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      07-04-2021, 01:39 PM   #1
msej449
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Extended Ownership Maintenance Schedule

BMW Long-term Ownership

Maintenance work to do outside the BMW schedule, or at a shorter interval than BMW standard.


I’ve been reading ‘round various 2 Series forums and threads related to long-term ownership and what sort of additional service work or actions are desirable, outside of the standard BMW service packages and decided to summarise it in a simple table, below. The table is divided into an initial section listing simple routine care and a second section on major mechanical work – usually replacements. Note this is just a survey exercise – it’s based only on what people have said, not on any engineering insight on my part, albeit on the insight and experience claimed by others.

If people have comments I'm happy to see what comes up and then incorporate them into a revised version. I'm not claiming this is definitive.

There always remains the statistical probability that any one of hundreds of components will fail unusually early. These things happen. The aim of these extra service measures is principally to minimise the incidence of failures over the ~40K mileage point i.e. for a long-term ownership. If you want insurance against almost any early failure, then you have to look at the cost/benefit of the various Extended Warranty schemes.

Forum discussions have a lot of variation in the specific mileage / time that people quote. For some items the range is quite wide – you’ll find at least one post form someone who recommends work earlier than stated here. Indeed, many threads contain arguments about both intervals, and whether a piece of preventive work is even necessary.

I’m assuming here that the owner has a standard service package from a BMW dealer, which will cover regular annual servicing in terms of an oil and air filter change, and brake fluid and brake pads at longer intervals. What the table is meant to do is to show what this won’t cover, or when service work needs to be done sooner than in a dealer’s service package.

Some service items such as differential oil and coolant are described by BMW as ‘lifetime’. This table reflects the general view that this isn’t true and that some of these parts are well worth replacing in a car that’s going to be owned outside of the standard 3 year warranty.

Finally, the table reflects advice for non-modified and/or non-tracked cars. The usual advice for these cases is that mechanical work should be done ‘earlier’ but how much earlier varied so much that I decided not to complicate the information with a lot of caveats and qualifiers.



(The charge pipe replacement is a one-off, not at repeated intervals.)

Other sources

There is an in-depth article from 2013 covering a wide range of topics and recommendations around maintenance of a long-term ownership BMW:

https://www.zpost.com/forums/attachm...9&d=1564415575

Unfortunately, it’s beginning to look a bit out of date and I have a concern that some of what was true for pre-2013 engines must surely have changed by now? Yes, much of it is interesting background, but after 8 years, it must need some revision. Basically, it's certainly worth reading, but may leave you with reservations about just how far some of the specific recommendations still apply to the current generation of BMWs.
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      07-04-2021, 04:24 PM   #2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by msej449 View Post
There is an in-depth article from 2013 covering a wide range of topics and recommendations around maintenance of a long-term ownership BMW:

https://www.zpost.com/forums/attachm...9&d=1564415575

Unfortunately, it’s beginning to look a bit out of date and I have a concern that some of what was true for pre-2013 engines must surely have changed by now? Yes, much of it is interesting background, but after 8 years, it must need some revision. Basically, it's certainly worth reading, but may leave you with reservations about just how far some of the specific recommendations still apply to the current generation of BMWs.
Thanks for going to the trouble to put this together!

FWIW re: Mike Miller's Lifetime Maintenance Schedule, Miller has stated multiple times that he thinks the document continues to be relevant for today's cars, leaving it up to us to make whatever use of it that we choose to.
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      07-09-2021, 11:07 AM   #3
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I didn't see anything about the belts and tensioner! also a high consequence failure item
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      07-09-2021, 02:07 PM   #4
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I use the Old School Maintenance for my e90 (147k). It includes power steering fluid at 30k, drive belts at 60k, and coolant hoses at 150k as preventative maintenance.
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      07-14-2021, 08:11 AM   #5
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Can our battery last 5 weeks idle without charging?
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      07-14-2021, 09:24 AM   #6
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Probably not. After 2 weeks mine shows a voltage of 12.2 volts. It is the battery management software (ironically) that powers up to check the battery several times a day that does it. As I was waiting for delivery of my 2021 M240, I would visit the dealer early in the morning and all of the vehicles on the show room floor had chargers on them. Should have been a flag on the play.

I am retired and the 240 is my fun-fair weather car so I do not drive it every day. I do check my P3 vent gage every couple of days to see what the battery voltage is and charge it when it is below 12.4.
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      08-24-2021, 02:00 PM   #7
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Where do you actually find a "ZF specialist"? I tried checking on their website and it was unhelpful...
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      09-29-2021, 06:06 PM   #8
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Sorry, I can't help with the ZF specialist question as I'm based in the UK. All I recall from other threads is that people have had to contact ZF country HQ directly to find their nearest specialist.

Re the whole charge pipe thing. One thing that's emerging is that in 2019 BMW brought out an uprated charge pipe as a replacement. And that independents that prefer to use OE parts (something that's usually reassuring) will stonewall over using non-OE parts like the VRSF. There's also an implication that the uprated OE part is good enough for a stock car and that the metal pipes are more designed for boosted engines i.e. over-engineered for a stock engine. But this isn't necessarily definite. And as a guideline cost, here in the UK, my local independent quoted GBP £497 ($668) all-in, including labor, BMW OE uprated part ($363) and tax.
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      10-04-2021, 12:41 PM   #9
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50k for diff oil seems odd, that's way too often. It's a sealed system with heavy oils and grease that doesn't break down very much.

I would replace AGM battery every 5-6 years.

Water pump and fuel filter at those intervals is really not necessary nor is It required to change the charge pipe that often.

Spark plugs, I would replace every 30k miles. New coils maybe every 5 years or 100k miles.

Overall, a weird chart.
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      10-04-2021, 04:40 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by flypenfly View Post
Spark plugs, I would replace every 30k miles.
What's lead you to choose this interval?
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      10-04-2021, 07:54 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dradernh View Post
What's lead you to choose this interval?
Easy to do on this engine and inexpensive. Something about replacing dirty looking spark plugs feels great.

I should clarify, 30k miles if tuned, probably 50-60k is fine if stock.
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