Quote:
Originally Posted by Eurosport
lifetime 
of course they don't want you to change it, that way you'll be in a new bmw, and the next person will be in their shop buying parts for the old one.
they just caught 2 rabbits w/out much hassle
if they made them to last trouble free for the intended motor/tranny designed lifetime like 350,000 or 500,000 miles, then that wouldn't make them enough money...board of directors wouldn't be happy |
It really has nothing to do with BMW. Modern 5 and 6 speed AT trannys are simply not designed to live for 350K miles, certainly not behind a V8. You are really lucky to get half of that. And at that point with the quality of fluids they are using these days and the cooling, and the filtering, the fluid is not really what is causing the failures. So they call it lifetime but if it makes you feel better swap at 100K. If you want 350K miles, manual is the only way to go. Or 1 or 2 rebuilds on an AT and hope the motor and the rest of the car will last that long. Probably not as likely with something as complex as the X5, especially not with the V8 engine. But I think you can realistically take these things up over 200K with one tranny rebuild. My buddy has a 740iL with 185K miles on it. Rebuilt the trans around 150K and it runs perfectly at this point. Keeping up on maint is the key, and not just talking about oil changes here - this ain't no Honda.