Quote:
Originally Posted by Plattus1000
They suggested A repair to the gasket (less than 9 months old) for a, I hesitate to call it a leak. Oil seepage? Barely visable. They only wanted $2,400 to do it. I guess it takes 15 hours and hundreds of dollars for the gasket...
One other thing I'd like to mention: As they did the inspection on our X with 181k on the clock, they noted the tiniest things that weren't important. The CV boots had cracks, oil dampness on the edge of the guide cover you can hardly see... Etc, etc.
You would think that they might have asked if the timing chain guides had been replaced seeing as how at this milage/age you're driving a rolling time bomb if you haven't. They did not.
I'll assume that they hope the guides will fail and boom, new car sale or money for a new car for them to repair it when it lets go
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Never, never trust the salesperson unless you fully understand their motivation.
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I assume by salesman you mean service advisor. For a time I had the dealer do my alignments. I don't ever recall that the service advisor didn't recommend repairs that should be done. Same experience under warranty. As you mention, some suggested work is not imperative and will be fine for thousands of miles without doing other damage but my experience has been that they weren't making things up.
It would be poor business practice if the techs didn't do a thorough inspection and mention any findings--as a potential liability issue, customer satisfaction and dealer profitability. There is always the option of a second opinion from a well recommended independent which due to dealer labor cost is the best place to have work done if one can't DIY.
Those unable to DIY have to be more than extremely careful if they buy a used X5, and, even if they can DIY, take a very significant risk that they will become one of group that is extremely unhappy with the cost to keep their X5 running properly.
With all vehicles it is best to adopt the pay me now or pay me later point of view. A newer low mileage vehicle costs more and generally runs fine for many miles. When we don't want to pay me now we are hopeful, playing the significantly worse odds, that we won't have to pay me later. Because of the age of an E53 and usually miles on it the X5 is already in the pay me later stage of life.