F30 335d needs a new engine. What to do?

Bump in case anyone has some wisdom for me

what should I do? I've been quoted 13k for a replacement refurbished engine. Does anyone have any recommendations for other places I should try for a quote for the work?

That's the first thing a lot of people said to me, close the engine up and trade it in but honestly I just couldn't live with doing that. Maybe if I was buying a car from a main BMW dealer but I'd just feel bad selling a grenade to someone. The car was driving perfectly and still had a tonne of power I actually can't really believe how it went from metal particles in the filter to completely unrepairable engine with not so much as a puff of smoke. I felt it was slightly down on power since its last visit to BMW for an EGR replacement so maybe that was related but I genuinely just thought they'd put on a different map or updated software.

I'm splitting my time between Galway and Clare/Limerick yep. That's €13k quote from Clondrinagh Motor Centre… they offered me €5k for the car as is which is just way too low. He said we all think our own cars are worth more than they are which wasn't exactly the right thing to say when I've been watching the value of F30 335d's for the last 5 years from time to time as I considered swapping…

I've just emailed Alpina for a quote thanks for the recommendation I forgot about them, I also emailed a few more I found on google

I never thought to ask BMW themselves, I doubt there would be any sort of goodwill considering I didn't use them for oil changes, but the car is less than 100,000 miles which might check some sort of box for them to consider at least attempting to soften the blow? Even if they'd sell me a replacement block at a decent price and I could get someone else to do the work maybe.

I haven't seen the engine myself but they claim the block is warped too much to be repairable, but there's a big jump between a replacement block and whole replacement engine which I haven't fully had explained to me. There must be several parts which are reusable aside from the block?

The price from CMC was made up of €7k for a replacement engine and the balance of the money to recondition and fit it. Maybe it also includes the bill to date for works opening up the engine to get to this point but I'd need to figure that out for sure.

I genuinely believe they could sell the car with a warrantied reconditioned engine(which should be no risk to them) for 25k, and for me to replace the car it would be €25k-ish and I'd have an unknown engine at that point so doing the work at the best price possible I think makes sense.

As far as I can tell the rest of the car is sound other than the wheels needing to be diamond cut again etc…

thanks for the replies… my head is absolutely melted by this

Will see what sort of quotes I get from others and I'll get back to CMC then, asking specifically what 13k counts towards because I really wouldn't like to get a call a few weeks in and find out they're after putting turbos back on that they later decide should have been reconditioned and all of a sudden they're asking for more money and I should have just walked away instead of pouring money into it. I am obviously not in the business of reconditioning engines so I'd be just trusting them to not come up with any unforeseen costs.

I don't want to sell this car I'm only approaching it from not wanting to get stung by good money after bad. If it made sense to then I would sell it, I think there's profit in there for someone to do the engine job and if that's me then that's fine as I'll have the car back and keep it for another few years at least. at which point the total cost of ownership will have been not bad for how much I've liked the car. The car cost me about €20,000 (15k cash + 4400 to VRT, then a few random bits needed sorting). even if I sold it for 5-6k right now that's not a bad cost of ownership over 4 years @ €3,750 per year. If I put 13k into it it's 33k, keep it for another 4 years and the TCO has gone up to €4,125 per year but I'll have a car worth a non-zero amount of money. What will my car be worth in 4 years is anyones guess but lets say it's 5k, we're back in the range of €3,500 per year. Obviously assuming nothing else goes wrong but something could go wrong on a replacement car too unless I went with something under warranty, and realistically what else could I be driving which would depreciate less than 3500 per year and have a warranty…

What else could I move to at the moment with a similar amount of depreciation over the next few years including mechanical issues, I'm just not sure there's anything

I think the 13k would be more palatable if I was absolutely sure it was going to cover everything but I'm quite worried that was for the "engine work" and the "finding out the engine is fked" work hasn't been paid for yet and it's quite significant. If that's the case then I don't really know what to do.

Haven't discussed that with them yet so I'll have to find that out about how good the warranty would be.

Have sent Bavarian Autotechnik an email thanks for that.

I think that's a big risk if it happened again it would be an expensive second go and I'd be kicking myself for not walking away.

I also don't know what I would move to as every replacement is so badly priced right now and I just couldn't go back to bangernomics I've done my time

it looked like a lot of metal here are some pictures from them. They took a few weeks to then tell me they had the block off to be machined and it was found to be too warped to be salvagable. He said I could look for a new block alone but for the price it makes more sense to get a running engine and recondition it. This might be just from his experience but I'm really not in a position to be able to say what should be done because I honestly have no idea what else was damaged. Should I get a second opinion entirely about the state the engine is in whether it's repairable?

Revenue CO2 Estimate

2. CO2 Emissions
4. 143

2. Rate of VRT
4. 23%

2. VRT Calculated
4. €3265

2. - Export Admin Fee
4. €100

2. VRT Repayable
4. €3,165

Just shows how lowball the 5-6k offer is when it's got the equivalent of 3.1k cash inside it as well as tonnes of parts people would pay good money for if it was to be broken. And that's aside from the fact it could get a new engine and be worth whatever if it stayed in Ireland…

thank you I will

Haven't seen the car in a couple of months now… no idea what state it's in but I'd imagine it wasn't put back together after they had it apart. I agree I was shocked. So it went like this initially he said it'll be in the region of €5k to have it open and to do the big end bearing. Then when it was opened more issues were found, the block was sent off to be machined but they decided it was too warped to be possible to repair. and from then on it was discussions about replacement engines.

There was a lot of silence in between updates and I had to reach out a few times for updates.

I've seen more metal in filters from motorbike engines that were still running fine, too so I was surprised that it ended up in being unrepairable. I can understand them identifying it was from a bearing which was failing and wanting to replace that. but the garage were fairly serious that the engine wasn't in a condition it could be driven again and the best time at having a chance at saving the engine was then, and after that they considered the engine unrepairable.

Should I be looking at having someone else look at the engine who might confirm the engine needs to be replaced?

as it stands though I'd say my engine is open in the corner somewhere waiting, and the rest of the car is sitting somewhere without an engine in it.

Ok I've got an update,

There's €2,300 owed so far including vat.

12 hours @ €80exvat per hour - €960exvat for removing the engine and finding out that it's unrepairable

copy pasted from a pdf so please ignore any issues with formatting

Total amount owed to date: €2,303.82

it says front discs but I think it was rears actually.

The offer to buy the car is €5000 which would also clear the money owed on it.

The other option at roughly €13,000* is completely recon engine & turbos + €1,000 for work done to date.

so the options

Pay €2,300 and bring it elsewhere

accept €5,000 and walk away

pay €14,000 to be driving out of there with a recon engine.

**the 13k price is approx** so there's scope for it to change

Need to ring bavarian for a quote on the engine as I didn't get a reply yet from them.

I'm not an expert but I think 12 hours @ 80+vat to come to the conclusion my engine was unrepairable is a lot of money for that.

I'm feeling like the obvious answer here is to just clear the outstanding cost with CMC, and organise getting the car transferred to Bavarian and then waiting a month+ for it to be worked on, and be done with it?

€2,300 to clear CMC

cost to transfer a non driving car + separate engine to Bavarian. Have access to a trailer and jeep but they're 2.5 hours away so diesel alone would probably pay for CMC to do the transfer

€5,900 for replacement engine

€1,000ish for fitting at Bavarian

€??? for two turbos to be reconditioned

€??? for remap after

back on the road around 10k from now?

thanks lads, I went into CMC today to look at my engine

I think after discussing with him that at some point in time something dodgy was done with the engine before I owned it

He showed me that there are imprints on all 6 pistons from a valve collision (I tried to take a picture attached at the end of this post but not sure if I'm really showing it properly) so he thought at some point the engine had a snapped chain. He also said that the general look of the engine seemed to be older than 140,000km or at least that it wasn't in good condition for a 140k engine if it was really 140k. He said the engine had definitely had someone else in there before.

He said what likely happened is the incident with the valves happened, the engine was repaired but something had been damaged and was slightly oval so over time it was hammering away until eventually the big end bearing started to disintigrate and then cascaded to other failures like the block being warped beyond repair.

There was damage to the crank shaft, 6 pistons with those valve collision marks, block warped. My big turbo seems fine and they didn't split it open to look at the small turbo but wouldn't do that unless they were being refurbished. Other ancilliary bits like high pressure fuel pump etc all fine

I was talking about the other engine for €5,900 vs his €7k quote and he said he would be charging me for the engine whatever he needs to pay for it and if they are gone down in price to 6k then that's what I'd be paying but the last one he bought was at 7k. He said I'm about 30 hours labour and an engine away from finishing it plus the decision to do turbo reconditioning which he said he would do if it was him while the engine is out

he said a replacement engine would be getting new linings in the cylinders, new piston rings, new bearings etc all over everything that needs doing will be done. This is the part I'd say everyone here will be most interested in vs just buying a running used engine and putting it straight in without opening it. This is the bit I'm wondering about too. He seemed fairly confident that the right decision is open it up and do the work that a used engine is completely unknown and the only way to know is to do the work up front and know I've got a good engine for the next few years.

He's going to do up an estimate with all of these steps in there and he said I can get rid of the ones I don't want and drop the price as much as I want to by doing less and less extra to the replacement engine. He said they could put a replacement engine straight in but wouldn't recommend it if I want to keep the car.

He also said there'd be a year warranty but a remap would void it which is fair enough.

Completely agree, main cause of all of my concern completely gone immediately when I saw my engine neatly taken apart and clear to me signs that there was real damage. I wish I had gone in the day after the first phonecall because it was much easier to go through it all in person.

So anyway I'm still in the situation until I make a decision. I'm going to have their estimate to go through and I can decide which bits I'd like to do or ignore and make sure I'm comparing it fairly with other quotes

He said it genuinely did take more than 12 hours to get to the point it's at, and I believed him I think they did a tidy job and didn't just yank the engine out of the car

I'm getting confused with the timeline myself now but anyway I think they came to the right conclusion that the engine block is a writeoff, the crank shaft is cut up from the failed big end bearing, all bearings were bad and one of them was completely falling apart. I'd say it would have been a catastrophic seize up at some point so I'm glad that didn't happen while overtaking or something.

took a couple of pictures but only on the phone so not great

He said there's marks from a valve collision on all 6 pistons that he thinks is from a snapped chain at some point or something with timing. I asked if maybe it was swirl flaps breaking in the past but he said the marks are even on all cylinders so its more likely it was timing caused the valve interference and then it was sorted before I bought it.

Was on the phone to Bavarian again and they can still do the engine at 5900+ whatever to fit it as my backup plan but I'm actually much happier with CMC now again that I'm understanding 13k was based on including the price of an engine at whatever he buys it for which might be less now, and it includes all this extra work that I'm able to opt out of bit by bit.

I think he was just incredibly busy and was on holidays for 2 weeks in the middle of it which ended up adding 3 weeks of delay because of messages waiting before and after that. Those delays got me worried when in reality I should have just driven in and spoken to someone in person…

I think I'll just wait for this estimate early next week and then decide? If I get it done in CMC I'd say they'd start work straight away so I need to balance a month less of borrowing peoples cars and getting the bus at times into this situation?