BMW and M Power Owners

Speaking on the reliability side I've had my E46 330Ci since February and travelled 7,000 miles and other than an oil service and an MoT it's only wanted for two things, drop links and aux belts.

Oh, and regular ~1,000 mile 1l oil top-ups.

I'd say almoststew1990 has been particularly unlucky :(
 
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Depoends how fussy you are really - I done a lot of work to mine over 12 months that wasn't strictly required, but was good to be sure the components were fresh.

It does seem like he has been particularly unlucky so far, my problem would be that there seems to be no sign of that run of luck stopping.....
 
mike gunnz said:
Actually feel for you as you've had ongoing issues with your e46 from day one. Are you planning to keep it or will you cut your losses and move it on? It sounds like a complete liability tbh plus there's still the potential for the common faults to occur...?
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I've been tempted and found myself looking at Autotrader occasionally but my replacement will be however much I get for my car as the rest of my budget went on rent / house security deposit, so is there much point? Sure I could get a smaller more reliable car but it will still be old and likely need consumables replaced.

pepsilol said:
Oof £85, that's a nice wee bit of profit for the garage for 10 minutes work.

Bosch coils for that car are like £35.
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I know. I was going to do it myself weekend after next when I'm next at my parents house, bummer :(
 
It's never let me down but I said at the time I made the decision to retire it from active duty that the frequency of stuff going wrong was beginning to annoy me.
 
My 12 year old E46 has had nothing go wrong with it other than a flat (wrong) battery.

Passed 2 MOTs whilst I've had it with nothing wrong. I've had it serviced, changed the tyres and the battery. 10,000 miles... so far so good...
 
Yeah this is where you soon suffer coilpack failure, coil spring failure, brake wear sensor failure, maf sensor failure ;)
 
The track rod ends have seized on my E46. Apparently heating them up to free them is an MOT failure? True? Would rather just heat them up and use a breaker bar to loosen them up than replace them completely.
 
mrk said:
Yeah this is where you soon suffer coilpack failure, coil spring failure, brake wear sensor failure, maf sensor failure ;)
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And once you fix that lot, the cooling system will decide to explode into a million pieces, and the DISA valve will implode and make a mess of your pistons :p
 
panthro said:
The track rod ends have seized on my E46. Apparently heating them up to free them is an MOT failure? True? Would rather just heat them up and use a breaker bar to loosen them up than replace them completely.
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Not unless they're damaged....but by the time you've freed them why wouldn't you just replace? Its a dead easy job
 
Why? If you need the tracking done anyway I'd replace them unless they're very new (which they aren't, because then they wouldn't be stuck)

Heating the nuts to get them freed effectively weakens them - whilst they're unlikely to fail there's a higher probability your alignment wont last
 
How easy can this be done myself? I have a trolley jack and axel stands but never attempted anything like it. I presume replacing the rod ends means I don't need to free them first?
 
panthro said:
How easy can this be done myself? I have a trolley jack and axel stands but never attempted anything like it. I presume replacing the rod ends means I don't need to free them first?
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Usually easy to do the track rod ends....



You'll need to free them off first, best way is to use some Plus Gas (it's my new favourite thing, having not used it before) then you can crack it off and undo without it being totally stuck.

E: I didn't watch the video before, just have. He removes the whole pigging track rod, not just the end. You only need to crack off the nut before the boot and unwind the end from there and off the track rod.


If a woman can do it (same principle applies to the E46, just different design between the threaded end and the balljoint end).
 
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No the only way you won't need to free them off is if you replace both the track rods and the track rod ends - again not difficult but a little bit more expensive.

I can do them with a trolley jack, axle stands, stillson and some heat on the drive easily enough - if you do the whole arm you won't even need heat.
 
InvaderGIR said:
Usually easy to do the track rod ends....




You'll need to free them off first, best way is to use some Plus Gas (it's my new favourite thing, having not used it before) then you can crack it off and undo without it being totally stuck.

E: I didn't watch the video before, just have. He removes the whole pigging track rod, not just the end. You only need to crack off the nut before the boot and unwind the end from there and off the track rod.



If a woman can do it (same principle applies to the E46, just different design between the threaded end and the balljoint end).
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You'll not be cracking the nut on old siezed track rod ends without heat and or a massive bar
 
This is why I said to use Plus Gas, it's amazing, million times better than WD40 for this sort of job. I've been having great fun removing stuck nuts and bolts this past week on the Golf. :D

Of course if he is really unlucky he'll have to remove the whole track rod + end.
 
If I had a garage and all my tools in one place this would be easy, but because I live in a flat I'd have to go round to my mums house, find all my tools etc. I might just get the local garage to do it. I'll have a think about it when I go home and watch the tutorial videos.
 
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