Got the oil changed today on the 35d

[Destination: Moon]

Hi,

I bit the bullet and paid 150 to get my oil changed early today. Another dealer quoted me 190!! I also treated my X to a half gallon of Urea.

The service people were all super nice from start to finish. I was even allowed to watch. A pretty big deal in todays crazy world. I was glad I was there, since when I got let into the service area my car was up in the air. When I asked the tech how much oil she took, he pointed at the computer controled oil pump hanging from the ceiling. He told me that when he keyed in my vehicle type it would pump out the correct amount of oil.

I told him that I thought the d took a special type of oil: SLX. He checked with the service manager and went to the parts dept for the correct oil. When he got back, he lowered the car and cracked the oil filter housing. The SM was by my side then, and told me that cracking the housing will let the oil fall from the filter into the pan for draining.

The filter is very accessible: on the driver side of the engine, right by the half buried, urea fill spout. It takes a 32 mm socket and looks like there is room to use a small adjustable wrench instead. One thing that bothers me: there is no leaked oil by the housing or any indication that they actually changed the filter. I left before this was done (did not want to overstay my welcome). I would not have this concern if the car did not have to be lowered for them to crack the filter. That should have been done when it went up the first time - before I got there, not after. I keep wondering if they would have just replaced the oil had I not showed up in the service area... Lacking any leaked oil, I still wonder if they changed it? Is there a good way to confirm this?

I took home an empty bottle of the SLX oil to check it against the Castrol Edge I bought over the weekend. Edge is supposed to replace SLX but the specs are different on the labels. Its hard not to think its the same oil.... I called Castrol and they would only say that the OE SLX is unique to BMW and not available in retail stores. They would not say Edge is the same or meets BMW spec.... (OE SLX also has several VW specs on it as well that are missing from Edge too) Sounds like a marketing conspiracy to me.

They only (only?) charged 21 bucks for the Urea. (Like I said, all the people there were really nice, best run service center I have ever seen.) Its pretty simple once you figure out how the bottle works. The bottle has a small top that you unscrew (leave the blue sleeve intact!). This reveals a smaller diameter nipple. I screwed it onto the fill nipple on the passenger side of the car (easiest to reach). When you screw the bottle onto the fill nipple, nothing happens.... You must push down on the bottle itself. That releases the fluid. It went in without spilling a drop. A master piece of design work for this nasty product!