just me who finds those posts difficult to decipher then - no offence of course!

 

[M1k3H]

I test drove both a DCT and ZF8 version of the Z4 before going for a a DCT.

My impression at the time was that the ZF8 box was very smooth with changes being imperceptible to me. My only other automatic driving experience at the time was DSG gearboxes, which can sometimes be a little jerky (but not bad by any means).

I went with the DCT simply because I went for the 35i which (I believe) only came with the DCT. as an automatic option. Plus I thought it suited the car best due to the quicker/more violent gear changes when you got going. The downside of the DCT is that in low speeds it can feel a bit jerky especially when cold. But the ZF8, I wouldn't class as jerky.

P.S. to clarify further, ZF8 test drives were with 4 cylinder engines, DCT with 6 cylinder.

 

[MissChief]

A clean MOT pass on the 428i for another years ticket. Happy with that. The MPS5's have held up amazingly well for nearly 20k miles and two years. For a performance tyre that's remarkable.

 

[Bear]

A clean MOT pass on the 428i for another years ticket. Happy with that. The MPS5's have held up amazingly well for nearly 20k miles and two years. For a performance tyre that's remarkable.

I had mine go for an MOT a couple of weeks ago. I said I would wait and they said 1.5hrs, thought it was a bit long for an MOT but fine. It ended up being 2hrs as they didn’t do it straight away due to issues with another car.

The service guy that was taking care of my car was really apologetic and I said don’t worry about **** happens, he went off and came back with an ///M baseball cap, a BMW umbrella, some ///M metal dust caps, an air freshener and some refills and gave me the lot. Was quite a surprise.

 

[Kenai]

some ///M metal dust caps

If you use these, make sure you remove them regularly. Mine had some on already and I was checking tyre pressure on idrive, didn't realise they were metal and once I needed to top up after a few months, they were well and truly fused to the valve stems

 

[Armageus]

If you use these, make sure you remove them regularly. Mine had some on already and I was checking tyre pressure on idrive, didn't realise they were metal and once I needed to top up after a few months, they were well and truly fused to the valve stems

Silicone grease or at a pinch vaseline will help prevent the bimetallic corrosion