aybeesea

I cant remember. I know it's 3 years in the UK - is it unlimited mileage?

ABC

dvw

Hi,

3 weeks ago I was in the same situation. My car, 530d, almost had 155.000 km when I blew the turbo. Since we only have 2 years of warranty here in Belgium and
my car was almost 3 years old, I was afraid to pay the full monty!
But, since BMW has the policy to pay some of the costs for every car less than 3 years old, I only had to pay 30% for the turbo (300 Euro instead of 1100)
Nevertheless I paid little less than 1100 Euro (work and pieces) to get everything fixed. Since day one everyone told me a car with this engine could do easily 300k km with no problems.
Yeah sure... I bought the car in 2004 after waiting one year because of the early adapter problems...
Maybe next time I should wait another extra year or buy something else...

thebe

My turbo went away at around 65K km. I was in Germany on a business trip and decided to go into a shop for a checkup. They diagnosed my turbo as "will die soon" and then changed it. The car was just one month out of warranty at that time. Thankfully BMW covered this as post-warranty and I only paid the labor.

Then a week ago, at 112K kms, the turbo died again. This time I believe it is because of a pressure sensor that was defect since one week before the turbo was changed. In that week I put another 1.2K kms on the car (my SA said that I can drive it but will have some missing HPs). Now I believe I will drive it more carefully than it was a shopping cart full of eggs.

Oh well, and in my case too the car was driven hard sometimes but only after proper warm-up and after longer trips the turbo was left to actively cool off. My car is an 530d.

the-oneil

I initially bought a 530d back in Sep 2006, after reading some stories about turbo failures & the expense of putting it right both here & on the bmwland.co.uk forums, I decided the diesel is not for me I felt like I am sitting on a time bomb that could go off at anytime, and the saving in fuel was just not worth it (especially that I only do 10K miles a year). On Turbo blow out of warranty woull wipe all the saving made in fuel and much more.

I swapped it for an N52 (2007) 530i M sport and never looked back.

niktee

This is one of the many reasons I keep bitchin' about the decision to eliminate the 530i from the U.S. in '08. All of the turbo freaks that are drooling over the 535 and it's prodigious power have this and many more things to concern themselves about. Give me the sweet normally aspirated 265 HP N53 3 litre and give it to me now! Where has our freedom of choice gone, BMW NA? (I realize this thread is referring to diesel, but a blown turbo is a blown turbo, and it happens more often than you can imagine.)

Flowerfred

yeah, it is.

Ricracing

The largest newspaper in Finland (Helsingin Sanomat) did write about their test drive with the E92 335i last Saturday.
Vastly reported (obviously) they wrote about seriours engine hick-up problems after cold starting!

You seem to have a point there niktee.

Really sorry for the turbo blow Flowerfred and others.

It's not the first turbo that have blown...

SteVTEC

My thoughts exactly. And the 335/535 has two tiny little turbos that'll be spinning their guts out, and since it's petrol vs diesel, they'll have to deal with significantly hotter exhaust gas temperatures which will put even more strain on them. They "say" they've used special materials in the turbos to handle the extremely high EGTs, but for how long? Probably for as long as the warranty period, and not much more.

BMW pulled all the stops out that they could to make that engine as efficient and responsive as possible, and it's awesome. But to get that they had to give up elsewhere, and most likely it'll be long-term reliability. If it costs 1100 Euro for one turbo on a 530d, it'll probably cost US $2000 for one of the turbos on a 535i, and there's two of them. Personally, I plan on buying and keeping for awhile in the US instead of leasing, so this is a big concern. I'd rather have the 530i back with the N53 engine and not have to worry about ticking time bomb turbochargers. In contrast, Subaru seems to know how to build pretty darn reliable turbo/petrol engines. They also run much richer mixtures (cooler EGTs) to protect the turbos, and lower compression. Turbos are a bit bigger vs engine size and laggier also. None of that is good for response or efficiency, but it is good for reliability.


As a consolation prize, the US N52 528i (3.0, 230hp/200tq) is probably quick enough for me, and it's cheaper than last year's 525i in the US when both are paired with the automatic, so that's probably what I'll go with. The wife and I are planning to eventually pick up a sporty convertible down the line anyways, so whatever E60 I get doesn't need to be ultra-fast. Will leave that for the 2dr convertible. Would still rather have a 265hp/230tq N53 though.

BMW.Aaron.TeamF1

If i'm not wrong BMW uses turbo units built my Mitsubishi.

Iceman

on the beach...


Sorry to hear that FF.