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Fuel Pump Nightmares

3K views 7 replies 5 participants last post by  Zebeleizis 
#1 ·
Here's a story about my 2011 135i and multiple terrible service experiences. I have called BMW of North America to report this, but I wanted to hear your opinions.

Oct 13 - Initial Visit
I finally took the car in after it had been having a long crank start for a while. During this visit, the service center told me that the car had thrown a code and that the fuel pump needed to be replaced. I was aware of the high pressure fuel pump issues that the 135 has had in the past but this is a 2011 and I thought they had solved the problem by now. I guess not.

Oct 15 - Pickup
After picking up my car and driving it home, I happened to pop the hood to check it out, and found a dirty rag inside the engine bay. If I hadn't happened to open up the hood, I would have never found the rag, and it could have possibly caught on fire.

I was livid, and reported it to BMW of NA that night. I also gave the service center a very bad evaluation in the survey, so I was contacted by the service manager and offered a checkup of the work. I decided to wait to take him up on it until I had another issue, because the car was still having pretty long cranks, although not as bad as the one that made me take it in.

Oct 25 - Trip #2, Oct 27 pick up
Car has long crank and stalls on trying to startup. Starts after second try. I take the car back in, they keep it until Oct 27 but say they found nothing wrong. It had not thrown another code.

Nov 6 - Trip #3
The car is still having relatively hard starts, but today it stalls while I'm driving in traffic. The car just put itself into neutral and stopped. I managed to get it started again, and took it back into the service center that afternoon.

They keep the car for 13 days. I had to give permission to the foreman to drive the car, and they finally admit that there's something wrong with it. They say they need to replace the fuel pump (again), and that it was not holding pressure. They also note on the service record that they emptied the fuel tank and then replaced gas in the tank.

Nov 19 - Pickup
I finally get to pick up my car, presumably finally fixed after having the fuel pump replaced a second time. I fill up the gas tank, since it was low. They had put about 170 miles on the car during these 13 days (is that normal?).

Nov 20 - Trip #4
This morning, I wake up, come downstairs, and there is a smell of gas in the house. As soon as I open the garage door, I am bombarded by gas fumes. I take the car outside and let it sit for a while to air out, then drive it around the block and notice that the gas smell is still there, so I call BMW assist to get a tow truck to come out and take it back to the service center, since I didn't think it was safe to drive if there was a gas leak.

They admit that there is a gas leak because they did not seal the gas tank correctly.

Now, here's what I'm thinking: there's probably a 1% chance that the initial fuel pump was a bad part and had to replace it again, but given the fact that pretty much every time I take the car in the job is not done well and it needs to be back for more service, I would conclude that this place is either intentionally trying to harm me because I gave them a bad evaluation, or, more likely, the mechanics are incompetent and/or poorly trained at their jobs.

Thoughts? Advice?

Thanks in advance!
 
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