Bavarian Auto-sport maintenance Guide

[xriderob]

Hello,
Just discovered bavautos recommended maintenance guide for BMWs, and specifically our X5's. It is interesting seeing what work they recommend performing at these certain intervals.
What are your thoughts on this never ending "conspiracy theory" about BMW wanting to reduce maintenance costs etc and BMWs not getting the services they deserve?

It's also nice they have small tech articles for most maint items.

http://www.bavauto.com/Assets/inst_pages/e53mc.pdf

There is a link for your viewing pleasure. Sorry if it's been discussed before. Thanks for input, I'm just looking to maintain this vehicle and be as problem free as possible.

[motordavid]

Very similar to Mike Miller's 'Old School Maintenance Guide & Recommendations"; Miller is the technical editor of Roundel Magazine, and has a monthly column in Roundel, where he often rants about BMW's rec'd 'maintenance', (under warranty), 'lifetime fluids', and BMW's continual complexities and monstrous repair costs, post-warranty.

If one doesn't currently belong to BMW CCA, it is worth the yearly fee simply to receive and read the Roundel Mag, imo, and I am certainly not a BMW head, or fanboi...
GL, mD

[xriderob]

Hmm
Interesting. Thanks for input.

[JCL]

My thoughts are that Bav Auto are in the business of selling maintenance items, and thus recommend you buy more of them (presumably off of Bav Auto).

The Bav Auto list has an option for non-synthetic oil. That seems silly to me. They also have brake fluid down for every year. The two year requirement is already conservative, so doubling it serves no purpose IMO. Coolant at 3 years isn't absurd, but I don't think 4 years is a problem. I wouldn't leave it longer than 4 years, myself.

I grew up changing oil every 3000 miles/5000 km in a shop. Filter every time. Chassis lubrication twice a year, once a year minimum. Tune up every year. Over time, those requirements have simply become relics of a bygone age.

Leaving aside the entire automatic transmission fluid debate, because there are different issues going on there, modern fluids in diffs, transfer cases, manual transmissions, hydraulic systems like steering, etc, simply don't require changing every two years.

I think that the 'conspiracy theory' is way overplayed. It is usually offered up by US posters, since that is where the maintenance is fully covered. The rest of the world, according to the theory, gets the same recommendations because the marketing departing in BMW in the US sets world maintenance policies for BMW. That is ludicrous.

The best maintenance practices are condition based (real condition monitoring, not just the BMW electronic version). If the vehicles required more frequent maintenance that BMW publishes, we would see common failures related specifically to those maintenance practices. There would be clear cause and effect relationships. Extended oil changes beyond the approximately 15,000 mile interval (to use one example) would result in cylinder bore wear, crank journal wear, rod bearing wear, etc. And we simply don't see those types of failures.

If people want to maintain their vehicles more frequently than BMW recommends, that is great, more power to them. I just don't think they should do it with an expectation of extending the vehicle's life, since doing it on schedule hasn't been shown to reduce the life. People often say "it can't hurt". I would counter that while that may be true, the converse isn't that therefore "it will help", but rather that it is "not at all likely to help".

Jeff

[xriderob]

Well thanks for the input. As always very helpful. I think I am torn not providing the constant maintenance and trying to find a reason to (for some insane reason) perform more little jobs. But I will have to change my coolant now and brake fluid is coming with front rotor/pad replacement, so other than that I change oil now around 10,000-12,000km and otherwise I guess just go by the wear items and BMW book. Thanks again and I am interested to see how my X is this winter with a heated garage.

[JCL]

I suspect your BMW will be fine, but your heating bill might not be. I remember installing a block heater in a SAAB in an unheated garage attached to our home in St. Albert. A visitor from BC didn't know it was going to be -32. I looked at putting heating in, but a neighbour showed me how much that cost him. I bought better gloves.

When I went through withdrawal from not needing to work on my vehicles so much, I bought a Porter Cable random orbit polisher and three pads. I am not a detailer by any stretch of the imagination, but at least it gave me something to do.