[Yandex]

Hello everyone, new to this forum but have used resources like mechanical advice for a while.

As visible from my profile I have a Civic as a daily. I've wanted a 2 series for a while, in my opinion, it is one of the best cars BMW ever made for genuine fun driving, pleasure, and joy which is what I'm after.

Originally I was interested in a 218d/220d with the B47 engine, specifically the B47C20O0 which was more tuneable due to the bigger stock turbo and injectors. Since then I've realised I have been lying to myself and knew I truly want a 235i/240i/M2 to enjoy myself.

Onto the issue at hand, I have found a lovely example for a very good price over here in the UK. It's a 2014 235i with the N55.

The description of it is as follows, it had an issue - 'car started knocking whilst driving... it was recovered and sat since... the issue is - when it starts cold it has no noise but when it warms up (10 mins later) it starts making a thudding noise'. A garage has said that it needs 'big end bearings'.

Now, I know it's stupid to buy a beemer that I am not 100% sure if it has been abused when the noise appeared etc. but by the looks of it whilst the N55 is a good engine it often has issues due to poor maintenance schedule especially as you get towards 100k miles.

The benefit of this car is that it has not been handed over and over again (here in the UK these will often have 5-6 owners with dodgy maintenance in-between) and does have a service history addmitedly not the more agressive 5k one it still has followed the 10k or whatever BMW oil service interval is. I want to know if by the description this is an issue that will be rectified by replacing the big end bearings alone or should I, seeing I'm already in there do other stuff on the engine? The full rod bearings or perhaps upgrade to forged pistons.

Or should I completely avoid this car? My thinking was if I plan on getting one with higher mileage I might as well get one that needs some work as they will all eventually need that engine work however some posts on here would disagree and rightfully point towards N55's that have done 150-200k miles.

Let me know what the more experienced community thinks. It would be my first BMW so I'm still learning. Even with my Honda it took me years to learn all about the small issues that won't be experienced by everyone, and even that car needed a transmission bearing which required the whole transmission out so nothing is perfect or forever reliable and I'm fine with that.

Just curious if this is a common issue, expensive or not to repair (I usually do all my work myself, but engine out jobs are challenging as I do not have the equipment to take and support an engine whilst it's out) and if it would be worth it at the right price of course.

Thank you all.

[ctt300]

Run away. Let them fix it and then sell it. You never know all the issues till you dig in and then can be multiple. Always look for non-modified cars as they have less wear.

[jb-slow]

It's usually cheaper to buy the well maintained car than the cheap broken one

[dnaiel]

I'd agree with ct. Sounds like they've trashed it and are just trying to dump it.