A few years ago my brother Ian had to decide whether to buy his dream car. He found a low-mileage 2011 BMW M3 convertible for sale for $29,500 in Florida, and though he wasn’t 100% sure it was the best deal, he bought it. For years, he enjoyed the fruits of that decision, hooning the absolute Scheisse out of that 414 horsepower 4.0-liter V8, feeling the crisp shifts of that ahead-of-its-time DCT automatic. But a few months back, disaster struck.
The reality is that my brother drives like a madman; I know for a fact that that S65B40 has touched over 7,000 RPM hundreds of times. Is that a bad thing? No; that’s what you pay for when you buy the greatest enthusiast’s M-car ever made. But the downside of buying a BMW is that you have to deal with BMW problems, and in the case of my brother’s low-mileage M3 whose rod bearings had allegedly been replaced by the previous owner, those problems have become dire.
A few months ago, after the car had sat for 6 months, my brother took his convertible M3 for a trip up the coast near his home of Boston, hooning it as he always does. “A couple miles from my garage on the way back I start hearing lugging / thudding noises (not too crazy),” he told me, “but the car is driving fine.”
My brother then parks the car in the garage and listens to the idle; the engine seems to be lugging. He shuts it off. He fires it back up, revs the motor to 7,000, and observes a noise that he describes as “not great.” He shuts the motor off, fires it up again, and it idles, then shuts off. From then on, it would no longer start. “It doesn’t crank again, and every time I press ignition it just gives a puff sound,” he tells me of this tragic incident, whose aftermath you can hear/see in the videos he shot below.
“I then let it sit for months before bringing it into BMW of Boston, which claims it is seized and needs a new motor.” BMW of Boston posted a video of its tech trying to turn the crank with a breaker bar; here’s a screenshot:
“We are on the crank right now … and unfortunately the engine does not crank over. I try to go back and forth, but it’s a no-go … I will be checking the filter to see if there are metal shavings. It’s highly possible that you do need an engine.”
Ultimately, the dealer determined that my brother’s M3 needs a new engine. How much will that cost? Check it out:
Holy crap! Over $40,000 after tax to replace a motor! That’s madness!
$10,458 of that is service, leaving the remaining $28,000-ish to parts costs. That’s an expensive motor! And I’m not even sure that “short engine” includes a crank and rods.
Needless to say, this is too much money for a convertible automatic M3, which is probably worth what my brother bought it for, assuming it was still, you know, running. So what’s the solution here?
The dealer’s quote is a lot, but it’s also a lot of work, so there’s no way my brother can get out of this cheaply without doing the work himself. I suggested he take it to an independent shop and see what they have to say. They can yank the motor, look inside, and see if it’s salvageable. If it needs new bearings and maybe honing and new rings, that’d be a best-case scenario. If it needs new pistons and rods, plus new bearings and a bore-job, that’d still be cheaper than the dealer’s estimate.
Worst case, the motor is toast, and my brother snags a used one on eBay. Looks like they go for between $5000 and $8000. I’d say get one that turns over and runs for closer to $5000, then have an engine shop go through it and replace the innards. I reckon you can get an independent shop to take out your old motor and look at it for a few grand. If the motor can be saved, I bet an engine shop can do that for $8-9 grand. And then the install might be another couple of grand. If he has to buy a new motor for $5-6 grand and have it rebuilt and installed, I think it’d probably cost about the same. I think my brother could get out of this for under $20,000. Maybe.
Whether it’s worth it for a car that’s worth maybe $30,000 is up to him, though. One thing I can say: Paying that $41,018.08 estimate from the dealer is clearly not the move.
Top graphic images: Ian Tracy; iOS
He can buy another one for $41K.
This is the obvious answer. Keep the current car as a parts car, and go buy another one. I see several for sale around that mileage for around the quote for the new motor. Why not get a whole new car if he really wants another E9X?
Ah yes….The tax has come due. Every single person I’ve known who has owned a BMW eventually had to pay that tax. Like a housemate who owned a BMW 3 series with a sunroof… Only for the sunroof to fail and lo and behold- a $5,000 repair bill. Same with a neighbor of mine, who’s daughter inexplicably bought a 5 series only for the headlights to fail the very next day. As expected, engineered in the most convoluted and unnecessarily complicated way, with each headlight having its own ECU, each buried somewhere in the dash. $2500. To fix headlights.
That said, doesn’t take much to run up insane repair bills on most anything. Friend of mine owns a Ford Focus RS. It had a problem with the clutch. Total cost to repair? $11,000. For a Ford Focus. Probably because most new cars and trucks are a big royal pain in the ass to work on and just getting to the engine is a chore.
This is exactly why I sold my E90 before anything went wrong with it. I had a good 4 years of fun and no life shattering repair bill.
BMWs are Doctors cars, designed to be leased (hence the 20,000 mile oil change intervals and the “lifetime” transmission fluid). The first “owners” turn them in and leave the problems behind.
Even when I had my E36 (325i), but wanted the M3, the “M” tax was in full force. That hasn’t changed, but the cars are uglier.
This is reason number 9,742 why you NEVER buy your dream German car unless you’re a professional level mechanic. I’ve nearly taken this plunge a few times and am proud that I never have. Owning a new German car for 2 years was more than enough for me.
Just buy a Lexus with the 5 liter V8. ISFs are still pretty cheap last I checked. If you want the modern BMW experience enjoy them as the Ultimate Lease Machine, as their engineers intend them to be.
Ultimate Lease Machine, could not be more precise!
When you lease a car, which is basically long term rental, people don’t baby the car. Most of those cars get beat.
Then young professionals who desperately want to look good driving a fancy car buy the abused leased car, and eventually pay the piper.
I wanted a used E39 M5 about 10 years ago. But a BMW tech said, the car may cost $25k but it still have a maintenance cost of a $72k car.
This is kind of a goofy take. This is an extreme example of a costly BMW repair. Also, there aren’t enough Lexus 5.0-liter cars to sate everybody who wants a performance luxury vehicle.
There are innumerable other examples across the internet. I’ve dug into the forums related to just about every high performance used German car and nearly all of them have some $10,000+ catastrophic failure point lurking somewhere and an endless stream of 4 figure stuff that’ll be due every year.
Don’t get me wrong, if you can pay to play and have money to burn then go for it. I also don’t necessarily think buying a used German luxury car that’s substantially under your budget and just accepting that there will be gremlins/putting aside the money you saved to deal with them is the worst idea ever.
I mean…it’s not a GOOD idea but you’ve got $50,000 set aside for a car and you want to spend $35,000 on a used M or AMG or whatever and use the rest to keep it running that’s doable if you’re a masochist or mechanically inclined. But as a general rule of thumb I don’t think there’s any argument to the contrary of “buying used German luxury cars is a bad financial idea”.
That being said I think it’ll be interesting to see how some of their most recent ICE models hold up, because they’re the most reliable they’ve ever been. The B58 and S58 in particular sure seem like they can survive a lot of abuse if you take care of them…and now they’re paired with a torque converter as the auto option rather than a DCT.
A co-worker sold his M3 Series around 10 years ago as it approached the end of the factory warrantee. He said it was amazing to drive but it was at the dealer for warrantee work so often that he figured out that the maintenance and repair cost were going to be ridiculous if he was paying out of pocket.
I’ve never leased a car, is it really catastrophic free? I mean you rent a car but the insurance and if you have any issues just have them give you another. However with leases they have mileage limits, wear limits, reasonable return condition limits do you really get off Scott free if you abuse it?
As long as you tick the periodic maintenance boxes and don’t leave any verifiable traces*, you’re good. Keep that in mind with CPO performance models…
*nothing cosmetic, no over rev flags in the ecu, etc. Also, a strong case can be made that “cost of ownership” driven maintenance intervals should be considered mechanical neglect…
Is SWG up for a challenge? If he is, it’s a win/win/win. SWG could hopefuly make some money on the work, your brother would get a good deal on the work, and we’d get sweet, sweet content.
This is a fifteen year old car. I am not going to look up how much it would cost to buy another one vs. fix his up. Then again, the devil you know may be better than getting something with different problems.
Or the same problem.
It’s never a different problem it is always a BMW problem that is far too expensive and difficult to repair
Kept a 1988 3 series convertible running for 17 years so I have felt that pain.
>engine makes noises
>let’s rev it to 7k rpm
Most likely it was still salvageable at that point before locking it up.
A little mechanical empathy can save a lot of money sometimes.
Seriously. What kind of fucking idiot thinks to do that?!
Steve (NHRN) Tracy apparently
Something sounds off in my engine, let me redline it to see if that fixes it.
Maybe he’s owned a Banshee at some point. IYKYK…
I think most folks simply don’t have mechanical empathy. Dear Spouse certainly doesn’t.
Seriously. When something begins to not sound right…. shut it down, for the love of god. ESPECIALLY when it does not sound right. Don’t rev it like that when it is stationary, even when the engine is healthy. When properly warmed, and properly oiled…. go crazy.
Yeah that is pretty unbelievable that the first thing he thought to do when its making bad noises is to rev it up to 7K RPM.
Seriously what the hell?
“Oh, it’s making some noise, let’s spin the main bearings to make sure the entire bottom end is scrap metal.”
If he’s lucky, it just spun a couple rod bearings, but even fixing that is going to be serious money.
When the engine won’t bar over, rest assured it’s not just the rod bearings.
Surely the noise was just something stuck. Nothing a little high revs won’t break loose and fix!
/s
A couple of companies make Ford coyote to zf adapters? 8000+ RPM (with a little tickling of the oil pump) and much better reliability are a (probably) sponsored swap away.
There is a LS3 swap kit out there.
Complete with wiring.
More power, better reliability.
To a no brainer this seems like one.
This is probably the cheapest and best option
I guess. I’m not a fan of LS swapping cars whose original engines are vastly apart from those of an LS engine, because you lose the character of the car. The high-revving, oversquare S65 engine is very different from an LS.
Beside which, those engine swaps are still pretty advanced-level jobs and can take weeks and tons of space, unless you’ve got access to a full shop and lift.
The cheapest option, assuming David’s brother doesn’t have a loan on it, is to kiss it goodbye.
The solution is the LT6 from the Z06 that also revs to 8400. except I don’t think you can buy it as a crate motor yet
Lose the character of the car? What if the character of the is a toothless meth head speed freak who buys 16 balls instead of 8 balls on the weekend? I’d settle for the athletic reliable neighbor
LS swapping a car is the equivalent of that SpongeBob episode where he decides to try being normal for a day and becomes this bland shell of what he once was and nobody likes him.
So what if you deal with SpongeBob on a daily basis you already don’t like him.
You try to understand that, while you don’t necessarily want SpongeBob’s companionship, there are others who would better appreciate his whimsical, off-beat, occasionally grating, but simultaneously charming personality, instead of trying to tear him down and rebuild him into some bastardized version of what you wish he was.
To do an LS swap that operated like it came with the car would cost more than the replacement at the dealership.
Assuming the owner’s in MA, he’s also subject to strict emissions standards. Unless the rules have changed, the swapped motor needs to be from a similar type car (no truck motors into passenger vehicles) of the same year or newer and needs to maintain all the emissions equipment from the engine donor. I haven’t worked on one of these BMWs but I don’t know if you could fit the full LS exhaust in / under there.
Playing by those rules an LT1 from a Camaro wreck is probably the best bet.
Supposedly it makes a civilized swap in the end.
It will be expensive I’m thinking $10K so best double that. (-;
Is it worth it? Probably not by normal measures, but who is normal?
Could be worse. Try repairing a blown Porsche engine.
Making me feel pretty good about only spending $1800 to put a new engine in my daughter’s Corolla. Of course I had to do all the work on that one myself…
Been there, done that.
I put a JDM motor and 6-speed in my Miata for $1500.
I think I paid ~$2500 for my SR20DET that I swapped into my S13. That was SO long ago, though. BRB, need to lubricate my replacement hips.
Why swap the JDM into the Miata? The 6 speed I get but why the engine? I assume it was one of the engines just not available stateside or just for the lack of emissions stuff?
Hate to be that guy, but I wonder if restarting it after the initial noise exacerbated the situation. Of course I can’t say with certainty I would have done differently in that situation either.
Revving it to 7k when there was obviously a mechanical calamity occuring certainly did not help.
This article is outrageous in its attempt to cause my outrage. I shan’t 😛
This is a high-revving engine for an M series, a V8 at that. I am actually quite surprised it’s not quoted higher. It’s quite unique, along with the V10 S85. It’s rare as hell.
And it’s being quoted at around the same price as what replacing a modern full size pickup’s diesel would cost, not to mention any other German V8 or V10.
I will have you know, David, that my 2017 Santa Fe 3.3 Gdi V6 uses six ignition coils that Hyundai will sell me at around $200 a pop. That’s only $50 less than the coils for your brother’s engine, which are notoriously expensive. The regular BMW coils for much everything else go for $70 with dealership tax and all.
You would say that my dealership is pulling my strings (they are, see below), but lo and behold, on the cheapest Hyundai parts website, these are still listed north of $170 a pop.
Speaking of my Hyundai dealer – they recently quoted me $2500 to replace a fuel pump that is 1.75 hours of labor to replace (in tank, no dropping the tank needed), with a $900 part price (from the dealer).
So trust me, this engine replacement is a normal price. Which we know plain well, neither your brother, nor you, nor the BMW dealer have any plans of going ahead with 🙂
PS: Given that these (the S65 and S85-engined BMWs) are clearly at a lowest right now, installing that engine at the dealer might actually end up being the right move if he plans on keeping it, given how any Integra R nowadays goes for three times what his way better M is currently worth.
There was a recent BaT WRX listing where the owner had receipts totaling close to $25K for an engine removal and replacement as well as some “while you’re in there” stuff.
But that honestly seems outrageous, most places I read a Subaru motor replacement should be like $6-$8K at an indie shop. Point being I’m not entirely surprised but I think he can get this done somewhat cheaper. Normally the best bet is to get that clean used one like pictured above but on a performance motor known for eating rod bearings an eBay motor is a real dice roll. Pulling it and rebuilding it would be sweet but I got to imagine those internals are way spendy and you need to find a rebuild shop that’s reputable for doing a precision performance motor (not just churning out SBC rebuilds).
Shops in this area are not cheap. Midas / Meineke are at $900/axle brake jobs without replacing the rotors. That number may even be a few years out of date, but I can’t imagine it’s cheaper today.
This makes me unreasonably angry. We’re talking abducting Liam Neesen’s daughter levels of angry…
Good lord and that’s like not even a real mechanic shop. And on most discs that’s like a sub 1 hour job especially with a lift. Even at the indie mechanic I go to when I can’t DIY something at $195/hour plus parts I would think a brake job would be like $400 per axle.
I honestly think some of those chain places rip people off though, they get folks in with a combination of ease and name recognition, generally good seeming service but are not that cheap. Caveat emptor I guess. Not sure if they’re just a west coast thing but we have a tire chain here called Les Schwab and I’ll admit they have great service and even changed my last flat for free, but man are their tires a rip off and pretty sure they do the walmart thing where they get crappier versions of brand name tires so it seems like you’re getting quality-at least anecdotally I had one car that I had bought that the PO had put on tires there and even though they were a what I thought was a good brand they were total garbage in wet conditions as well as being loud.
Does GM sell the Z06 LT6 engine as a crate motor yet? Sounds like $40k could get that shoe horned in easily. Then it would rev to 8400!
It’ll also reduce the value of the car to about $8400.
More than it’s worth now!
Ha, I suppose that’s true!
BMW- Bring More Wallet.
Big Money Wasted
as the owner of 4 BMWs I totally agree
Blown Motor Waiting
There’s a note that the engine is cancelled and no longer available. Does BMW actually not keep servicing them that long?
More than anything they wanted David’s brother to walk from the service area to the showroom.
Yeah this seems like the give ridiculous estimates so you get him to buy a new/slightly used one off the lot and they give you chump change for trade in on his with a blown engine.
Absolutely, the broken M car is a pipeline to someone buying a new car out of inventory.
That said, there is no arbitrage or profit in taking in a broken M car, for a dealership. They are essentially buying it and offloading it for the same price.
Or less
I guess that’s probably not a bad idea since the customer was foolish enough to buy a BMW in the first place, but most sensible people would never buy anything from such a garbage brand again.
It’s a 2011. I would never expect any manufacturer to still have new engines sitting around for a 15 year old vehicle.
It doesn’t matter the year of the car it is the last year the engine was available in a model.
I had a 2004 Focus SVT that already had engine parts that were obsolete and no longer available just 10 years later in 2014 which is why I sold the car. Low production performance-oriented vehicles don’t seem to get long term support from the manufacturer.
My low production model Vehicross blew a motor 3 years ago. I sourced a rebuild at AutoZone when I couldn’t find a good used one anywhere. About $4,000. If it is a popular engine someone is rebuilding them and since he hadn’t driven it for months it’s not like repair time is a factor
I noticed that and wrote-off the estimate since it isn’t happening anyway (I’m assuming a dealer isn’t going to touch a donor engine). That alone cut the estimate from completely bat-s#it insane to only completely nuts.
I agree with the others in that they only bothered with the estimate as pressure to just stroll through the showroom.
Time for a stroker build?
Dang, $8.15 for a can of non chlorinated BMW brake clean.
kinda seems like a deal If they can do that entire job only using one can.
Kinda agree!
That’s about the same price as the parts store stuff. Whatta bargain!
Why is the dealership posting videos of them working on customer cars?
I assume they took the video to send to the customer, as opposed to posting in a public forum?
They probably sent the video to David’s brother as proof of the problem. The Mazda dealership did the same thing with my car.
Honda dealer ditto.
It may not be public. My local Chevy dealer sends me a video of their inspection every time I take something in there. I could see them sending something like this if I had a car in for diagnosis.
It’s most likely the video that they send directly to the customer.
Ever watch “Just rolled in” on YouTube? There’s some funny/concerning stuff there.
4 of you answered the same thing all at once, which is impressive, and your answers make sense; I would just not refer to that as “posting” the video.
Correct. This dealer’s service seems excellent. Super transparent!
Just like the engine block.
My Toyota dealer mechanic had to make a short video to show me the results of his 25k service, emailed it to me. Very likely a similar thing.
Many dealers do this, especially at luxury car dealerships. The videos are hosted on a publicly accessible CDN, but they only send the link to the customer.
What I have learned from this article:
Don’t drive like DT’s Brotha!
“Short engine” is the same as short block, which would be everything below the head gasket, so yes, the crankshaft and connecting rods would be included, but not the heads or manifolds.
I’m aware of what a short block is, but per a cursory search, I don’t think this is that.
Ok, I figured for sure you would know what a short block is. After you mentioned that you believe a short engine is different I too found some instances of people saying its the short block minus the crank and rods. I wasn’t aware that was an option, thanks for the insight.
Isn’t that…just a block?
Why would they need a block, when it’s likely the bearings have seized to the crank? Boring the cylinders and line boring the mains could be needed. Of course if the cylinder bores were the special, electro discharged silicon rich surface, that might be a bit more. ????
Id look for an engine out of a wrecked M3 (there’s bound to be a few idjets who anre dumber than David’s brother) and have it refreshed and slam it in there.
I honestly have no clue how BMW defines it :/
what was he thinking leaving it for months? I would have taken it right away (and to a independant shop)
That it was too much to deal with at that point and time?
It’s not like it was going to get any worse by just sitting there, so what’s the reason for you prioritizing doing it right away?
Taking it in “right away” implies that you are in the financial position, family situation, and headspace to deal with it and make a decision right away.
There are alot of problems in life requiring time, money, and energy; sometimes fixing a broken car is not the priority.
yeah I get that, but an M3 personally I’d be sweating bullets to know what was wrong! lol
And then you are sweating bullets figuring how to pay for it. Sweat is sweat
Send it to Dave’s Auto Center on YouTube so we can all watch them rebuild it.
edit to add: I think the dealer is giving him the we-don’t-want-to-deal-with-this price
Came to say the same. The estimate also says the engine is not even available so not only are they giving him the go away price, but they are saying they can’t even do it by the looks of things.
And please exit by way of the showroom…
Or send it to IDoCars so we can see the full extent of the gore
I know Eric did the rod bearings on one of his BMWs without removing the engine. He was able to get access from the bottom of the car. It wasn’t exactly easy, but probably worth at least pulling the oil pan to take a look before doing anything drastic.
N’ah. Send it to Robot Cantina so they can put a 25hp mini excavator diesel in it and see what fuel mileage they can get.
How about 2 of those small equipment diesels side by side in the trunk, each linked to its own wheel?
Or the legendary 420cc BIG BLOCK Hemi.
Thanks for the recommendation. I worked for the manufacturer of their CNC equipment for years, but it’s so hard to find automotive machining content so it’s nice to see everything I worked on in action.
Taking a car in this condition to a dealership is madness.
Yeh that was my thought. When I had my Porsche Cayenne I took it to a very reputable indie shop that had the kind of Porsches that made mine embarrassing to drop off and they still had a substantially lower hourly rate than the dealer. I have mostly DIY’ed on my BMWs but I have to believe it’s a similar disparity.
Legitimately taking any out of warranty car to a dealership is madness.
It super sucks about bro’s car though. Especially as he went through the trouble of finding one that already had the bearings replaced. I know I’d be an awful combination of livid and sad after that.
Sounds like dude drives it at 10/10ths on the daily. He can be sad, but he shouldn’t be mad at anyone but himself!
“He fires it back up, revs the motor to 7,000″
Livin the dream I guess. :shrug:
The bearings are a known failure point, it really only becomes his fault after he repeatedly starts and revs it. Prior to that it might’ve been a quick and relatively painless job at an indie shop.
I’m also a firm believer in the Italian tune-up. Babying the car and keeping it under 3k all the time can be worse than giving it the beans. Anyone that buys a sports car with a 8k redline and then lives in fear of actually using the top half of the tach should probably go buy an F150 or a Corolla.
Yeh if someone lied to him about the bearings that’s a major bummer and I’d be pretty pissed if I was in his shoes. OTOH pics/receipts or it didn’t happen, I’ve been burned a couple time on used cars because I trusted a seller who seemed like a really great guy.
Stupidly everything I’ve read about these motors (as well as the S54 and S65) is that any owner who knows what is good for them will get periodic oil analysis done. When used they just aren’t a good buy for the casual car enthusiast, David’s brother sounds a lot like mine: likes a fast good handling car but likely wouldn’t know a rod bearing from a wheel bearing.
The Cayenne is chock-full of Volkswagen Group engineering. Any dealer that works on Volkswagens and Audis ought to be able to handle a Cayenne.
True! But A: the V8 engine is unique to Porsche B: Nothing I’ve learned about Audi or VW dealers makes me think they’re gonna all that much cheaper, though saving a few bucks is still saving a few bucks.
I will add I only had the car because I bought it off my dad for the tiny amount the Audi dealer offered him for trade-in on it, but part of why he was selling it was because he lives in Montana and there was occasional work on it the VW/Audi dealer wouldn’t do and he wasn’t finding an indie mechanic he liked taking it to (and the nearest Porsche dealer was like 6 hours away)