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      09-12-2012, 11:12 PM   #1
ILoveChess100
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I am sick and tired of BMW dealerships that don't know how to service their own cars

So my 2011 135i with PPK hit ~12000 miles and about a year since purchasing so it was due for its oil change as part of BMW's recommended maintenance intervals. By now you must already be wondering 'an oil change... What could they possibly screw up during what is considered to be one of the simplest maintenance that can be performed on a vehicle, besides maybe stuff like adding air to a tire?' Well apparently enough to screw up the car.

So the service was on early saturday morning, seemed to have gone through just fine... About an hour and 15 min wait or so, kinda standard. I happen to live about 3.5mi from BMWIrvine. Drove home afterwards, everything seems fine. My commute to work is about 4.9mi (these distances will become important soon enough). Mon/Tu, pretty standart, go to work, 10hrs there, come back. I am sure mostly everyone on the forums that owns similar configuration to my car has observed that it takes a little over 6mi for the temp gauge to get to 1 bar below half and it pretty much statys there forever during normal driving, or rising to half, maybe slightly above if you are driving it like you stole it on a twisty mountain pass. So through tuesday, all my driving hasn't been long enough to notice anything funky that might be going on as it relates to temperature.

Wed was a different story. To work was the same, but on the way back silly me decided to make a trip to Costco. Right around what would be mile 7, I glance at the instrument cluster and see the temp right smack at half. Odd, that doesn't usually happen and I wasn't driving as if I stole it. Change lanes as my next turn is coming up, glance back at the cluster and gauge is just climbing, this time fast enough to be observably moving. Didn't take long to figure this can't be good, let off the gas but was already in the left lane slowing down for a light at a major intersection. Bing Bing, yellow sign for temp warning comes on. 5 sec later, bing bing red sign for temp warning comes on. Now I hope none of you ever have to experience driving your car in limp mode at 5mph because thats about how fast it would go with the pedal to the floor, through a major intersection of angry drivers trying to get places while making a left turn. I am sure I was called multiple names and I am sure people thought 'god what is this 113 year old doing on the road and what a shame he bought such a nice fast car, yet drives it with 5mph'... But of course what I was being called that wasn't my main concern as I was just trying to pull off safely and not get run over... Side of the road, waited for traffic to clear, popped the hood, coolant reservoir is boiling (and I mean boiling, like it made better burble sounds than the 135i stock exhaust when downshifting). So I start looking around the engine bay, assesing the amount of coolant spilled all over the place (quite a bit of it) and then it kinda hit me... Coolant is supposed to be blue-ish in tint. Whatever this liquid is it looks totally transparent. Coolant also is not supposed to boil, even with the temp 1 or 2 bars over half. Water on the other hand could easily boil at that temperature. Hmmmmmm. Did BMW service add water in my coolant? So fast forward a bit, waited a few mins, turned the car on, moved like 50 feet before the red temp warning lit up again so I figured I am just going to get to a safer part on the road and let it cool off a lot more. An hour and a half later, the temp came down enough for me turn around and make it part way home, pulling off before the gauge hit half, then waiting another 45min and finally home. So now I am trying to figure out if there is a way for me to prove the coolant is not actually coolant, but without opening the reservoir as I don't want the stupid dealership to go tell me that I did something because the thing has been opened. Any ideas?

My plan for tomorrow is to drive straight to the dealership early in the morning when its nice and cold and give them one hell of a time. But of course I have no guarantees they will figure out and fix the problem without breaking something else, or even admit to their wrongdoing whatever it may have been... So anyone ever deal with a situation like that? How do you approach the dealership and force them to do the right thing and tell you waht they screwed up? Can I just pop up there with a video camera and demand to film them while they diagnose the problem with my vehicle?

Also any ideas as to what else might be wrong? If the coolent reservoir is actually coolant (lets assume), what other thing during an oil change can cause the car to overheat? I am thinking too little oil? (prb not). Water in the oil tank? (lol I know this would have broken a lot earlier so that last question is a joke).

Anyways I am just incredibly frustrated. When I first bought the car I had problems with CrevierBMW for software related stuff so I switched to IrvineBMW. I am starting to run out of dealerships close enough to be considered for service.
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      09-12-2012, 11:45 PM   #2
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good luck getting the dealer to admit they did anything wrong. Last time ever took my car to the dealer, they broke my water pump and told me that I had no idea had a German car works and that everything is fine and the clicking noise coming from my pump is normal.

Go figure...

Good luck though.
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      09-13-2012, 12:11 AM   #3
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If this leaves a sour taste in your mouth and you need a new dealer you're more than welcome to setup an appointment with us for anything. We are mod friendly and install things such as superchargers at our dealer so none of our techs would make this type of rookie mistake. Ask for Jesse Gutierrez who is our mod friendly / forum friendly service adviser. You can say Philip sent you.
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      09-13-2012, 12:19 AM   #4
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Originally Posted by Zeros and ones View Post
good luck getting the dealer to admit they did anything wrong.

And what if I happen to have a video of the service procedure done on my car, on that day, from say a.... front window mounted go pro that appeared to be off? :-) Where I can see with decent clarity which hose the tech used to fill the reservoir in question, and his face? Maybe I got something going for me there after all )

Anyone here familiar with BMW service shops enough to confirm what comes out of the hose in the following images? Tap water perhaps?
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      09-13-2012, 11:28 AM   #5
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The Plot Thickens
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      09-13-2012, 11:36 AM   #6
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The Plot Thickens
+1.
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      09-13-2012, 12:24 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Philip@McKennaPerformance View Post
If this leaves a sour taste in your mouth and you need a new dealer you're more than welcome to setup an appointment with us for anything. We are mod friendly and install things such as superchargers at our dealer so none of our techs would make this type of rookie mistake. Ask for Jesse Gutierrez who is our mod friendly / forum friendly service adviser. You can say Philip sent you.
man I wish you guys were closer to me
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      09-13-2012, 04:04 PM   #8
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Water is normally used to top off coolant. A little bit of water is not going to cause the car to overheat. Also water is better at keeping a car cool than antifreeze. Antifreeze is used for its anticorrosion properties and to keep the water from freezing in the winter (ANTI-Freeze, get it). Now what could have happened was the tech forgot to put the cap back on all the way, so the system was not pressurized and caused the car to over heat. Its under warranty, so I would have called them as soon as I pulled the car over the first time. I would have not even tried to drive it home. Overheating a car can cause the headgasket to blow. Keep us updated and I would not go into the dealer shouting a blaming techs for using "water" in your coolant.
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      09-13-2012, 04:40 PM   #9
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When I bought my car, against my friend's suggestion, I took my car to Shelly BMW (same owner as Irvine BMW) because it is close to my house.
Terrible service, I had about 3-4 things I wanted to at least ask and she tried to stop me from telling her the list so I had to like fight to tell her my problems and she told me none were going to be fixed under warranty. One of them was the very common peeling steering wheel trim. She told me, "we used to fix them under warranty, but not anymore" what the heck does that mean? it should be fixed under warranty but not anymore? what?
And I never even got to the 3-4 (can't remember exactly) things as she just tried to close my file as soon as possible.
And I made an appointment WITH a loaner, and she fully knew that but she steered me to wait in the lobby by saying "you're going to wait here, right? " they did not even have any loaners and I probably would've gotten a truck from Hertz. So I waited... got the car back. As soon as I got home, I got a "check engine" light on. I called her back the day after and she said it wasn't their fault.
Took my car to South Bay BMW and they fixed ALL 3-4 problems under warranty and gave me a BMW loaner for about a week.

South Bay BMW is about an hour away but they are the biggest dealership in LA and they seem most professional. Always have enough BMW/Mini loaners and they fix any reasonable stuff under warranty for you.
Thus far, they've fixed everything for me without a question and I'm a detail prick that notices everything.

Don't change dealerships too often based on one or two experiences.. Crevier BMW is probably the dealership I'd pick if there was no South Bay BMW.

Last edited by sonicbimmer19; 09-13-2012 at 05:01 PM..
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      09-13-2012, 04:45 PM   #10
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The Plot Thickens
HAHAHA ++++++++++1
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      09-13-2012, 06:29 PM   #11
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Love the GoPro idea. Seems like something Chris Hansen would do.
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      09-13-2012, 06:38 PM   #12
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I work as a tech in south Miami. I will use regular water to top up a coolant system of a car if I open it and find that the level is just below minimum. If its more then that I'll charge 1 qt of coolant (which BMW does make and sell) and then mix it with water to get the car topped up to the right level. Also I highly doubt you would of been able to drive the car 3 days with a loose coolant cap bleeding coolant. You would of seen the coolant beneath your car and been smelling that sweet/tingy smell that hot coolant has. What it sounds like to me is that your thermostat may have taken a dirt nap. Unless the tech that performed your oil service was in and around your engine bay somewhere he had no business being for an oil service I don't see how it could of caused what your having now.

Post up when you find out what's wrong with your car, I'd like to know. Pm me if you have any tech questions
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      09-13-2012, 11:40 PM   #13
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Originally Posted by Ammonia View Post
The Plot Thickens
First off, +++1 to this commenter! You brightened up my day!


I dropped off the car in the morning explaning the overheating problem to my SA. I said I find it disappointing that the car breaks down just 3 days after an oil change and I hope its not related. My SA got super defensive at that point and said something to the effect that its unfair for me to blame the technitians without there being a proper analysis done on the car. So I said, sounds fair lets get the analysis part under way. When can it start? So after a long drawnout discussion of how they can give me a rental, but can't cut the other cars and put mine infront to speed up their quote of 45min to 1hr to just take the car in, I remided my SA that as far as I am concerned the service from saturday is incomplete so my car better find its way at the front of the queue instead of waiting on all these folk that arrived today, but werent there on saturday... I also told him I will not be taking a rental and instead be sticking around and checking regularly on the status updates of this follow up service. Somehow that worked because when they drove the car off the staging area they didn't just park it out back, it actually went straight into the service.

About 35min later upon inquiring as to the status I was handed a copy of readouts from the car, with the relevant section in the pictures area at the end. Basically the Water Pump stopped due to blockage (at least thats how the car reports it). I joked with my SA by asking whether any surgical gloves or a scalpel was forgotten in there during the operation, but he didn't seem to be in a joking mood - go figure.

The fix was to replace the pump. They had the part in stock and I was told 2.5hrs for the labor, so I figured I'll stop bugging them and booked it out of there with a rental.

When I picked up my car I looked it over - they had cleaned out the engine bay decently from all the spilled fluid and as far as I could tell the everything in there looked just as I remember it, so couldn't really tell there was some major component swapped out. I drove the car a bunch in the surrounding area (basically hop on the freeway, exit, city streets back to freeway) for a couple rounds watching the temp. It climbed slightly over half which is unusual (compared to before) as I wouldn't consider what I was doing particularly hard driving, but no warning lights or boiling fluids so I left. My SA wasn't in when I picked up the car, so I asked another if he could give me extra details about the repair. I was told that the dealer technitians do not take components apart to diagnose what broke them and instead they ship them to BMW directly so that it can diagnose and improve the parts. How true that is I have no idea.

Later on I e-mailed my SA with basically the same question, phrased politely, seeking more information about what was broken with the water pump and if it had any overlap with the oil change... The e-mail I got back said exactly "It is an electric motor and it just failed". Yeah right, total BS. The e-mail didn't even follow basic Hi X, body, signature, Y... Just body. Fine not a big deal, I am used to receiving e-mails from 15 year olds.


Later on at night I got a chance to pull off the footage from the service. It was the same technitian that did the oil change on sat, that was also doing this service. Couldn't really tell anything during the actual pump swap from the footage as it was all done under the car, but it is very clear that the liquid used this time around came from actual gray coolant bottles (4 to be precise) and it is a blue-ish liquid just as one would expect it to be. That "water" hose was not touched at all during today's service.

Other interesting stuff from the footage, is the tech guy doing the test drive. I always turn off any music in the car when I drop it off for service, but he turned it on, browsed through the songs on the USB I had plugged in there, even commented on my music taste, until he found a song that he apparently liked, turned it up and drove the car in the way you'd imagine any joyrider to do so. At least he thanked my radar detector when it beeped with enough advance warning for him to slow down and not blow the doors of the cop car on the other side of the intersection he was approaching. Not exactly a top-notch handling of customer's property, but I am not going to raise a stink about that.



So bottom line... Did they put tap water in the coolant reservoir instead of the BMW 50/50 solution with distilled water? Yeah I am pretty damn sure they did so. Is that what caused the water pump failure? No clue and no way to prove it without access to replaced parts. From what I have read, tap water could strip the inner coating of whatever it is flowing through due to its ionization properties and the high pressure of the system. Thats why the actual solution to pour in there is a 50/50 mix of coolant with distilled water, not tap water. Whats the likelyhood that the system was going to fail anyway without the oil change? I would guess it would have worked correctly just fine, but again no way to prove that.

If the fix from today works fine over the next couple days I will just drop the issue altogether (but the footage is definitely a keeper from both those services). Ultimately I just want the car to work so that I am not regretting the burning hole in my pocket from buying it.
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Last edited by ILoveChess100; 09-13-2012 at 11:53 PM.. Reason: typos
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      09-14-2012, 01:30 AM   #14
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To be perfectly honest, in my opinion, putting tap water would not have caused anything to fail.

My dad is one of those "change engine oil every 5,000 miles, don't change anything and car will last 15-20 years, no problem."
He fills up his radiator with garden hose and doesn't have any problems.
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      09-14-2012, 02:42 AM   #15
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Is there any kind of crust/dirt that builds up on the coolant reservoir cap? I am imagining a scenaio that maybe some kind of crust built up around it and in the process of unscrewing it to check level and top it off, that 'dirt' falls in and eventually clogs something enough to make it stop working? Kind of a long shot. Either that or some piece of something slipped in while the cap was open? On the video the tech has the reservoir open for a good 3+ min while moving about doing stuff all over the engine bay. I don't have enough resolution or sharpness in the video of the area to tell if something small slips in so I am just speculating here.

From an engineering perspective though, it is far too great of a coincidence for the breaking of a component to occur so soon after a service was performed 'in the vicinity'. If the dealership never touched the coolant reservoir and the water pump still broke I wouldn't be blaming them. But they did touch it and it did break, so simple probability says something they did during that service led to breaking of the component.

BTW I build electric bikes with buddies as a hobby and I can tell you electric motors are ridiculously robust when compared to virtually any other mechanical contraption. If you use them within the tolerance levels they are designed for and proper duty cycles those things will far outlast us in a lifetime at 24/7 operation. It is very very easy to detect if an electric motor is under more strain than it was designed for and I am sure whatever circuit BMW builds (or buys) for this thing will have this simple capability of reading current levels and RPM speed. A simple formula can calculate degradation of performance over time, signaling something is wrong. So I really don't buy the argument that the electric pump has been dying all along over the last year and was going to cease completely in a couple days without the software being able to detect it. It just doesn't add up.
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      09-14-2012, 08:43 AM   #16
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At op I love chess

The electric water pump that failed is on the bottom passenger side of the vehicle. If you want to see it and the work performed you'll have to take your splash shield off from under the engine.

Those two faults listed above in that diagnostic printout would not of been caused by a oil service, plain and simple. Karma unfortunately chose you to have your car break down right after an oil service. Also tap water or for that matter any water added to your cars cooling system is not going to damage/corrode/eat away at the system. Also that electric water pump really is just that. An electric motor with an impeller mounter in the housing that the dme speeds up or down dependent upon the cooling needs of the engine, that's it.
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      09-14-2012, 01:31 PM   #17
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Glad all is well with your car...But on putting water in the radiator...Yea it works fine but if you want to keep your cars radiator for the "LONG " haul than alway's use distilled...The minerals and iron in the water are corrosive over the long haul....i regularly change my anti freeze every 50-60000 miles religiously in all my cars....a little cheap extra insurance....Years ago i did have to replace a few radiators in my old cars for adding straight water...I learn from my mistakes. Dealers should also use distilled
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      09-14-2012, 07:42 PM   #18
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Welcome to the club OP!
http://www.1addicts.com/forums/showthread.php?t=726308

This won't be your last dance with the cooling system in these cars. I highly doubt the dealership had anything to do with the WP failing. The only real fail here is BMW's ability to make a reliable water pump.
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      09-15-2012, 12:54 AM   #19
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Welcome to the club OP!
http://www.1addicts.com/forums/showthread.php?t=726308

This won't be your last dance with the cooling system in these cars. I highly doubt the dealership had anything to do with the WP failing. The only real fail here is BMW's ability to make a reliable water pump.
After reading through your experiences with the WP I can totally relate on how much it sucks to be in extreme limp mode with our cars.
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      09-17-2012, 08:31 AM   #20
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OP is the type of person that makes me glad I'm not in customer service.
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      09-19-2012, 10:09 AM   #21
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Philip@McKennaPerformance View Post
If this leaves a sour taste in your mouth and you need a new dealer you're more than welcome to setup an appointment with us for anything. We are mod friendly and install things such as superchargers at our dealer so none of our techs would make this type of rookie mistake. Ask for Jesse Gutierrez who is our mod friendly / forum friendly service adviser. You can say Philip sent you.
Sorry for the off topic but where are you guys located at? I may bring my car in to ur dealership if that's the case.

To the OP, ur post made my mornin breakfast worth while as I eat here with my laptop on the table lol
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      09-19-2012, 01:51 PM   #22
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Quote:
Originally Posted by E82-128iOC View Post
Sorry for the off topic but where are you guys located at? I may bring my car in to ur dealership if that's the case.

To the OP, ur post made my mornin breakfast worth while as I eat here with my laptop on the table lol
We are located in Norwalk California.

http://www.mckennabmw.com/index.htm
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