Birds, Uxbridge

FWIW I have only used Birds once and found them to be quite dissapointing.

When i first got my e36 evo it had a tendency to feel flat when the oil was at operating temperature. Given the various vanos horror stories I was expecting to fork out £2k to get everything done.

Based on reputation I dropped the car off at Birds to ask for a diagnosis. Feedback included a recommendation to tighten the steering adjustment (thanks but unlikely to solve it and not cheap at £80!) and a recommendation for a ~£500 spend to  investigate the problem by stripping the vanos down and checking it had been installed correctly by the dealer that had replaced it only a few years ago. Note that the initial inspection was around £60 (which I paid) from memory.

Normally I'm not scared to throw money at my cars to keep them running perfectly but this time I hesitated and decided to ponder the decision to go ahead. I was entertaining the idea of cams and tuning btw.

Lifting the bonnet a couple of days later and checking the oil level I discovered that it was MASSIVELY overfilled. Imagine the previous owner had filled it up before sale. Hmmm. Vanos, oil, oil pressure? I drained some of the oil from the sump and got it back to a reasonable level.

Problem solved! 1 Year later vanos is fine, car pulls perfectly and not a drop of oil is consumed between services.

I'm ashamed to say that I didn't check the oil myself (serviced all my own cars in the past and rebuilt engines ffs!) but I would have thought that a BMW specialist would have...

Just realised that this post has not asked for feedback and I've just made a totally random rant.

Rant over, I'll get my coat...

Birds are very much around and active, the Phil from CPC is no longer there, although he used to do some great trimming work.

Birds 01895 810850

Always a few interesting cars lurking in their workshop!

rr_ww wrote: Thorney used to be somewhere else. Amersham I think. Is Uxbridge due to become an E30 mecca

That'll be good if it is, just down the road from me

Thorney is and was out that way, but needed premises to assist with installing his motorsport stuff and testing Milltek exhausts for new models and probably work on his VX220 thingy!

Thorney - This guy is in the same premises, he would know!

The Dec 2006 Issue of BMW Car has an advert for them.

The name has changed to Kevin Bird Garages. Same website www.birdsauto.com & phone number is 01895 810850