[Mainz-Junior]

Since everyone’s going into their stories, here’s mine, I could also do with some advice as to what to do if anyone has any to give me.

Earlier this year about 8 months ago, I bought my very own 2008 e92 coupe (320i) second hand from a private seller with 43k miles done. Because of the mileage I decided to take my chances and didn’t get warranty/repair insurance. I was super chuffed with this purchase as the car has long been a favourite of mine and had always been a classic in my eyes.

Drove it around for about a month and half and then, the first of many occurrences of the ‘check engine’ light happened. Was getting all the classic symptoms, rough-idle, loss of power, unresponsive accelerator etc…

First time taking it to the dealership, they tell me two of the injectors are gone and that its probably an issue which will cause the other two to fail very soon, something to do with injector overcrystallization or something, but they say all injectors and sparkplugs need replacing, costing £1.4k

Main reasons for going straight to BMW was that I had just moved to a new city and didn’t know anyone or anything there, and me and most people I know have had bad experiences in the past going to backstreet garages.

Everything’s fine for about two and a half months, but then the same issues started happening again, and so I took it back to the dealership the second time, they found the same problems again with the injectors and so they replaced them and the spark-plugs for free as they were under warranty, and even road-tested/MOT’d the vehicle as well but didn’t find anything so sent me on my way.

Fast forward another month and the problems are back AGAIN. However unusually turning the engine off and back on again seemed to make the problem disappear almost instantly, leading me to believe the problem was to do with the cars electronics or injector coils which had not been replaced or touched yet.

Taking it to the same dealership and they once again said it’s an injector problem, being convinced there are deeper issues they tell me that a compression and leak test is necessary, which would cost 150. I agreed as I was convinced that the problem was to do with the electronics as opposed to the engines structural integrity but would be nice to get some reassurance.

Results came back – worst case scenario happened. I gambled on the engine being fine, but that didn’t seem to be the case

Cylinder 2 showing weak compression (7.5) with the others showing 15.5 and they need to strip the engine to investigate further, but this low compression could be what is causing the constant injector failures.

8 hour job = £900, If I went through with the engine stripping, I would be £1k down and we haven’t even found the problem yet or have an idea of what to fix, and judging by the size of the compression difference in the 2nd cylinder, I don’t think I want to pay to know whats happening. They say it could be anything from a dodgy piston head, to a cracked engine block.

Other problems the car has had are: splash shield coming off on the M1, headlight washers not working, (one also coming off on the M1) and the Rocker cover oil leak (fixed)

I am expecting repairs to cost no more than £2k including the diagnosis so about 3k in total. Unfortunately, I am going to have to cut losses with this car as the repairs are becoming impractical and unsustainable, and if the current trend is anything to go by then I am certain that these won’t be the last set of repairs I do on this car.

I’m gutted that the engine is having so many issues despite not even reaching 50k miles or me owning it for solid year, but the same time it was the first time I have bought a second hand car and I will just take it as a lesson learnt at this point, and judging from the posts and experiences from other people here it seems that the 320i has some kind of fundamental design flaw, which is a shame.

If anyone has any advice or recommendations as to whether I should repair the car or try and sell it to salvage some cash then I am all ears at this point.