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Originally Posted by bblank
1) It is specifying the odometer reading of when the car needs to be serviced.
2) It specifies the number of miles remaining before it should be serviced.
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All BMW's are definitely number 2
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Originally Posted by bblank
I drive it pretty hard, so I can't imagine it can go 19,500 before a service. I can bet though that if I take it in now, my dealer is going to tell me to go another 9500 before they'll change it for free.
Thoughts?
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If Irish BMW dealers are anything to go by, you are betting correctly. The OBC is a sophisticated beast and is designed to adjust this figure automatically depending on driving style. Thus if you spend a long time motorway/freeway cruising, it will likely extend out past the initial 15,000 mile interval that it starts with. OTOH if you do a lot of stop-start driving or hard driving it will be less than 15k.
I truly saw this in action myself at a recent track day with my E46 M3. The service interval dropped by 500 miles in the course of the days session despite me only covering 67 miles on the track!!
The dealers view will be that the car is operating normally, and that it doesn't need a service (unless one year has elapsed in which case it should be done). It shouldn't do any harm to wait until the indicated mileage has elapsed before having the service done.
Having said that, if you are nervous about it it won't do any harm to change the oil.
But you might find that relatively speaking, you don't actually drive the card as "hard" as you think you do.
C