BMW turbo blowing engine up myth

bummer, still glad you're ok!

I am too busy with work to do anything to the car.

Have to leave the Diesel in and the brand new tow bar fitted :-(


Looking at a 520d on a 56 plate tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

yesterday I was home early and couldn't resist. and guess what, it started!

Took a few attempts and a lot of smoke the first few times, but then it fired up with not too much cranking.

but only runs when I disconnect the intake air pipe from the EGR. As soon I put it back on, the engine dies. It also only idles, doesn't respond to an throttle inputs.

Edited by UweM3 - 01-May-2012 at 09:11

I was going with 60mph-70mph on the motorway in rush hour. Didn't fancy any stunts at 7:30 am.

It revved up in a split second, there wasn't much time to stall anything.
My main concern was to reach the hard shoulder from the fast lane.



Edited by UweM3 - 01-May-2012 at 19:29

Andrew Rolland wrote: Sounds like you did the right thing, look out for you and others first, engine life comes futher down the list.  If you are lucky to have caught on to what was happening quick enough you could try and save the engine if you can without harming yourself or other road users.

In the end of the day, it's just money. Not that I have enough and as usual it always happens at the wrong time.

that is the second BMW engine in our household which blew up in the last 3 month.

It's really my own fault, I did get all the warning signs and ignored them.
-- Quite a smoke push when starting the car
-- bit of shaky idle for a few seconds till the oil cleared from the intake
-- waste gate rattle (but that has rattled for the last 20k miles!!)

I knew the turbo was on it's way south, but would you spend £1000 "just in case" on a car worth only 3k?

plan was to run the 320d for another year, save bit more up and get an E61. Well, I am getting an E61 tomorrow.....

But this time I am considering taking a warrantee out. It just gets too expensive with these modern cars when they go pop.

No more £500 replacment engines these days. And all the gubbins around the engine need more or less replacing as well if you want to be sure your replacement engine isn't going to run like a pig.

the other engine which went bang was my wifes 318ti.

When it went, I told my wife to get rid of the nun runner and move on.
but she loves the car and wanted to keep it.
because it was only a head gasket failure, we went ahead. As soon the engine was opened up, the hell opened....
The cams had worn into the head and it was looking like a chimney inside.
So safe to say it had very rarely seen an oil service.

Used engine had to be sourced (which I wanted to do in the first place).
Turns out the 4 cylinder valve tronic is a sought after engine, £1000 for a used lump. And it's just the lump! They strip EVERYTHING off, even the oil filter housing.

Cut a long story short, £2700 later we had a running car with a 70k miles engine. Considering that the car is only worth 3K, it make my blood boil to say the least.

It is like you said, they don't rust anymore. Engine and electronics send them to the scrapyard.

Andrew Rolland wrote: Your wife must be a diehard bimmer fan then, mine would have told me to scrap it!   So did you not give it oil services then or are you blaming a previous owner for lack of oil services or the way your wife drives the car?

we didn't even get a chance to carry an oil service out! Happened 3 month after we bought it. My wife doesn't drive a lot, so service is maybe once a year.

It all started when her other compact was written off when a wheel from a caravan hit her on the M25 and she wanted EXCATLY the same car.
And there was only ONE for sale in the whole UK like it.
It was/is a very clean car with good paintwork, spotless leather interior, widescreen sat nav and and and.

Well, the rest is history

BTW I bought an E61 520d estate auto with 79k miles and FULL service history. Fingers scrossed. Drives bloody nice that E61!

fully agree with all you said!

but I have a boot release button if I am not mistake.