BMW and M Power Owners

anticonscience said:
How much is the iDrive fault to fix?

Can't say I would be thrilled at the prospect of buying a broken car, it sounds like you'd never get it fixed to be honest as I've been in a similar position before of having a car with a (albeit a much smaller issue) problem and never ending up sorting it out.
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It's pretty cheap to buy a second-hand CCC unit and get it coded to your car (like £300); there's loads of them on eBay or BMW forums from scrapped cars/people who have upgraded to CIC.

I had mine replaced under warranty and they said it was around £1k of work.

Received my high kick spoiler from Taiwan on Friday and fitted it over the weekend. It came fully painted with everything needed to fit it, delivered from Taiwan in 5 working days and cost me the grand total of £90!

This is a replacement for my M3 lip spoiler and is the second painted Taiwanese spoiler I've purchased and you really can't go wrong with either the quality of the spoiler or the paint job.

It was an absolute ball ache to remove the 3M tape from the existing spoiler, but it was well worth it. Excuse the early morning dew-covered car but it's been raining all weekend and this was the first chance I've had to take a photo:

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Eugh.

Another very cold morning- it again turned over very badly (whole car visibly shaking from the outside like it has an 7.2l V8 hemi or something!) with the engine light on, just like it did before. if I let it warm up a bit, turn off and start up again, it runs fine with no warning light.

I've decided I've had enough of this piece of junk- I've made the executive decision that it is going to go. The question is do I trade it in for a loss or try to sell it privately on the basis that it has a new clutch and hydraulics, water pump, handbrake, Pilot Sport 3s...
 
Have you had it on diagnostics to see what's up with it?

I know the feeling though, I've been VERY close to that stage with my E46 numerous times and it sucks :(
 
last time the diagnostics thing said misfire Cylinder 5, and the coil was changed. All the spark plugs were done two years ago (less than 10k miles) so aren't likely to be naff I'd think?

Other than that, it's the looming oil CCV thing bill, the fact the gearbox is pretty... crunchy and I just cannot smoothly changed gear in it. Basically I got it to enjoy it but as I don't I might as well have a cheaper to insure / run normal car I don't enjoy!
 
It's a shame that you are finding that thing so unreliable, all of my BMWs have been really pretty good (even my current 2003 330i seems fine and I'm putting 4-5 hours/day on it)

I'd stuck with it to be honest, shaking like that with an engine light will be a cheap fix, and you've done all that other stuff :)
 
Nah they won't care, they're not a turn it round get it back out the door quick kind of car.

Honestly, get it running OK with the misfire sorted then sell it on for £2.5k - buyer beware. Took me about a month to sell mine privately but it wasn't a difficult sell really (albeit it was in good nick with pretty much everything done to it)
 
When you say "everything done to it", what do you mean?

I was hoping for a bit more than £2.5k, more like £3.5 privately based on autotrader prices (up to 5k area for a 03 [but admittedly facelift] 330ci auto) and the work that has been done to it (without downright lying to a buyer) and otherwise reasonable spec for the money/era/e46. Are manuals not as sellable as autos for the poser-y 330ci?

I'll definitely get the misfire sorted first. I just don't want to get stuck in a focus 1.6 or 307 diesel :(
 
I mean I personally refreshed pretty much every common issue, bodywork was good and it was running right.

Vanos seals, rocker gasket, coil packs, cooling system, trailing arm bushes, drop links, full track rods and ends, new bearings at the front, newish discs and pads, shoes were good refurbished calipers, ccv, clutch was good, box was good, diff was good, wheels were good, branded, well treaded tyres, interior was good, history was good,

If I paid £3.5k for a pre facelift car I'd be taking my time looking through receipts and expecting all those issues /common faults to have been sorted or thought about - you want rid with as little poking about the car done as possible.

If I bought your car for under £3k then had to spend a bit of time sorting it I wouldn't be too fussed - if you tried to get top money for it (I'd say anythig even nearly approaching £4k is big money for a pre facelift now) I'd be more careful about it in the first place.

Your call, but you should consider the audience. By all means check trade in but it wasn't worth putting mine against a £7.5k car. Suspect you'd need to be paying quite a bit more or at least be paying quite a bit more than you could potentially get the newer car for
 
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ah yes quite a lot of work done then.

Thanks for the advice- I definitely won't be trading it in now, I don't want to take a £2500 hit on it. I'll be having a think about what it's worth over the next week and how to position / describe it.

I'm also generally worried that I've had it 3 months and got several receipts with at least one each month- if I had owned the car for a year with lots of receipts in the first three months I could justify 'turning it into the car I want it to be' but as it stands it just looks like I've bought a car, had to lots of work to it and now what rid of it. I'm pretty sure even I'd be put off from buying it so someone with an ounce of common sense would walk away.
 
I haven't read the thread, but have you checked the intake pipe for splits?

That said, what you are describing sounds like dodgy coils to me. They cost barely anything, and the same for plugs... so just belt and braces and change the lot. Worst case... it has new parts int hat are good for another 30-40k. Even Bosch replacement ones are only about £25 each
 
Aren't you going to try and have the misfire fixed? Have you had the codes read by a proper BMW reader with the proprietary codes or just a generic OBDII one?

It'll either be:

A) spark plug
B) coil pack
C) injector
D) HT lead.
E) DISA o ring

A, B, D and E cost about £40 for all of them and take about 45mins to replace. Do everything you can easily and cheaply. This includes a thorough inspection of all rubber pipes all over.

Just got to hope it isn't the hydraulic lifters or assembly. Might also be the CCV which would also explain the oil consumption.
 
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It was done at an independent BMW specialist using a large tablety thing where he had to select the make and model of the car first- no idea if this would be a BMW one or generic, but it didn't have any bmw branding on it. The error code read "misfire- cylinder 5".

Yes I am going to get the misfire fixed. Is your list in order of liklihood of causing the problem?

Conanius said:
I haven't read the thread, but have you checked the intake pipe for splits?

That said, what you are describing sounds like dodgy coils to me.
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I had the coil done on this cylinder last week.

Wouldn't the splits in the intake pipe be causing the problem all the time, not just on very cold mornings?
 
An indy would have spotted a fuelling issue previously (assuming they aren't complete muppets)and to be honest fuel pump failure is pretty rare. Pump or filter issues should be relatively easy to discount as they are unlikely to be limited only to cold start. Same with the DISA, if it's not sealed correctly the issue should be there all the time. Whilst I wouldn't rule these out completely I would still think it's more than likely to be coil, lead or plug related and would go about inspecting them first.
 
almoststew1990 said:
It was done at an independent BMW specialist using a large tablety thing where he had to select the make and model of the car first- no idea if this would be a BMW one or generic, but it didn't have any bmw branding on it. The error code read "misfire- cylinder 5".

Yes I am going to get the misfire fixed. Is your list in order of liklihood of causing the problem?
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With proprietary software it should give you more information about the problem rather than just a misfire? Not sure. Anyway, having done some research on this, it seems it's a common issue, and a lot of the time it is the hydraulic lifters that have failed.

If you had the coil changed last week on it, then rule that out. Change the spark plug, the DISA O-ring and HT lead. I'm not sure how proficient you are at taking stuff apart but this should be about £20 in parts and take an hour or two.

Check the air intake boots carefully looking for splits whilst you're doing the DISA O ring and just generally have a poke about. The only other thing it could be is your CCV. Since you're rinsing oil at the moment and having this issue, CCV maybe a good shot. I think when i had mine done at a BMW independent a few years back they charged £170. If you can find a small one man band BMW guy who works for £40ph, that'll be down to £120, which isn't all that bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECwRRfvVRQU for reference.

almoststew1990 said:
Wouldn't the splits in the intake pipe be causing the problem all the time, not just on very cold mornings?
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Probably, but not definitely. For the sake of 5 minutes looking for a broken boot, it's worth checking. This is what mine looked like (strangely got no error codes or idling problems):

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scratch said:
It's pretty cheap to buy a second-hand CCC unit and get it coded to your car (like £300); there's loads of them on eBay or BMW forums from scrapped cars/people who have upgraded to CIC.

I had mine replaced under warranty and they said it was around £1k of work.
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This, But besides from that the car is in good nick, and due to it being my sister's partner car i'm gonna get it at a nice family price xD
 
Uncle_Gravy said:
This, But besides from that the car is in good nick, and due to it being my sister's partner car i'm gonna get it at a nice family price xD
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Are you certain it is the CCC computer that has gone and not the screen/DVD drive?

As scratch said, £300 from eBay, 2 hours to fit and either code it yourself or get an independent garage to do it for £60
 
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