Handy Maintenance Spreadsheet

[Huecifer]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks it's absolute B.S. that BMW doesn't provide a maintenance schedule with the car (it's the ultimate driving machine...but someone else has to tell you when to work on it). So, I took at look at Mike's guide (or Bob's guide, or whatever) that everyone is always talking about, and made a little Excel spreadsheet. It's not EXACTLY to the same mileage in some cases, but I tried to only round up/down just little so there were less maintenance milestones.

Don't hate my 10k oil changes. I've been doing that interval forever, and my last car got to 176k with no problems. I also put non-german castrol into my car (gasp!)

Two questions. I never found a clear indication of when the timing belt (chain?) should be done. The forums for my last car made it abundantly clear that it needed to be done at a certain point... but I rarely read about it here. Is it not as critical on our cars?

Also, what's a v-belt??

[MightyMouseTech]

Chains usually only get replaced when they are worn. There is no interval for replacement. Keep fresh oil in the engine and at the proper level and it should never need replacement.

A "V-belt" is the rubber belt driving the accessories.

How about a file that is not in .zip format?

[bmw1racer]

Originally Posted by Huecifer

Also, what's a v-belt??

It's pretty much the same as the serpentine belt.

[cheshirecat79]

Originally Posted by MightyMouseTech

How about a file that is not in .zip format?

... just unzip it and extract the file? Pretty standard way of transferring data.

[MightyMouseTech]

Originally Posted by cheshirecat79

... just unzip it and extract the file? Pretty standard way of transferring data.

Ya, if my work computer was not locked down and I was able to unzip (wait, what?!?).

[128Convertibleguy]

Originally Posted by cheshirecat79

... just unzip it and extract the file? Pretty standard way of transferring data.

Zipping a 30KB file, these days, is just annoying. Some of us don't have a zip extractor handy. With available bandwidth, there's really not much use for one.

[Huecifer]

Forum won't let me upload excel files because it's not an acceptable format. Thus the zip file.