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Sedans BMW 5-Series BMW 5-Series Maintenance and Repair
2164 messages, Last post on Aug 09, 2008 at 9:47 AM
You are in the BMW 5-Series Forum. Your Hosts are pat & karens
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Replying to: tlouie (Jun 20, 2007 6:19 am) Your specific question regarding oil changes is fairly easily addressed, consider the following: - Most six cylinder engines in the three liter range from most manufacturers have an oil capacity of between four and five quarts. Your new car uses seven. - Most modern ULEV (or better) engines (engines that produce FAAAAR fewer combustion byproducts than older engines) are able to go between six thousand and seventy-five hundred miles between oil changes, on conventional oil. Your car requires the use of a very high quality synthetic oil (most synthetics cannot meet the BMW LL-01 oil spec, and not a single conventional or semi-synthetic oil can). - Viewed as a whole, your very efficient (from a combustion perspective) engine with half again as much oil as most other engines of a similar size, and using only the best oil money can buy, can safely go the ~15,000 miles as recommended by BMW. - One other point. BMW has now been recommending a 15,000 mile OCI since the introduction of the E46 3-Series back in late 1998. If the 15,000 mile OCI is bad for the engines, we'd be seeing hundreds (if not thousands) of posts clogging up these sites complaining about failed engines. I've seen a handful, and in every case the engine was abused (i.e. run WAAAAY longer than 15,000 miles before the oil was changed and/or run far too low on oil). I hope this helps. Best Regards, Shipo
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Replying to: shipo (Jun 20, 2007 7:10 am)
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Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Jun 20, 2007 8:13 am) Based upon my very unscientific observations, there seems to be a very hit and miss nature to this problem. Take two seemingly identical cars, driven in seemingly identical conditions and using the same oil, and you might could well find that one runs perfectly while the other will be barely able to maintain an idle. Go figure. Best Regards, Shipo
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Replying to: shipo (Jun 20, 2007 9:01 am)
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Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Jun 20, 2007 9:47 am) The absolute heaviest "cold" oil allowable (i.e. that meets the BMW LL-01 oil spec) is 5W-30. It would be interesting to see if the folks who've had the greatest incidence of problems are those that have used the factory BMW/Castrol 5W-30 engine oil versus those of us who converted our cars over to the thinner Mobil 1 0W-40 and/or Castrol Syntec 0W-30 oils. Best Regards, Shipo |
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My friend owns one of these. He has a rebuilt engine on it. The car is fine except it will take 10-20 seconds to strat , he has to keep turning the ksy give it gas for that time till the ignition kicks off. He says the mecahnic said it was a problem with some valves or something not sure what he said. am planning to buy this car from him but not sure if this is a safe buy, the rebuilt engine has 50k now. At the same time another guy is trying to sell me a 97 MITS eclipse with 73 k on it, looks runs nice. Whats your opinion? |
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Replying to: shipo (Jun 20, 2007 7:22 am)
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Replying to: tlouie (Jun 23, 2007 6:44 am)  Best Regards, Shipo
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Replying to: shipo (Jun 23, 2007 7:07 am)
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Replying to: tlouie (Jun 23, 2007 11:43 am) I am not sure I would call European cars' reliability as being horrible. Take it for what its worth, but My 2002 530i was the most reliable car I have ever owned (including the ownership experience by the person who bought it from me). My prior cars were 1981, 1989 and 1994 Accord, 1995 Integra, 1989 325iX wagon in Germany, 1993 Altima, 2004 Sienna, and 2003 M5. The 530i had zero repairs and cost the least to maintain. The current owner probably has about 60,000 to 70,000 miles on it. Our 95 Integra and the 04 Sienna had more service visits and warranty repairs by same or less mileage. My 03 M5 probably has had about the same number of service visits for warranty repairs as the Integra and the Sienna this point (53,000 miles) but the M5 repairs certainly would have cost a lot more if it had been out of warranty. |
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