New BMW 3 series - When ?

lomb

kbannon wrote:

I was one that needed a new cat!
Anyway the problem ran until the engine manufacturing changed in March 1998 IIRC. However, the old 1995 to March 1998 engines continue to fail.

i remember now , i reakon the cat mite blow again if shes using oil.cat failure seems to b a common problem on bmws. suppose theirs 3 choices. 1 find another victim and offload it, 2 repair it (prob not worth it)or 3 drive it till it dies when the cats blow decat it and come nct time buy 2 uni cats and bolt them on, then decat it after. should still run if a little roughly for several years.

Gatster

By plenty I meant about 50%, probably a bit less but still enough to enable you to find one that had been sorted. When I was shopping around in the UK I'd ask dealers if they were aware if the issue had arisen, if they didn't know, wouldn't check or give me the info to do so myself I ended the conversation.

Most independant BMW dealers were pretty up front/knowledgable when questioned about individual cars they had ('general' used dealers not so helpful), so if I take the plunge I'll go that route.

Thing is it is a bit of a lottery - I know a couple of people in the North West of England (where the glut of cheap petrol apparantly made this quite an issue) and thinking back to the late 90's-2002-ish they had no problems, but there are plenty of horror stories about. I only found out about it when I started looking for BMW's with the affected engines - it made the task harder but as I wasn't going to buy in Ireland I have no idea of the extent of it over here.

Seth Brundle

read this thread...
http://www.bmwcarclubforum.co.uk/forum_posts.asp?TID=13448&PN=1

stratos

My 98 Bimmer failed at 49,000 miles. I was lucky engine was replaced free of charge.