ISUK

Well, at around 10:00 GMT this morning my turbo packed up whilst overtaking a car on a hill. A horrible noise, lots of black smoke and a loss of power. I limped it back home and called BMW Emergency services. About 100 minutes after my call a BMW mobile technician arrived in an E39 estate and confirmed that the turbo had failed after he revved the engine hard and saw huge clouds of black smoke. I asked him if it was a common thing for turbo's to fail and he said "yes" and that he had been called out to quite a few on roadside calls

So there you are. A fairly serious failure at only 15,600 miles. I'm not a happy camper just now and the service I received from my dealer when the car was trailered there was less than brilliant. I asked when they thought they would have it repaired and all I got was a blank stare and "we'll do our best sir but there are SIX other BMW rescue jobs in the queue ahead of your car".

I'm fed up with the crappy after sales service on offer from BMW in the UK. I tried to book my car in for the *URGENT* safety recall on the passenger airbag sensor and was told the earliest they could look at the car was the 26th October. I tried another dealer and they quoted the same waiting time. It seems that BMW GB are selling more cars than their network can support. Time to switch to another brand I think and cancel my X5 order.

530E60NL

Sorry to hear your problems man.. This sucks. A turbo shouldn't fail after only 15.000 miles...

ISUK

Thanks for that. I needed to vent some steam and don't mean to put others off their cars. Mechanical problems can and do happen but it did come as a bit of a shock to have a turbo fail so early. I run a large fleet of trucks and they are all turbocharged, do in excess of 150,000 miles each per year and it is extremely rare to have a turbo fail on them. So to have it happen on a car like a BMW is unexpected to say the least. As I say it is the aftersales in my experience in the UK that leaves a lot to be desired. I'm sure there are good dealers here it's just that I haven't found one.

ISUK

Oh, one other thing I forgot to mention. The BMW tech was more interested in the colour combo of my car than it's technical problem. He had a good look round the interior and pronounced that it was the nicest E60 he had seen and that it was the first time he had seen the auburn interior. I have to say that whilst it was nice to receive a compliment it would have been much nicer if he could have fixed the problem. Ah well.........

northernmonkey

sorry to hear about your turbo ISUK.

I know a few 330d owners that had similar problems, once fixed problems never came back, faulty turbo that was all.

i dont think any brand offers 100% reliability and it seems it don't matter what you spend. was talking to a guy last week that just had his lamborghini gallardo back at the dealers after 3000 miles for a whole new gearbox !!! and he paid well over ?110K for it.

Heard similar stories about the pricey Merc SL's etc etc......just fact of life I guess...hopefully your car will be back to its best soon and you'll be again.

alohalc

that sucks big time ! doesn't matter turbo or not, the point is your car only has 15.6k miles and it broke down like this ? hard to imagine it's a bmw . i hope they'll at least give you a loaner and fix the problem sooner. good luck .

530E60NL

Or give you the twinturbo 3.0 hehehehe..

ISUK

Thanks for your support guys. I've been given a 320i ES loaner today which I have to say feels really slow. It actually felt like my 530d with a blown turbo

I've to take the 3 series back to the dealer tomorrow and they are going to give me a brand new 530i until my car is fixed. I couldn't get the 530 this afternoon as it had just arrived at the dealership and they were PDI'ing it. It still had to have its de-wax and valet. I've got to go to Glasgow tomorrow so that's a round trip of nearly 700 miles on their car, not mine (one silver lining!). It will be interesting to compare the petrol to my diesel. Comparison report to follow next week.

530E60NL - do you think you could phone BMW GB and suggest they give me a 535d Sport as compensation for the inconvenience? Carbon black with Auburn will do nicely thanks.

SLVR530I

Another lessoned learned for me....I did not know that 530d had turbo

530E60NL

The 525d has one too.. (only a smaller engine capacity) The 535d has two turbo's.. (but has a 3.0 engine)