hpi4

Hi

I have a 520d manual done 55k miles. The car struggles to maintain speed on the motorways when met by a gradient, it just loses power. Is this common with 520 diesels or is something wrong with the car. On flat roads the car is fine.

Any thoughts or advice would be apreciated.

Hpi

barton2002

emmm....i have a 520d too. but isnt it a necessary that the car loses its speed while it comes to an up hill? assuming u give it the same amount of power?

so do u mean it loses power even if u hit it hard?? i drive in DS mode 100% time bcus the auto gear box is just not driveable at all. n it makes the car damnnnnn slow. but if u put it in DS mode, it instantly transform the car n make a whole difference! n putting it in DS makes u feel like ur in an 530i on paper! lol, because i got it remapped. but ofc it would be not as good at higher speed n rev.

higher

You could have a turbo failure. Lack of power usually means turbo problems on diesel engines.

Look for exhaust smoke when accelerating hard, which is an indicator or turbo problems, could also be cylinder head, look for white deposits in oil, remove oil cap and check. Or valves.

Otherwise you could put the cruise control on and let the car take care of maintaining speed on hills etc.

hpi4

The car is manual. I've tried the bit with cruise control, but even then it losses power. will a diagnostic machine tell me what might be wrong with it?

higher

It that case it needs to go for investigation / diagnostics at BMW dealer. Common failures could be as said, Turbo, Cylinder head, exhaust gasket, blocked injector, or any number of mechanical things. Less common, could be your engine management system or some other electronic jiggery-pockery !

You could probably get BMW to check it for minimal cost (£50-100), which is better than risking letting the car fail on a cold dark, raining, February night 100 miles from home. And you never know it might be something small and cheap to fix.

Also, there are lots of independant BMW service centres around that can do the same (probably for free) if you give them the repair job. I know couple of good ones down south - depends where you are, but someone on the forum will tell you where the independants are wherever you live.

Good luck. Let us know what happens and what the fault was.

hpi4

thanks yes gonna take it in and check it out. Am in the northwest, lancashire. Anybody have any suggestions for independant bmw service centres. Many thanks

nsudac

How close are you to Liverpool City Centre? Autotech are always talked highly of. I had a similar problem with my e60, they did diagnosis on it (which didn't pick any problems up) for free.

Website: http://www.autotechliverpool.co.uk/

hpi4

Thanks for that, im not too far from liverpool, if i cant find anything closer i will give them a go. So if your car didn't show up anything on the diagnoistic how did you solve the problem or do u just live with it now?

Thanks

nsudac

I'm not sure if it's the same problem. Mine used to randomly lose ALL power under hard acceleration (so revs would drop, speed would drop, just as though I'd totally lifted off the accelerator). It seemed to fix itself - or atleast it hasn't happened for atleast 6 months now.

I did put a couple of bottles of Redex in the fuel tank a couple of weeks before it disappeared, not sure if that was related.

5erg

Hi guys.
I am new to BMW, I bought my 2006 520d two months ago. Just wandering what is your MPG on 520d manual. I get 23MPG in town and 42 MPG on motorway, normal driving, is that normal? BMW claims it should do 35 and 60MPG.
Regards.
Serg