The 10 comandments of BMW

[einstein57]

Someone who says BMW is the king of maintenance whores bust be allergic to cats.

[808BMW]

e30s need working on a lot because theyre all 20+ years old and when you buy one for 1500 bucks like most people, there's a lot of lost maintenance to catch up on. unless you do it all at once, its gonna catch up to you one by one. dont bash the car! they're far from complex.

Bingo, my car's PO was an idiot and let everything go, once I went through a couple times and just did the maintenance that had been skipped it's whole life, it's never given me a problem.

I've worked on a lot of my friends cars of the same era (or even newer) and I'd trust my e30 over most of em any day.
7 years and I've never been left stranded. Good enough for me.

[3bvert]

wheres number 8?

hey your right
skips #8
page 4-06 has commandment 7 and 9
skips 8

since those 2 deal with fuel economy maybe they left that out for future use
such as

commandment 8:
install cop kits and Mark D chips wiht a mega-flow

[3bvert]

Cool. Could you scan the pages?

Ill see if I can this wekend when I have more time

by the way
its the owners/service manual dated 1984 for a 325

[northwestm3]

Someone who says BMW is the king of maintenance whores bust be allergic to cats.

I actually am allergic to cats. My record for fucked up cars was an E39 M5 with 27 fault codes when I hooked it up to my computer. I just rebuilt a head on E30 last week. I have had to fix and help other people fix more things than I can count on E46's. I work on a ton of cars of all ages and makes and I see more BMW's needing something fixed than any other type of car. Sure if you only have had BMW's or are fairly new into working cars or just not aware of what is wrong with your car because you think it runs fine then I could see how you think it is a reliable well engineered car. The engines and suspension design on BMW's is among the best, the rest is far from it.

[Aptyp]

those 10 commandments are retarded. What happened to "Thou shalt"??? He made 10 statements that no one gave a shit about in the 80's and now they've resurfaced to not mean a shit today. Thanks.

[northwestm3]

e30s need working on a lot because theyre all 20+ years old and when you buy one for 1500 bucks like most people, there's a lot of lost maintenance to catch up on. unless you do it all at once, its gonna catch up to you one by one. dont bash the car! they're far from complex. my 1987 celica gt-s is more complex in almost every way. not to mention far harder to work on and far less information for.

I had a 81 Chevy K5 Blazer that I got for $2,200 and had 280k miles on the original engine before I destoyed it off-roading. In the 5 years I owned it I never had to fix a single thing besides general maintenance and the occassional broken part from abuse 4 wheeling.

I have had my E46 M3 2 years and have had a failed coil, failed TPS, failed cats, failed EGT sensor, leaking rear diff seal, worn out belt tensioner, and broken auto leveling headlight sensor. Currently has a vacuum leak I am trying to find. This car has 125k miles and has been extremely well maintained and from what I have read and experienced this level of fixing things is average. Sensible engineering

Now add the E46 M3's common history of failed subframes, spun main bearing on 02 models, SMG pump failures, and vanos failures on 03+ cars and you have a super reliable car

The E30 has a good size laundry list of common failures as well. Problem is most owners don't even know shit is wrong with their car. I have been a mechanic for 26 years and thoroughly go over my cars constantly. I bet I can find at least a dozen things broken on your car that runs great.

[RickSloan]

what your comparing is apples and oranges and a few things on your list could be ignored if you werent concerned with driveing your luxury sports car. The 81 prob had issues that your ignored cause it was still beatable as a truck. Your fight for saying that these cars are mainence whores is frustrating esp since you drive an e46 not an e30 they are totally different animals

[northwestm3]

what your comparing is apples and oranges and a few things on your list could be ignored if you werent concerned with driveing your luxury sports car. The 81 prob had issues that your ignored cause it was still beatable as a truck. Your fight for saying that these cars are mainence whores is frustrating esp since you drive an e46 not an e30 they are totally different animals

I have like 20+ friends with E30's including the owner of this site I know the E30 just fine and work on them all the time. There were 4 E30's in my driveway last night. They break quite often.