This is my first BMW, that is, first one that I’ve kept for so long. I’ve got plenty of other cars in the fleet, none of them have had such a catastrophic failure of the belt with no warning.
The belt IS inspected, at least bi-yearly along with my oil changes. No damage of any kind was apparent at last inspection, which was just 5 or so months ago.
And it’s not like this is a highly specialized component. Virtually every car out there has a serpentine belt, tensioner and pulley. Although I suppose a lot of the cars these days have gone electric for steering.
Just another cost to pay for owning the Ultimate Driving Machine.
I’d advise people with cars 5 years old or more to just change the parts out. I ordered my replacements from Pelican Parts. They have parts from oem suppliers if you want to go that route.
Instructions on how to do this job are here:
https://www.newtis.info/tisv2/a/en/e...ement/CyzmXfQq
There are two pulleys on the tensioner itself. There are two other pulleys there also. Then it goes around the alternator, power steering pump and of course the crank pulley.
Getting the fan off was a bit of a pain since I’d never done it before. There is one self-tapping torx screw on the underside of the fan that holds on transmission cooler, so I had to remove that before the fan could be lifted out.