I had the same experience at close to 300K km on my pampered 2000 540i M-Sport with the disintegration of the plastic timing chain guides. Certainly amongst the finest road cars for the driver when all is well, but you must have the means to maintain them and recognise that to design a car with a steel chain but plastic guides, it is designed to fail eventually and create a payday on replacement parts or prompt a repurchase on a newer model. I took the latter path as I had no guarantee that that would be the last expensive repair, and I did endure recurrent oil leaks and cooling system repairs during my years of ownership. That, and a current shape BMW F30 328i (about the same size car) blew past me like I was standing still on an on ramp one day. They don’t sound as good, but it goes to show that technology does move on, even if we don’t want to so much. By comparison, that car is faultless to date.
20th Dec 2017, 12:56
I had the same experience at close to 300K km on my pampered 2000 540i M-Sport with the disintegration of the plastic timing chain guides. Certainly amongst the finest road cars for the driver when all is well, but you must have the means to maintain them and recognise that to design a car with a steel chain but plastic guides, it is designed to fail eventually and create a payday on replacement parts or prompt a repurchase on a newer model. I took the latter path as I had no guarantee that that would be the last expensive repair, and I did endure recurrent oil leaks and cooling system repairs during my years of ownership. That, and a current shape BMW F30 328i (about the same size car) blew past me like I was standing still on an on ramp one day. They don’t sound as good, but it goes to show that technology does move on, even if we don’t want to so much. By comparison, that car is faultless to date.