Quote:
Originally Posted by nicklockard
I'll offer an opinion: drive more, worry less. There's a lot of paranoia about emissions equipment. May or may not be justified. You might find a high miles car w/o problems and might get 25K good miles before ever having to do anything.
Take one for a test drive. It should put you back in the seat assertively. Lots of problems cured by replacing all vacuum lines and testing/diagnosing/fixing vacuum control issues. Search for thread by robnitro--great DIY guide.
This is my second BMW. The first one was the most reliable/cheap car I've ever owned, by so much it astonished me. They get a bad rap. I think it's because a lot of young/inexperienced and careless young guys thrash the shit out of theirs and wonder when it fails on them due to pushing stupid power levels without accompanying robustness upgrades. You're familiar with German car ownership: you have to give them love and attention. They don't take well to neglect like a Camry would for 20 years. You neglect a German car for 3 years and you'll pay for it, lol. You neglect a diesel German car for 2 years and you'll pay for it.
If you come over to the dark side and you like torque more than power, you'll wonder what the heck took you so long.
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Ha, love this post.
Although this IS good advice, I can only take so much of it for face value. I'm certainly not a BMW expert, but I've owned more than a dozen of them and done 95% of all the work on them over the years myself (aided tremendously by friends and beer). So I do have a very solid basis for their reliability as a whole. But I have found while owning so many different models (along with 3 M cars) that some are more "problem prone" than others. But I could not agree more that preventative maintenance is paramount with these cars or you quickly thin out your wallet.
Since this would be my new daily, the car would remain stock-ish, save for a modest tune...that is unless of course things start to fail at a rapid rate.
I'm already enjoying flirting with the dark side, a full conversion does sound like bliss.
Mike