X5 50i M-Sport - Long Term Reliability?

[Mongojoe]

I bought a CPO X5 50i M-Sport a couple of years ago. It now has 60K on the odometer, and I have another year of extended warranty and maintenance. Really love this vehicle, and only put about 10K per year on it, but am worried about long-term reliability. I've had the "customer care package" service done after a couple of reduced power issues, but not sure if this is a band-aid or a true fix.

Can anyone weigh in on likely maintenance issues and costs for the long haul (out beyond 100K)?

Is the N63tu (M-Sport motor) more or less reliable than the N63?

Thanks!

[philooo]

I am in the same wagon, I now have 55k miles on it and warranty expiring in 5 months.
I am wondering about holding or selling.
I actually placed an add to see interest and listed my maintenance history:
https://www.panjo.com/buy/2011-bmw-x...kage-fl-333205

I had 15k of maintenance done last year alone. While this was scary, I have to say that now that I have all the expensive items done may be I should just keep the car.

I have not read much about N63 problems aside of these usual problems:
- valve stems
- injector
- coolant lines / pump

Everybody is bitching about the N63, but really I have not seen anything else happening to these engine. There are expensive fix but aside of that I have never seen any catastrophic failure. I see a lot more thread on diesel engine failure...

I am curious to hear about high mileage N63 maintenance issues.

The car is such a joy to drive and now that is is worth $20k, there is really nothing on the used car market that can touch it.

[xbimma]

Philooo please tell me more about expensive items. I'm on the market for 2012/13 E70 (5.0i)


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[jiggz]

Originally Posted by Mongojoe

I bought a CPO X5 50i M-Sport a couple of years ago. It now has 60K on the odometer, and I have another year of extended warranty and maintenance. Really love this vehicle, and only put about 10K per year on it, but am worried about long-term reliability. I've had the "customer care package" service done after a couple of reduced power issues, but not sure if this is a band-aid or a true fix.

Can anyone weigh in on likely maintenance issues and costs for the long haul (out beyond 100K)?

Is the N63tu (M-Sport motor) more or less reliable than the N63?

Thanks!

There is no M-Sport specific motor. Your E70 has the N63, the N63tu is in the current generation F15 (2014+) X5 50i.

As for long term (100K+ miles) I haven't seen many people at this mileage yet. Lots of guys 75+ who haven't had any major issues.

[philooo]

First I want to say that the car was never disabled and the engine always operated on full power tons of power

But I have a couple of issues and considering I was under warranty and also had a friendly BMW advisor I got many things done on the car.

The one big issue was oil consumption / leak.
I always had heavy oil consumption, but looking at it closer I realized I had first a couple of engine seal leaks. That were costly to repair. I will not list them all, but I had a bunch of seals redone: heads, oil pan, and more..
After that I had the valve stem seat redone that was a big one. The car was not smoking that much but at full throttle you could see a bit of smoke coming out, that bill was like $10k when they were done with the car. Because so many parts needed to be disassembled (engine stayed in the car), so a couple of smaller items broke during the work I guess, so they replace a couple of lines, pumps and stuff in there.

The second main issues were with turbo coolant leak. Nothing major but I had the usual top lines to the turbo replaced, you can see these very often on forums, the fitting start to leak slowly. Pricy as the line are very complex. Luckily they were under warranty as they are part metal. If they were all rubber I would have been out of luck, under on CPO.
Then I had auxiliary pump replaced and coolant tank crack replaced.

These really were the big items for me. Again nothing terribly wrong but just very time consuming each time because the engine is so jam packed with lines, everything takes times and at a $180 dealer rate, it goes really high fast !

Aside of that I had the customer care package done with all injector replaced and a bunch of lines and sensors. Also had drive shaft done as part of the recall.

FYI I am giving you prices the dealer charged to BMW NA. I personally did not pay a penny on all these. All my invoices are at zero but they ask me each time to sign the one which has the dollar numbers on it, and I always read it with amazement.

I have to say that BMW did a bunch of recall and warranty extension for down defect so that are doing something good there.

I think all these issues really reflect what most N63 owner have seen, again it can be pricey but I have never seen any catastrophic failure on the forums.

Also I guess repairing all these things could have been done for a fraction of the cost at an independent shop.

My service advisor is telling me that the earlier N63 really get all the issues and that the new N63Tu has been very reliable for them. He told me earlier diesel and gas engine were the same. So all in all try to buy the later models.... Or an N63 like mine were all big items have been done

[xbimma]

Many thanks Philooo for the details. This tells me extended warranty is a must have. Glad I started looking for a good one. Also I already decided to go for E70 LCI which IIRC started April 2011. But I generally ignore any listing with MY < 2012-01-01 regardless the asking price


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[Thecastle]

I dunno, I wouldn't touch a N63 without a warranty. Based on the common fuel injector failures, HPFP failures, same damn oil leaks as the N62, crap valve stems, Timing chain failures, MAF failures. Maybe that is why I see 2011's with 100K miles going for 16k? https://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/d...0208/overview/

I'll bet it smokes!

But on the upside, you can idle at the Starbucks window when it hits 80K+ miles, then gas it as you leave and say I'm Batman as you leave a smoke screen :-)

Here is the story about N63 a bomb on wheels; about the catastrophic failures folks are seeing BMW 4.4-liter N63 Engine Experiencing Frequent Reliability Problems - autoevolution

BMW N63's eat batteries Enginerdy: Why BMW's N63 twin-turbo V8 eats batteries


Bottom Line, I'd say the N63 is quite possibly the least reliable motor I've seen in a new car, given how many expensive and even catastrophic repairs they take to go to even 80k-100K. I would not consider the N63 engines to be low maintenance/low cost. Especially as they age, keep it while under warranty/cpo then dump it.

I will say that the Diesel engines themselves are actually more reliable than an N62/N63 however their emissions systems are crap in terms of reliability. The M57 at least doesn't suffer from oil leaks, valve stem seal failures, coolant pipe failures, etc. Just a lot of SCR tank failures and CBU.

So I think the bottom line take away is..... BMW dosen't build durable engines. Here is a piece for Jalponik. Keep in mind I love my BMW's as I own 3 currently.
BMW Engines Are Gigantic Pieces Of Shit

[Entropy]

Long-term reliability and BMW X5 do not belong in the same sentence. End of story. Know what you're getting into. There is a reason they are so cheap!.. Which is great for us DIYers.

[Mongojoe]

Does anyone know if the N63 "Customer Care Package" service is a true fix, or is it just a temporary solution that buys 10K miles or so before failing again?

[Thecastle]

Originally Posted by Entropy

Long-term reliability and BMW X5 do not belong in the same sentence. End of story. Know what you're getting into. There is a reason they are so cheap!.. Which is great for us DIYers.

Agreed. But as a guy who just got done spending 4K fixing his 2008 X5 4.8i and numerous weekends under his car on Jack stands.... I question if buying a used BMW is ever a good fincial choice compared to leasing a new one. I suspect my "cheap" X5 will cost me just as much in maintence and repairs as the lease payments for 1 year of owning a new X5. Heck I'd say if you can't diy, you'll spend so much money keeping these cars running it's likely cheaper to lease a new one every 3 years. I think the trick for saving money on a BMW is to buy a used 3 year old with less than 40k miles and keep it until it's 6 and 80k and dump it.

------

Did the customer car package make the n63 reliable? As in they don't blow their oil seals, and stop eating batteries. No. I know several people who have had 3-4 sets of injectors replaced and the customer care package didn't work. If you know you've mastered the many weakness of this engine then buy one. Another thing to keep in mind, there aren't after market fixes for a lot of the engines design flaws. You will fix the same things multiple times, and frustratingly he parts are cheap but the labor to fix problems is high.

At least the diesels you can remove bmws terrible emissions system and make the engines reasonably reliable. But I wouldn't buy one as a reliable alternative to the v8. It's a different set of equally expensive problems unless you mod,

Personally if you want reliability stay away from BMW v8 engines. the n63tu still has problems too. In my opinion the n62 is probably the least problematic recent BMW v8 and there are some after market fixes for some major problems. But damn, who puts a shitty gasket behind an alternator.

Stick with the 6 it's more reliable, it jus has cooling system failures. Consider a cooling system refresh every 50k miles as maintence and you'll be good.