Costly repairs

[philip600]

Hi All,

Just had X5 in to local indy for PAS pipe that was leaking.
Bl**dy Hell the parts are dear
£ 178.88 for the pipe & 2 hours labour to fit & whilst it was in they noticed NSF CV boot split so another £ 34.71 & 4 hours labour because the shaft was siezed
So bill so far comes to £ 566.47 & other side CV boot needs doing soon & they haven't even started on aux heater that isn't firing.
Thing that annoys me is that why can some manufactures make parts that last years & others can't ?
I accept that items wear out but before the X5 which is now nearly 5 years old but less than 40K miles I had a Kia Sorento. Bought new & kept for nearly 6 years & 60K miles & did nothing to it but normal servicing, not one thing went wrong or broke The cost new was less than £ 22K as opposed to approx £ 48K for the X5.
My mates 4.4 Discovery has just had needed new autobox at 4 years old & less then 25K miles, I believe it's the same box as the X5

Having said all that I still love driving it
Next job is to see if Warranty Direct will pay out as I have Luxury Care policy Wish me luck.

Phil.

[AW8]

Sorry to hear of this. Hope the join't under the new boot isnt damaged.

PAS hose & outer front CV boots are known items to need attention on these. Boots I accept have to sustain some wear due to weight of the car. I agree that a new PAS hose is expensive & they shouldn't fail as often as they do. Not sure if weakness is in the hose, connections or from fitting method when they bolt the car together new.

Auto boxes are shared with other makes of cars & made by dedicated manufacturers - in yours & my case made by ZF.

[X5Sport]

Had to have my PAS hoses replaced under warranty and they changed them for a modified version which has better strain relief apparently. The originals were leaking from the lower joints. Check the PAS Fluid level when you get it back too. Mine was very low and obviously had not been rechecked by the dealer after filling the system and then running it.

The ZF 6sp Auto box is a known problem. It's used by BMW, Jaguar, LandRover and Rolls-Royce and possibly Audi too. Mine went at 42k miles. The rebuilder had a queue of BMW's and LandRovers to repair, along with those of all sorts of other manufacturers. At a guess I would say these units are made 'down' to a price, not 'up' to a quality and because of the complexity of the newer auto transmissions (now 8 speed or more) there are more chances that a minor component failure results in catastophic damage. Mine was a plastic part in the torque converter which failed, bits got into the oil pump and that as they say was that. New box please!! BMW Price £7k++ for the box and £3k++ for the Mechatronics Unit. Rebuild £2.2k inc

I did read an article, which I have been trying to find again, which referred to the original versions having oil which was not up to snuff and ZF producing a Mk2 which seems to perform better. Not sure when the versions changed, but it was after mine was built in Dec 04.

[bigshout]

X5Sport do you know i the auto box issue was related to the 3.0d or 4.4i and 4.8i as well?

[philip600]

Hi again,

I will accept that suspension bushes etc will take a hammering due to the size of the car (although they should still be up to the job ) but CV boots ? All they do is spin around & turn with the drive shaft don't they ?
I suspect it's more to do with quality of the materials used.
The PAS hose had blebs in it & looked like it could have let go at any time !
I know there is a lot more components to go wrong with our cars but I'm talking about how quickly certain parts require replacing when you consider how much the car cost new.
Another case in point is my Fiat ( Fix It Again Tomorrow ) Doblo van. Again bought new by me for just over £8K, registered Nov 05 so 1 month older than the X5 and now showing 70K miles so not far off twice the mileage, it carries nearly 75% of it's payload all the time & gets thrashed on a regular basis when I'm late for appointments, so it has a fairly hard life.
Guess how many times it's gone wrong, broken down & needed repair ?
............................... twice ?
..................... 5 times ?
........... more ?

No, the answer is never !
Serviced every 12K, new tyres & front discs & pads & that's it ( I realize it will not start on Monday morning now )
It's on original CV boots, exhaust, turbo, pipes, struts etc so why can't BMW produce vehicles with the same quality of materials ?
As I said I still love the X but the ownership would be so much more enjoyable if things did not wear out quite so quickly.
Off to York for weekend tomorrow in X5 so now doubt all will be forgiven ( until the next time she's broken )

Phil.

[philip600]

[quote=""bigshout""]X5Sport do you know i the auto box issue was related to the 3.0d or 4.4i and 4.8i as well?[/quote]
I think the autobox is the same across the range
Phil.

[X5Sport]

As far as I know the issue affects all as the only difference is in the power the Torque Converter can handle. The 3.0d (218bhp version) and 4.8 V8 use the same one as the torque is similar. The 6sp was originally only on those two models with the other two using a GM 5sp unit. There are as many, possibly more, issues with that one.

I sould say that it is rare for a premature failure like mine, but BMW still refused to do goodwill. A look on any number of BMW Owners sites will give you an indication of the failure modes and mileages. Quite what the percentage is across the board I don't know. I can only go on the comments of the rebuilder and what I've read. I know I was just plain unlucky and it wasn't the usual 'transmission jerk' that started it all. In my case there was no warning at all, and no warning lights when it happened.

At one point I thought BMW actually stood for Being Mended Weekly! My old Skoda Octavias never ever broke, not once.