Quote:
Originally Posted by julezw
I have to open a can of worms here. Through my experience and research I have to respectfully disagree with you on following strictly factory maintenance or 'non-maintenance' and that face lifted e53s or more reliable? Factory maintenance says don't maintain anything until it breaks and push oil changes to the limits. Sure the tranny fluid change is iffy but diffs really? And how are sunroofs, air suspension etc and the N62 and ZF 6 speed more reliable than pre face lift trannies and engines?? Please elaborate cause I am dumb founded at some of these statements.
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Ha ha... take it easy. I think everyone has his own experience. At least, to my experience, my 2004 4.8is has not brought me too many trouble up to now. Battery is still the original one and is still green eye up to now. Alternator was replaced when 30K Kms (this is a bit early???!!!). Both front CV boots were renewed recently. Other than these, nothing significant else. It has run 58K Kms. However, my previous 2001 4.4i really brought me much trouble. Almost replaced everything (of course engine and transmission were not included). I bought it when it had around 70K Kms and sold it at around 115K Kms. I had owned it for 5 years and it costed me around 5K USD per year.
Talking about air suspension of 4.8is, you must replace the leaking one or two as soon as you find it leaking, then you can save th air pump and other related things. Most of cases are that lot of people out there do not notice it and when they find leaking, actually it has been leaking for long time and it results in dead air pump and other thing, then they have to replace the whole system.
N62 engine is more reliable than M62 engine, I think this is no doubt. Frequetnly change engine oil (not follow the indicator) is just wasting your money, however nothing bad to the engine.
Transmission, lot of people here talking about renewing the fluid as precaution and differential as well. My friend who is workng in BMW Hong Kong told me that this is the last thing you should do it. The fluid is designed for at least 10 years or 200K Kms (which ever comes earlier). If you find something wrong with the transmission or differential, usually it is not the fluid, it because the life span of the transmission or differenctial has reached, changing fluid does not geting anything better. So my friend warned me not to change the fluid unnecessarily, unless you overhaul the transmission or the differential. Otherwise, serious problem will come after you change the fluid.