N63 engine recall

I have had three different 5's for the last nine years, the latest is my 550i. It is two years old and has had numerous issues including all injectors replaced and alternator also. Now it is going in this week for the latest customer care program. I have decided that I am ready for something new and looking at trying the 6 gran coupe. Does anyone know if the vehicle if the $2,500 trade allowance is valid after the vehicle has had the repairs done? I presume it is but thought I would ask.

Thanks in advance

PAX5 - Thank you! Awesome info.

Originally Posted by britus05

I have had three different 5's for the last nine years, the latest is my 550i. It is two years old and has had numerous issues including all injectors replaced and alternator also. Now it is going in this week for the latest customer care program. I have decided that I am ready for something new and looking at trying the 6 gran coupe. Does anyone know if the vehicle if the $2,500 trade allowance is valid after the vehicle has had the repairs done? I presume it is but thought I would ask.

Thanks in advance

Yes, still valid.

I picked mine up today. The GT. They still have the X-5. Didn't get jack in terms of goodies. I am so done with BMW. I am so glad I have my 2014 f150 with a v8 no turbos. I love the design and handling of the cars but the execution and lack of engineering integrity is shocking. Very disappointing from the Germans.

Auf Wiedersehen, Auf Wiedersehen........

You make Audi look good thanks to the 550.

To the corporate minders that monitor the site--do you realize that you've really irritated a large group of your customers? Especially those that had problems that your arrogant local and corporate techs dismissed those problems--only for your to come out and admit, with a service "campaign"?

Do you understand BMW, that your cars became absolutely undependable and your customers had to drive your cars at the whim of your engineering?

Once you lose faith in a car's reliability...then the entire car from sourcing, to production, to diagnostics and repair falls under scrutiny.

Not to mention disgruntled techs........that further enhance the BMW experience. BMW, do you think that no one in the U.S. that works for manufacturing companies that recognize your pattern?

Ever hear of a "failed vendor?" I'm glad that you feel it's ok that it's my money that has paid for a defective car to which you had the gall to pronounce as "within spec" a year ago--now you announce a large service campaign to replace multiple parts and check tolerances when your dealers, under your direction wouldn't even pull a valve cover...

Even worse, they would say "the N63 is a noisy engine" and take you in a test drive in a totally non-comparable car like a 650 owned by a different driver with entirely different driving styles and break-in and say "see, this engine is louder than yours."

Amazing.

My question is...what will be the next thing to go wrong?

For example...most of us experience unusual oil consumption compared to almost every other car out there. The last car I had that burned oil this bad was my 72 Thunderbird.
Where is that oil being burned? Is it in the turbos and it's coking up the bearings? Is it leaking in through the valves and putting large carbon deposits there, robbing us of power over time and will end up requiring an expensive valve cleaning or valve job later on?

What about the roughness that happened when I had injector issues? While most times I was able to have it towed in (total of 4 times in the shop for that issue btw), what about the times I had to drive it in because I had no choice? I am sure all that vibration, etc did nothing to help the engine and probably put a big strain on other parts.

Unfortunately, with the crackdown on warranty repair costs, many of us have had to "deal" with the issues because it was "within spec". I am sorry, but if any of your engineers had been there, I am sure they would have instantly recognized how far off their design it was.

With more and more engineering decisions being made by corporate beancounters, I fear the the vaunted engineering prowess of German car manufacturers is probably over.

BMW, ease our minds..put a lifetime (however long you deem the lifetime of a car to be...15 years? 200k miles?) warranty on the car's powertrain and related components for vehicles purchased new or CPO. If you want to put a condition in there that it's serviced at the appropriate intervals, I can live with that, but lets be honest, your reputation is damaged and on the line for a bunch of people who buy fairly expensive cars. Customers you probably want to keep buying your cars.

even a 10k allowance would not be enough to get me to buy another BMW at this point. Right now, your cars are overpriced for something as underengineered as they are. Unless you are talking exotics, cars need to be reliable first. If you can't depend on it to get you to your destination and back, everything else you might make the car (fun to drive, comfortable, etc), means squat.

I really hope this fixes the issue, and if it does, then providing a warranty won't cost you much. If it is only a band-aid though, then I think you are kidding yourselves about the ability to retain future customers.

I don't want to "quote" the two posts above, but I'm responding to them.

In the calendar year 2012 I bought a BMW car and a BMW motorcycle. Over the past 40+ years I've owned an awful lot of cars and motorcycles (I'm at 59 cars now and 14 motorcycles). But these were my first ever German vehicles. I've owned predominantly Japanese with a number of U.S. cars thrown in. When I got the BMWs, the forums I had been on for the Japanese vehicles all said "you'll be back" and constantly reminded us of how unreliable German vehicles are, ESPECIALLY BMW's. This reputation for poor quality didn't just start with the F10, this reputation for poor quality has been around for many, many years. I have pointed out on both car and motorcycle forums that I know many people who have owned BMW's and have had little or no problems. I do admit that the friends I have who own them don't put a lot of miles on them and they keep them 2-3 years at most.

My 550 has had the injectors replaced at 23,000 miles, and now subject to a campaign to replace many components known to be a problem. My BMW motorcycle has had a switch cluster replaced twice for a design problem that is so bad that nearly 50% of the owners on the forum have also had them replaced, sometimes multiple times, and BMW has redesigned the component not once, but twice.

At this point, I don't see ever buying another BMW car - I have documented a number of things that have killed the experience for me despite that fact there are a lot of things I love about the car. As to the motorcycle, the one I have simply has no real competition for what I use it for. Yes, there are of course competitors to the bike, but not with the features it has. I'd prefer the Japanese update some models that would make them a true competitor, and I'd be gone from the BMW. Otherwise I'll just never own one without a warranty on it.

What BMW has done is made the "you'll be back" folks right, and folks like me eating crow. Oh, I did buy an Audi to replace my 550 who's lease is about up. So I really didn't come back to the Japanese. Let's see how smart I was.

Man, I am getting freaked out about this. Just got 2013 550xi CPO about a month ago. Are there those out there who have the cars with N63 engine, and who are not experiencing problems??
So far mine seems fine, except that one cold morning when I started it, it ran extremely rough and message appeared "drivetrain malfunction"....I turned it off, waited about 30 seconds - started it, and it was (or seemed) fine, and has run fine since.

Originally Posted by packy

Man, I am getting freaked out about this. Just got 2013 550xi CPO about a month ago. Are there those out there who have the cars with N63 engine, and who are not experiencing problems??

So far mine seems fine, except that one cold morning when I started it, it ran extremely rough and message appeared "drivetrain malfunction"....I turned it off, waited about 30 seconds - started it, and it was (or seemed) fine, and has run fine since.

They all have it. Don't worry. It will be fixed and run good as new.

Originally Posted by packy

Man, I am getting freaked out about this. Just got 2013 550xi CPO about a month ago. Are there those out there who have the cars with N63 engine, and who are not experiencing problems??
So far mine seems fine, except that one cold morning when I started it, it ran extremely rough and message appeared "drivetrain malfunction"....I turned it off, waited about 30 seconds - started it, and it was (or seemed) fine, and has run fine since.

I have had no issues with my 2011 550 xi with 32,xxx miles. Just recently got a discharge battery message, but that has been it. Sounds like I have been lucky. Going in Feb 9 for campaign.

We all need to band together here. First schedule the service and document it here. Post everything that was done. As far as I am concerned every dam part on this list should be changed.

Second. File a complaint with bmw North America customer service. It won't matter but at least it will be documented.

Third file a complaint here https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/ivoq/
We all need to do this so the govt is well aware. Once they get thousands of complaints they will get involved and bmw does not want that.

Forth for the most part we are all well off connected people who own these cars, we need an owner who is a lawyer to file a class action or get one started. Seems like a slam dunk once we can get organized.
Time in the shop, warranty extension and resale are all huge hits to us the consumer due to bmw negligence. We need to be loud and document how until pleased we are so they act and not hide behind a customer campaign. That's a cowardly attempt of not issuing a recall.

Originally Posted by Supercomputers

We all need to band together here. First schedule the service and document it here. Post everything that was done. As far as I am concerned every dam part on this list should be changed.

Second. File a complaint with bmw North America customer service. It won't matter but at least it will be documented.

Third file a complaint here https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/ivoq/
We all need to do this so the govt is well aware. Once they get thousands of complaints they will get involved and bmw does not want that.

Forth for the most part we are all well off connected people who own these cars, we need an owner who is a lawyer to file a class action or get one started. Seems like a slam dunk once we can get organized.
Time in the shop, warranty extension and resale are all huge hits to us the consumer due to bmw negligence. We need to be loud and document how until pleased we are so they act and not hide behind a customer campaign. That's a cowardly attempt of not issuing a recall.

Agreed 1000%.

Somebody who is good at spread sheet should start one and keep track of all the cars that have been on affected by the good people on these boards. My skills in Excel are not good unfortunately.

There was a guy on the ED board that had a spread sheet going of cars dropped off in Europe and then tracking time from drop off point to ship then across the ocean to the VPC. A list like that would be fully comprehensive and used by the attorney in a class action suit.

If there are other ideas by the users on these boards please share them so we can get the ball rolling.

Agreed. We need something that could keep track of items replaced, time in service, number of phone calls, number of visits, and any other notes someone may want to add. We may be better off doing a google doc that can be modified by anyone on this forum, as opposed to one person keeping track. That way it's not on one person to maintain it, but we could get data from everyone. We could nominate one person to handle the contact info of people that contribute, because eventually everyone would need to make a statement of some sort.

ETA: We would also need to reach out to the 5GT, 6, and 7 guys as well.

Originally Posted by packy

Man, I am getting freaked out about this. Just got 2013 550xi CPO about a month ago. Are there those out there who have the cars with N63 engine, and who are not experiencing problems??
So far mine seems fine, except that one cold morning when I started it, it ran extremely rough and message appeared "drivetrain malfunction"....I turned it off, waited about 30 seconds - started it, and it was (or seemed) fine, and has run fine since.

Had mine since May 2014 & love it & no engine issues. Had a bit of vibration issue but corrected & since then great car. I'm hoping it stays that way because so far BMW Canada is not doing the recall.

Originally Posted by packy

Man, I am getting freaked out about this. Just got 2013 550xi CPO about a month ago. Are there those out there who have the cars with N63 engine, and who are not experiencing problems??
So far mine seems fine, except that one cold morning when I started it, it ran extremely rough and message appeared "drivetrain malfunction"....I turned it off, waited about 30 seconds - started it, and it was (or seemed) fine, and has run fine since.

That is exactly what happened when mine needed new injectors. It ran very rough for a couple of miles and the same message came up. I got to work because it was before the dealer opened. An hour later I went to start it and go to the closest dealer, about two miles from my office. It ran fine then. They said they did not have time to look at it, so I drove it that day then to my regular dealer closer to home. They ran diagnosis on it which said that four injectors needed to be replaced. They replaced all of them.

Originally Posted by Supercomputers

We all need to band together here. First schedule the service and document it here. Post everything that was done. As far as I am concerned every dam part on this list should be changed.

Second. File a complaint with bmw North America customer service. It won't matter but at least it will be documented.

Third file a complaint here https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/ivoq/
We all need to do this so the govt is well aware. Once they get thousands of complaints they will get involved and bmw does not want that.

Forth for the most part we are all well off connected people who own these cars, we need an owner who is a lawyer to file a class action or get one started. Seems like a slam dunk once we can get organized.
Time in the shop, warranty extension and resale are all huge hits to us the consumer due to bmw negligence. We need to be loud and document how until pleased we are so they act and not hide behind a customer campaign. That's a cowardly attempt of not issuing a recall.

I don't agree. First of all, there is no reason to suspect this is safety related at this point, so the NHTSA will not care. Second, BMW has already taken steps to fix the issue. Thirdly, I hate people who think that every time something goes wrong you should sue someone. That should be a last resort, and not needed because BMW has already stepped up to the plate. BMW does not get penalized for a lawsuits, it gets added to the cost of the vehicle and we all pay for it.

Originally Posted by lastbmw

Sorry. Got to vent.

I took my car in 10 days ago because my brakes were squeaking and I thought it might be time for new brake pads. The SA informed me that there was a "campaign" for my 550i and that they might need to check over my car for a couple of days. No worries. Took the loaner 528i and went my merry way.

Over the past ten days I've gotten several texts from my SA. First, need to order some parts might take a few days. Next found some more issues, need to order some more parts. Will take a couple more days. Finally, three days ago, we are done with all the work but will need to do about 8 hours (yes 8 hours!!!) of testing before we can get the car back to you. Two days ago, we found more problems during the testing. Need to order more parts. Should be ready early next week. Wow!!!

Maybe I will get my car back Mon or Tues which would make it two weeks in the shop. Still don't know exactly what is being done to my car, but I can assure you there must be major problems with these engines based on my experience and the experiences of others on this site. The resale value of these cars just took a major hit.

I called BMW customer service and was given quite the run around. Bottom line--they kept referring me back to the dealer as if the engine is the dealer's problem? Really? Found out that this recall is being referred to as a customer care package. Even the White House couldn't put that lame of a spin on a major problem. Who do they think they are kidding? They say they are offering $2500 as an incentive to trade the car in and buy a new BMW. Great, we take a major hit on trade in or resale and they get to pocket the profit from selling a new car (I can't believe even one person will take that deal unless they have a money tree in the back yard).

I actually bought a new 740i in the mid 1990's. Wonderful ride but the car it was a piece of trash from a reliability point of view. Had too many problems to count--especially electrical. Got rid of it after about 16 months and swore I would never buy another Beemer.

Fast forward to 2013. I got the itch for another new car (its a disease and causes this symptom to occur about every 18 to 36 months) so I shopped all the big name brands. I really liked the 5 series so decided to give BMW another chance. Bad decision. I've had other problems (lots of tire issues and some electrical problems too) but this takes the cake. Never, ever again and I will advise friends and foes to avoid the brand like the plague.

The only good news for me--I leased the car so I can turn it back to BMW in a year!

Also, the dealer has been great during this process.

Good luck to everyone.

What dealership are you going to? I bought my '13 CPO from United BMW in Roswell.

CPO outright purchase January 2014 with 48,000 miles. BMW Maintenance plan purchased.

Here's a twist on what others seem to be experiencing: My '11 550iX is going into the shop (IRA BMW of Stratham, NH) tomorrow morning for an "evaluation" for "about two days." The Service Manager (AJ - always responsive and pleasant) offered that they need to determine what components are necessary before BMW NA will ship parts.

Since last January (2014), with 48,000 miles on the odometer (I also had the dreaded Drivetrain Malfunction), my car has been in the shop 32 days on 6 separate occasions. BMW NA is still promising to work with me on the loss of use. I've been very patient and keeping extensive records. Symptoms are as many have disclosed: shuddering with light acceleration, rough idle, hard starting.

Originally Posted by jjsC6

I don't agree. First of all, there is no reason to suspect this is safety related at this point, so the NHTSA will not care. Second, BMW has already taken steps to fix the issue. Thirdly, I hate people who think that every time something goes wrong you should sue someone. That should be a last resort, and not needed because BMW has already stepped up to the plate. BMW does not get penalized for a lawsuits, it gets added to the cost of the vehicle and we all pay for it.

Fully agree! How dare you speak rationally on an anonymous forum!

Originally Posted by dommm

Had mine since May 2014 & love it & no engine issues. Had a bit of vibration issue but corrected & since then great car. I'm hoping it stays that way because so far BMW Canada is not doing the recall.

I was told that BMW uses multiple sets of injectors in North America, and Canadian cars get different injectors than the US. Secondly, the timing chains in Canadian cars are indeed subject to stretching and they will be doing something about it soon.

On one of these forum/threads (5,7 or X) they are starting to list the parts replaced with part numbers. On a timing chain replacement they listed the part as;
11-31-7-567-500 Chain & Guide Rail (kit).
This kit is an old part # and only includes 1 guide tensioner. Considering on each bank there are 3 - you would think, while it's part they would replace them all.



From the parts breakdown, it appears the N63 has guide rails/tensioner on both the leading & trailing sides of all gears - the drive side of the chain to/from the gear(s) which (if worn) would change timing.

Originally Posted by jjsC6

I don't agree. First of all, there is no reason to suspect this is safety related at this point, so the NHTSA will not care. Second, BMW has already taken steps to fix the issue. Thirdly, I hate people who think that every time something goes wrong you should sue someone. That should be a last resort, and not needed because BMW has already stepped up to the plate. BMW does not get penalized for a lawsuits, it gets added to the cost of the vehicle and we all pay for it.

Not trying to get in an argument here, seriously, just stating the facts. Has your car been in the shop 30, 45, or even 60 days at a time trying to figure out what's wrong? Have you spent countless hours talking to your service advisor, service manager, or "regional techs" during the process? Does your car dash light up like a Christmas tree while the car violently shakes? Forcing you to stop and wait for a tow truck in who knows where. If so, then I truly respect your ability to move on, really.

I know there's a decent amount of people just on this forum, that have experienced countless more issues than myself.

I hardly call replacing a few parts stepping up to the plate, especially when BMW NA has been adamant that there was nothing wrong with our cars this whole time. I know people will continue to have issues with other parts due to this faulty engine, mine did last year.

BMW NA needs to make this right by stepping up to the plate for everyone involved, by either extending the warranty, or providing a REAL trade incentive. I'm not saying let's sue them, but I think something needs to be done to force their hand.

Originally Posted by jjsC6

I don't agree. First of all, there is no reason to suspect this is safety related at this point, so the NHTSA will not care. Second, BMW has already taken steps to fix the issue. Thirdly, I hate people who think that every time something goes wrong you should sue someone. That should be a last resort, and not needed because BMW has already stepped up to the plate. BMW does not get penalized for a lawsuits, it gets added to the cost of the vehicle and we all pay for it.

I cut & paste this quote from post #260 of this thread.

"When I first got the drivetrain issue, restarting the car made the errors go away. It was then driveable with no noticeable issues. About a week later (after the car sat outside all day in the cold), the error came back. This time the car was not safe to drive and had to be towed."

It seems at least from this poster that he thinks it IS A SAFETY ISSUE.

Originally Posted by JoeRock550

I was told that BMW uses multiple sets of injectors in North America, and Canadian cars get different injectors than the US. Secondly, the timing chains in Canadian cars are indeed subject to stretching and they will be doing something about it soon.

Very interesting about the injectors. Were you informed about the injectors and the timing chain by the local dealer?

Loved my 550 until I started getting the CEL and intermittent shuddering. After two visits to the dealership they gave me the car back still shuddering, and told me basically nothing was wrong. Dumped the car as who has time for this type of bull****, and I will never buy another BMW. Sad as I have purchased 4 BMWs in the past, including an M car, and I was basically given the run around (and told by the mechanic that that is how BMW works now). "Bring it back again, and maybe we can get it fixed the third time," No thanks BMW. At 38 years old I have a fair amount of cars in my future, and this experience will keep me from future roundels.