Quote:
Originally Posted by TriX5
My car is on its fourth active tank, first failure was under previous owner. I had it replaced twice under parts/labor warranty, it seems to last just under two years. A tank costs 800+ and not sure where the other 1200 come from, the OP quotes 2k? Each time car is in for two days to get it fixed. I can't believe there is a wait of several weeks involved....
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I happened to be at my local BMW Dealer Parts Department today picking up an online order. The parts guys are VERY good at this facility and I have been dealing with them for a number of years.
I happened to make some comments about the DEF tank issues and I was speculating that there may even be a Warranty Extension on these at some point. One of the guys mentioned some of the tanks are on "National Back Order" at this point. He was even shaking his head with no idea on delivery time frame.
I also think the $1200 in question is about 1/4 to make up list parts price and the rest is labor as I think this tank is not quick to replace.
This means a few things to me:
A. The failure rate is higher than expected and there is not sufficient projected spare parts inventory to keep up with the failures/demand.
B. The failure rate is higher than expected and the failures are being addressed with a revision or redesign delaying current availability.
C. The failure rate is higher than expected and the supplier is unable to keep up with assemblies for both new builds and field/in service repairs.
D. Everyone is generally screwed because the failures are on the uphill side and they will continue to snowball as these vehicles continue to age.
E. The critical mass of failures is not quite high enough to have 3rd parties come up with a cost effective solution with repaired cores available for purchase and exchange.
F. As much as BMW would like to come up with some overall software improvement to make this less of a customer annoyance, I think the VW debacle just killed any hope or idea of this ever happening.
I just do not see this story ending well anytime in the near future.
Good luck to all Diesel owners and their DEF systems.