Woodspiral

Thanks very much, Greydog. I found one and will give them a call. Regards, David.

Hey there, Can anyone recommend a garage in Bedford or Bedfordshire for servicing and general repairs? I bought a 520d this year and need to get it serviced soon. I think a door handle needs replacing too. Thanks, David.

Thanks very much Oldbrook! I've booked Halfords in to install a Blackvue 2ch system. Great tip! Woody

Hi, I want to get a front and rear 2 channel dashcam installed. Looking though the models it seems Nextbase and Blackvue are two leaders amongst others. Does anyone have any experience with these? Wondering about fitting it myself but a bit nervous about getting everything right. The 4m fixing lead on the Nextbase models is apparently not long enough to run from the mirror area to the boot fusebox, for one. Another issue I'm concerned about is the mounting of the rear cam on the flip up boot window - how will that work. I did see a picture of someone installing it with a coiled wire which I guess if done discretely in a corner it would be ok. Does anyone have any experience of doing this? Is it a doddle? I've got a quote for £150 to install which seems a bit expensive but I don't know what's involved. The electrical side of it makes me nervous too - attaching it to potentially the wrong terminals, etc. I'm pretty handy around the house and the workshop but when it comes to cars a lot of it is a mystery to me. Thanks! Woody

Hey Greydog, Yeah I'm sure once these teething issues are ironed out it'll be plain sailing! I just ordered a Witter towbar install. I could have tried it myself but couldn't bear the thought of breaking or scratching something! I'm quite handy but cars can be very fiddly and specialist to work on. I need some advice for a dashcam choice and install - will post another topic for that. Thanks, Woody

Hi Dave, After inspection found out that all my tyres are brand new. I think the dealer my have fitted them. We all hate potholes but I read in the paper yesterday of trials of graphene-infused tarmac which will improve matters. Obviously it will take time to roll out across the UK, and lets hope all counties adopt it. Beds defintely worse than Cambs for example - quality of roads changes when you cross the county line. Something to do with budgets, no doubt. The dealer checked the outstanding safety recall with BMW and it was for potential exhaust recirculation but was actually fixed so it seems like a paperwork error. I will follow up in a couple of weeks to make sure it has been cleared off the MOT system. Another issue came to light (in addition to the very occasional brake judder/worn bush one) in that the key fob can unlock the door without any hand contact, particularly if I approach the car from the passenger side, along with repeated clicking for about 10 seconds. This seems to be a well documented problem with a cause of faulty door handles so thats another reason for a trip back to the mechanics which has been arranged. These are small faults for what is a beautiful car which is a joy to drive. I will get around to posting some photos eventually! Best wishes, Woody.

Thank you so much Greydog! The checkmot site has revealed that there is an outstanding safety recall. I will follow up with the dealer to get that sorted. It shows that it has passed all the MOTs which is great news, but the last one has an advisory of wear to near legal limit on nearside front. I am wondering why just one would be worn, that seems a little unusual. It fits with your reason (2) for the brake judder, although TBH that was 93k and the vehicle is now nearly at 99k, and the previous owner may have replaced the tyres. I didn't spot any issues when I did the walk around and from the photos it looked ok too. It's something I should have asked when buying; that's my inexperience of buying cars showing through, but at least that is easy to sort out. I'll go and check in a bit and see if I can gauge the condition of the tyres myself. Wear to the legal limit should be easy to spot with the coin test. On the judder I'm not sure if (2) would be responsible since it doesn't happen all the time. I feels more like a mechanical thing. If it's (3) as you think most likely then that is something I can ask BMW to check when doing the safety recall. Just possible the recall is related to the judder I suppose. Yes, the iDrive is certainly complicated. I got the hang of the bare basics I think; I paired my phone, I used the sat nav to get me home, found the manual and the car status. There's a host of other things in there which need looking at like the multimedia stuff. A bit of a learning curve. Learning how to switch it off after driving when stationary would be a good step 🙂 I need to research towbar options - I had a quick look last night and there seems to be a few companies who offer them at reasonable prices. I'll create a separate post if I have further questions. Once again thanks for your great advice - I will save the links you mentioned into the wonderful OneNote application (best note taking app+application on the planet!) It's grey and wet here in 'sunny' Bedfordshire so photography will have to wait, let's hope the sun comes out tomorrow. Best wishes, David.

Hey Greydog, thanks for the detailed advice! Yeah, I figured the 'bad batch' type of thing affected the Which review. I actually found another review by Which on their site for the 5-series as a whole which contradicts the 5-series Touring review and says that the long term 3-8 years reliability is very good! At this point I began to get suspicious of these particular results in the review since one always wonders firstly how widespread they were in their scope (i.e just how many drivers they polled at that time) and secondly the bad batch factor. Trying to form cast iron metrics about any part of the motor industry is quite hard work I think and subject to annual fluctuations, bias, subjectivity etc etc. For these reasons I was more inclined to go with their general recommendation that BMW was one of the top manufacturers for reliability. I was still very grateful to Which though actually, as I would never had looked at BMW as I may have thought that they were too expensive to own and run. Well, ask me that again in a year because today... ...I took the plunge and bought an absolutely gorgeous 520d SE Touring machine! I had to pay 3k more than my original budget but I'm so glad I did because driving it back home tonight was a very happy experience indeed. It really lacks for nothing in my opinion and for a shade under 8k it's a huge amount a car. It's obviously been extremely well looked after and the services and MOTs seem to all be in order. I'll be getting a tow hitch fitted soon, so I'll take that opportunity to ask the engineers to give it a quick once over and check for any missing recalls. I didn't have time to organise a vehicle check prior to purchase as it was on at a very reasonable price and the dealer had had a lot of interest in it. Had I not bought it today, I would have lost the opportunity I think. There are a few oddities which I need to get used to. One is that the turn indicator on the satnav is under the binnacle dials, which is nice if you are driving straight, but I was stationary one time with the steering wheel rotated ready to pull off at a roundabout and couldn't see the indication because the arms of the steering wheel were obscuring the view. Perhaps the turn instructions can be configured to appear on the main screen as well? Another oddity is that when breaking the car judders a little more than I would expect, like the breaks are being applied too aggresively - perhaps that is my fault on the pedal? Perhaps the break pads are very new? Perhaps there is an issue with the breaks/suspension. The dealer said he would fix anything that came up in the first three months, so now is the time to get these things ironed out. It's an unknown beast to me, that I need to get to know. The computer side of it seems to be the most daunting. Couldn't even work out how to switch the screen off without locking the car! So many puzzles, I will need to spend time to read the manual. But it drives like a beast! For me the 3.0 would have been a bit overkill - I'm a fairly sedate driver TBH. 3.0's consumption is a bit higher and the insurance group is a bit higher. If I was a German salesman hammering my way down from one end of their country to the other on autobahns burning company fuel then I'd want a 3.0 but as it is my 4 cyclinder twin turbo 2.0 seems to be adequate enough, with sport mode to the rescue if I need to do some serious accelerating. For the foreseeable I'm not planning on towing anything too heavy, just a bike rack, so I think it can cope with anything I throw at it :-) I'll get some photos together and post them onto the other intro forum. Thanks again, Woody.

Great thanks, Trevor. That's a vote of confidence and good generic advice. I've realised if I stretch to 7.5-8k I could get a 5 series touring model. More luxurious and more toys but Which rates it lower and says "3-8 year reliability is poor". That's a shame, if true, since the 5 looks a lot sharper than the 3.

Hi, Looking to buy a 3 series Touring and would appreciate any advice people can offer. There's a myriad of specs and just basically need to know what to look for, what to avoid. I'm focusing on the 3 touring because it's listed by Which as being a great car and also BMW has 5 stars for short and long term reliability. Is that people's experience? I'm looking for an affordable secondhand car that's reliable and cheap-ish to run. The estate seems quite useful as I sometimes carry a full load, and will get a tow hitch attached for a bike rack. My budget is around £5000 although could stretch a bit further if it made a huge difference. One model that seems to be about right is this one in Ashford; https://germanperformance.co.uk/vehicle/name/bmw-3-series-318d-exclusive-edition-touring/ It's got high mileage, but if the 5 star reliability is believable then it should go on for another 100k with proper maintenance? Some on sale from that year(2012) have done 200k+. Combined fuel economy is 62mpg but HonestJohn has figures of more like 52/53. Is that about right? Appreciate any advice! Thanks! Woody