opinions on 320d e90 ?

weekaizer

i have put a deposit on a 2008 bmw 320d m sport with 63k with full bmwsh!. since i have paid that deposit i am reading alot of issues with timing chain failures on those engines... the dealer assures me the car will come with a years warranty but does anyone have any experience first of all with the chain breaking and causing damage and secondly if bmw repair them under warranty??. £11000 plus vrt is alot of money for a car which potentially could cost alot to repair!...

ian87

I bought one last year. I know a guy who was parts manager with a BMW dealer. He said once the car is kept topped up with oil, regularly changed etc that it reduces the chances of it happening and even then it's a lot rarer than people think.

weekaizer

I was more worried about the general design of the engine, lot of people on forums saying the set up of the chain and sharpness of the teeth coupled with fuel pump problems may eventually cause it to snap... Hopefully it's not common, i would have thought these BMW Diesel engines are so common they'd be bulletproof!.

ian87

What you have to remember is people post about these problems on forums etc but people don't post about the good things. It's quite rare to happen but seems more common because people are more likely to post about problems than their cars reliability..

pajo1981

I've one of these cars OP. It has 100k+ miles on the clock, serviced only according to manual, driven hard , and yet to have a single issue.

Chill out. The internet is full of scaremongering.

Boskowski

I agree with the previous posters.
People typically go on the internet when they have a problem, they rarely do when they don't, singing praise. It will certainly give you a distorted picture if you don't factor that in.

weekaizer

True!. I'm prob just being paranoid that I'm gona end up with big repair bills after already on this bvarian beaut!I usually only keep my cars for 6 months max or so, hopefully il be holding onto this one a bit longer!.:)

bazz26

This argument is two sided. Just because it hasn't happened to someone's particular car doesn't mean it isn't an issue with others. Equally just because it has happened to someone's car doesn't mean it will happen to every other car.

The timing chain is an issue on these engines alright but it doesn't effect all of them and there is no specific set mileage at which time it happen. It has been known to occure on cars with mileage as low as 40k miles and on cars with mileage as high as 120k miles. What I am hearing now though is that it is becoming cheaper to repair the damage if it does occure as the chain can be replaced and head repaired without having to remove the engine and gearbox, this reduces the labour costs.

My advice is to have the oil and filters changed around every 15k km rather than the longer 30k km that BMW recommend. This is what I do and I have no problems with mine so far with 120k km on the clock.

At the end of the day there are no guarantees of 100% reliability with any car you buy.

ian87

bazz26 wrote: »

My advice is to have the oil and filters changed around every 15k km rather than the longer 30k km that BMW recommend. This is what I do and I have no problems with mine so far with 120k km on the clock.

I'd echo this advice judging by what the parts manager told me. He was of the opinion that regular oil changes and keeping the oil topped up reduces the chances of this happening.

weekaizer

bazz26 wrote: »

This argument is two sided. Just because it hasn't happened to someone's particular car doesn't mean it isn't an issue with others. Equally just because it has happened to someone's car doesn't mean it will happen to every other car.

The timing chain is an issue on these engines alright but it doesn't effect all of them and there is no specific set mileage at which time it happen. It has been known to occure on cars with mileage as low as 40k miles and on cars with mileage as high as 120k miles. What I am hearing now though is that it is becoming cheaper to repair the damage if it does occure as the chain can be replaced and head repaired without having to remove the engine and gearbox, this reduces the labour costs.

My advice is to have the oil and filters changed around every 15k km rather than the longer 30k km that BMW recommend. This is what I do and I have no problems with mine so far with 120k km on the clock.

At the end of the day there are no guarantees of 100% reliability with any car you buy.

As a matter of interest how much roughly are we talking for a full repair should the chain ever snap?!..