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you have to deal with BMW problems, and in the case of my brother’s low-mileage M3 whose rod bearings had allegedly been replaced by the previous owner, those problems have become dire.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
It is “Scheiße”. Not “Scheisse”. I have to be strict on this one,
You really know your shit
Sure do. I am German. We are strict with our shit.
You guys just need to work on your sausage, I heard it’s the wurst.
That is so lame it almost hurts. Especially since “wurst” isn’t pronounced anything like “worst”. (It’s “voorst”, more or less.)
But you still get points for the pun.
Of course they do, they inspect it on that little shelf in their toilet bowls for that purpose.
Not really, no. I know what you mean though, and you are not wrong, just out of date. These toilets were once quite common. In my dad’s house (where I grew up), I think there is still one. But it’s only very old bathrooms. Most bathrooms in Germany today have normal toilets without “examination shelves” these days.
Stories like this are why I worry about out of warranty used cars.
Dang, this makes replacing an M96 with a Jake Raby engine not look so expensive.
LS swap?
It’s a high performance, high revving engine which requires some care and maintenance and not being treated like a tractor engine. A Porsche engine is in the same ballpark
“…but, but, but GeRmAn QuAliTy!!1!!”
The price the dealer is asking isn’t the mind boggling part of this story. The real mind boggling part is that after all these years of hot garbage coming from Germany, there are still morons out there who equate Germany with high quality cars. They haven’t made a car worth buying in around 2 decades, and I’m sick of the automotive press pretending otherwise.
Don’t you guys have friends at FCP Euro? Connecticut is spittin’ distance from Boston.
FCP Euro don’t do repairs. They do parts sales.
Engines are parts. And they did the work on their Ski-Classe M-B wagon a few years ago.
They do plenty of their own projects, but they don’t work on clients’ stuff.
The half a tank of premium is worth more than that engine after he revved it.
Fucking hell, that was painful to listen to.
Please tell Ian that he needs to call Marc at German Performance Service in Allston. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Bring that rig in, because Marc and his crew are the best in the business. He’s probably forgotten more about BMW engines coming from Turner Motorsports than anyone will ever know. If it can be fixed, he’s the man to fix it.
Yup. EV battery replacements are so much more expensive than an engine replacement….
I’m not too excited by the dealer estimate; I would expect that or more. What does raise my eyebrows a bit though is that they want $52 EACH for torx bolts. I get that specialized fasteners aren’t cheap, but I still think $10 each would be far more reasonable.
Yeah that and the 22 dollar nuts
Making curious rod knock sounds, hey, let’s rev it to 7k in neutral!
The more I read what The Autopian writers do to their cars the more I realize that everything I own is so reliable because I’m not an idiot.
He’s not an Autopian writer, he’s an Autopian writer’s brother who lives on the other side of the country.
And his antics are comparable to other writers (except Matt and Griffin who prefer reliable transportation). David himself ruined a block on a Jeep by off-roading it hard and literally putting it away wet with water in the engine.
I had to stop the video when he started to wind it up past 4k. That was about all of the pain/third party embarrassment I could endure. Literal butt clenching there, knowing that the engine sounded that bad and yet he was going to torture test it anyway.
Who knows, it might have been salvageable for rebuild had he babied it the short distance home, shut it down, and had it towed, but it sure doesn’t sound like it now. My mother was not a mechanical person, but she knew it was serious when the old Plymouth Voyager started knocking. It’s a pretty distinctly “not right, sounds serious” noise.
Das engine had information Ve needed!!
Textbook FAFO
The engine was run hard with bad bearings and probably needs new heads too, not just the short block.
Time to call the junk yard IMO.
The guy in the Miata with the Ferrari engine article needs to buy this car and throw a Ferrari engine in it.
I think you have that the wrong way. The BMW M3 now needs a Miata engine. lol
Ok fine, I’ll take that too
It’s the Bimmer dream. So similar to a fever dream.
Unfortunate and unexpected thermal event?
Since when is ‘replacing rod bearings’ an acceptable maintenance item for a very low mileage engine?
Outside of a race motor, rod bearings should last the life of the engine.
Then again, if you’re savvy enough to know what rod bearings are and bought a car that apparently needs them as routine maintenance items, you probably know you are entering a world of pain.
If you like the red flag parade, by all means, enjoy.
The S65 and S85 engines came with inadequate rod bearings from the factory, and required preventative replacement at anything north of 30k miles.
Any used car buy with these two engines, bought at any mileage, would have them replaced as a CYA procedure if the maintenance history is not clear.
The updated ones and aftermarket ones are supposedly ok, but people still replace them before 100k miles.
Surprisingly enough, replacing them is relatively straightforward and doesn’t require dropping the engine. With no AWD, the usual nightmare of the front axles going through a tunnel in the oil pan is avoided.
It’s still not cheap or short, but it’s straightforward.
Rod bearings as preventative maintenance are par for the course for certain M engines. The S54B32 in the E46 M3 was generally good for about 60-80k plus/minus on a set. They’re narrow and routinely see north of 7K with very high piston speeds. It’s the cost of owning an M car. The S65 and S85 were subject to the same thing. Doing a replacement with the engine in-situ took me a weekend of taking my time, not a big deal. My car was on its 3rd set (dealer did the first set under a service action at 47K) when I sold it with 170K on it.
German engineering superiority is an absolute joke. If I’m going to deal with huge expenses from shoddy engineering, I’d at least buy something Italian and get some personality and usually much better looks for the annoyance.
There’s a quote I remember from the VW Vortex Car Lounge days to the effect of, “There was a time when German cars were the best in the world. That is no longer the case”.
I like that understated phrasing.
We all have “those exes” who are now married to someone else, it takes all kinds…
SWG says, “My Gossin sense is tingling. Turn off the phones!”
These engines are not an easy rebuild. You need special tooling to deal with alusil block, there are no cylinder liners. Its something not everyone is going to have on hand and if they don’t have the tooling they probably shouldn’t bother trying to rebuild one. Go over to M359restorations YouTube channel and observe the madness. The rod bearings should not be replaced with the OEM shell, the standard procedure is to use Clevites or BE bearings that have a bit more clearance than the OEM stuff. If the OEM bearing are used the installation procedure needs to be followed perfectly or the bearings can end up wearing our prematurely. It’s also standard procedure to have an oil analysis done every or every other oil change so you can potentially catch the rod bearings before they fail spectacularly and seize the engine.
This! If his brother finds a shop crazy and skilled enough to machine and rebuild the original motor there NEEDS to be a deep dive article on the shop and the process because it is so incredibly rare there is a shop that can do that type of work these days.
Unload. To someone that knows what they’re doing. Rinse repeat if you have the wherewithal, or go a different direction if you can’t afford a repeat. Cherish the memories. I bet they were worth it. These are really special machines.
This is why I stick to inline 6 BMWs now.
Also @David, Boston doesn’t seem that far from Bedford Hills, NY – have him call Bimmers Only, they are not cheap, but they know what they are doing and might be able to chime in on what’s needed.
“You need an engine. That’ll be $20.”
I’m in like $3000 in parts to build a 2.0L bottom end for my VW pickup for a 10hp gain and I’ve dismissed it as an exercise in cash destruction
Hoping he finds a solution that suites him!
I don’t take too much offense to dealer service departments but a factory assembly is superior from a WC standpoint. Rework can be costly
Water Closet?
I’m thinking the Q and the W are a bit close to each other on the keyboard…
Bingo! But I do poop a lot
And, once more, the subject of poop comes up again. 🙂
Working Class?
Considering that over a decade ago my local BMW dealer wanted $80 for a fog light bulb on my basic-ass 525i, the numbers presented in this article for an engine replacement do not surprise me in the least.
I second Colin Buckhurst’s suggestion to get SWG involved!
I wonder how much the replacement parts higher cost was due to import tariffs?
But this article did make me happy to see a 2-door BMW 3-series.
I also chuckled at the comment below about BMW = Bring More Wallet. 🙂
It cost nothing, on account that none of this will be freshly imported.
You can clearly see that the “Short Engine” part entry on the quote states “part cancelled, no longer available“, which means either that the dealership has one in stock (yeah, right), knows where to get one already in stock (well, ok), or – cough cough – that the quote was needed for the sake of human knowledge.
Owning a BMW is “investing” in the Capital Depreciation Fund. I have spent more in parts and registration than overpriced California gasoline over the course of 80K miles.
Or, Break My Wallet,
After repairs it’s Bitch Moan & Whine.