Originally Posted by terminx

Haha, really? That's ridiculous. Anyone who knows fuck all about these engines knows that the water pump, coolant expansion tank and the entire CCV system are probably the Achilles' heel of the M52TU and M54.

They're solid engines, but anyone who owns one should be ready for anything made out of German plastic that's more than a few years old to break at any time. This actually applies to any German make and model. Some kind of environmental regulation over there requires plastics be of a certain composition that happens to get very, very brittle as it ages. It's the cause of many of our common problems... window regulators, broken IKHA buttons, broken cluster adjustment stalks (on the E46 at least), blown up CCV spraying oil all over your engine bay, etc. You could probably improve the durability of a lot of that stuff by just making it in Japan. Uh oh, here come the haters!

I haven't had my E53 long, but I've owned a few E46s. Do you know if the E53 3.0 has the same issue with exploding cooling fans as the E46? On the E46, there isn't enough clearance between the primary cooling fan and the radiator, so when the motor mounts fail the engine sags enough that the fins on the fan begin clipping the rad, sometimes blowing up so bad that you get fan blades through the hood. Does that happen here too?