If you haven't owned the car long, and bought the car from a dealership or some sort, I would contact them about the car having a whole heap of problems; here in the states we have a "lemon" law that protects buyers from buying faulty cars. I believe your problems are fixable ( anything is fixable for the right price) but that they could be potentially pricey. Given that you've put a lot of money into the car I dont know how much more you are willing to put up. I hope I'm not giving the impression that your car is a lost cause; I just want you to get to the bottom of this and want to throw some suggestions out there for you to explore if you choose to do so .


You being the ninth owner does makes me question the history of the car. I would try to do some research on the car's history (might help with maitainace troubleshooting or the lemon law pursuit).
This is what I did when I bought my X, and maybe it will help you do some research on your precious X:

-Do a carfax (don't know if you have those in the UK)
-If the car has been serviced at any auto shop/BMW dealership it may give the location on the carfax(most definitely will for BMW dealership, mine did)
-Since you are the registered owner of the car you can request service records from BMW and the service department will print them out for you.
-The records will show you what kind of maintenance has been done at this particular dealership, even with descriptions of reason(s) previous owner(s) took the car in for. If there are multiple dealerships you will need to contact each dealership independently, since each dealership keeps their own database (there isn't a universal BMW database from what i was told).
-If you want to digg further into investigation you can contact the previous owner(s) that are named with contact info on the service record from BMW.
I didn't do that, but if you are feeling ambitious go for it ( i thought about it .

-- I wish you the best and hope your problems are more simple than they seem...Good luck and keep us updated--

Gm

Oh yeah..What is LPG? Petrol is gas (petroleum) I'm assuming?

By the way...:xoutpost: