Quote:
Originally Posted by NickyC
Made me lol. 
Also, I'm not now nor ever buying the line about the rod bearings on the S54 being "maintenance" items. It was shitty design plain and simple, and nowhere in the owner's manual or anything else with "BMW" on it does it say to change the damned things every 50k miles. |
It's not what bmw says, its what specialists say. In europe at least, where theres a lot of experience with this line of engines as we also had the s50 since the early 90's that is pretty much akin to the s54.
Changing out the rodbearings is about $300-400 in parts and about a day's labor, so say $1200 in total (dont know what's an acceptable rate for an indie us mechanic but I think $100/hour is fair). So doing that every 50k miles, that totals the service costs for that at less than 2,5ct/mile.
I think thats an acceptable amount for an 100hp/liter NA engine (and a healty 114Nm/liter at under 5k revs) that came to market in '99 (or if looked at the s50 in '95). unless you're very cheap ofcourse but then a BMW M is never a good choice because BMW M parts are expensive in general.
If you wanted something to rival that kind of NA specific output at the time from another brand, you'd have to settle with ferrari to put it into perspective. You think those engines are more reliable and cheaper to maintain at those mileages?