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Originally Posted by JimD
I am taking the watch and wait approach, at least for now. My bimmer is a e88 n52, 2009 with about 103K miles. I only replaced the battery last year. The only thing that gives me pause a bit is my alternator experience. It failed on the way to work one day and the car just quit. The battery still had power but the car quit. I paid $800 for the replacement and $600 was stated to be the alternator. I looked them up on line and found alternators for that but i also found alternators around $200. Not sure the difference. But when your car is undriveable, you don't have any real bargaining leverage. If you do it proactively you can shop around and probably save significantly.
But while it may be a wear item in our cars they also seem to fail early sometimes. That seems to open at least a small chance that you would replace a coolant pump that is working fine and going to continue to do so for awhile with one that will fail faster than the one you replaced.
I've also thought of buying one and putting it in the trunk. Solves the issue of part cost and also availability if it goes far from a dealer. But lots of places have these pumps now.
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My father's alternator was replaced on his '07 X3 3.0si. Luckily they had his 1er to drive. But we ended up purchasing the $200 alternator and replaced it. It was a pita reinstall, but so far so good. Mind you we only did it this year.