[jzchen]

Originally Posted by Blubaron79

bringing this thread back. I am ordering one now. It says order with ATC, or w/o ATC. What is ATC???

There are filters with activated charcoal/carbon impregnation and without. I am assuming that is what ATC is. Anyways, Fram came out with one that has baking soda as well. I am most likely ordering one of those as we have had smell issues. It took a while, but these are available on eBay now. My local O'Reilly wanted way too much...

[amani]

My sister has a 325i, she took a look at the filter before the last maintenance before hitting 100,000miles. the filter looked like the ones from the junk yard. good thing she caught it. who know when did they change it last time! perhaps never did. so don't trust them and inspect it yourself. Or make them change it more frequent by saying you constantly have that rotten smell after the AC is being turned on. for some reason BMW always have that rotten smell while Japanese made is less potent.

[Efthreeoh]

Originally Posted by Blubaron79

bringing this thread back. I am ordering one now. It says order with ATC, or w/o ATC. What is ATC???

ATC means auto climate control (vs. manual). All USA cars have auto climate control.

[jzchen]

Originally Posted by Efthreeoh

ATC means auto climate control (vs. manual). All USA cars have auto climate control.

Thanks! My mistake! That's what I get for assuming!!!!

Anyways, I was changing my wife's oil yesterday and pulled out the Bentley Manual and stuff I printed from webista, and low and behold, under the oil service page I printed:

For A/C:

change the microfilter

So I guess the official interval is every time you change the oil. (I actually just found it a few minutes ago and thought I'd report, as I'm putting away all my stuff.)

Geez, it took me years to find it and it was right under my nose!!!!!!

(Now that I think about it, BMW probably didn't include the interval in the manuals because then they'd have to pay for many replacements with their no cost maintenance program!!!)

[hugus311]

every 15k seems a bit excessive to me. my gf tacoma has every 30k

[Efthreeoh]

I checked my service records. My cabin air filter change intervals have been:

49,425 miles
49,514 miles
59,867 miles

These were all according to the CBS maintenance indicators. Not sure why BMW would have dropped the notification from the CBS system, except to add confusion to the interval and have people replace them at shorter intervals. There's a lot of profit in selling a $30 filter that costs $3 to make.

I remember when cars didn't even have filters in the HVAC system, so it kind of makes me laugh about this whole thing in the first place. I'm not sure what the purpose of them are other than to get free money from the Consumer....

[jzchen]

Originally Posted by Efthreeoh

I checked my service records. My cabin air filter change intervals have been:

49,425 miles
49,514 miles
59,867 miles

These were all according to the CBS maintenance indicators. Not sure why BMW would have dropped the notification from the CBS system, except to add confusion to the interval and have people replace them at shorter intervals. There's a lot of profit in selling a $30 filter that costs $3 to make.

I remember when cars didn't even have filters in the HVAC system, so it kind of makes me laugh about this whole thing in the first place. I'm not sure what the purpose of them are other than to get free money from the Consumer....

I'm not too sure about this, but maybe there is something to the interval. (I already mentioned my suspicion about why BMW didn't include the interval anywhere.) My wife's '08 328 has 55000+ miles on it. My '08 335 has exactly 4688. Both have developed a smell...

The BMW spray cleaner was like $20 or $30 from the last time I tried to get rid of the smell...