Z4-forum.com

tomscott wrote: So basically if you run the car for longer than 1200 miles, you WEAR THE ENGINE EXCELSSIVELY and the engine "ages" prematurely.

The engine is most vulnerable when new and "as they get higher milage" is all well and good but once they get to 60-70k you may find the engine may be worse with bore scoring etc and essentially the likelihood of a failure is higher. 12k+ for a new engine and labour... just saying

I wouldn't touch one with a bargepole.

"EXCELSSIVELY".....wtf does that mean.

I think it was you who decided a car that had the running in service at 1400 miles wasn't worth buying.
What evidence do you have for the above statement, or are you just spreading misinformation on the back of your own assumptions??

VRSteve wrote:I think it was you who decided a car that had the running in service at 1400 miles wasn't worth buying.
What evidence do you have for the above statement, or are you just spreading misinformation on the back of your own assumptions??

Be fair, Tom's a Porsche fan so he's rightly scared of premature engine failure...

PerryGunn wrote:

VRSteve wrote:I think it was you who decided a car that had the running in service at 1400 miles wasn't worth buying.
What evidence do you have for the above statement, or are you just spreading misinformation on the back of your own assumptions??

Be fair, Tom's a Porsche fan so he's rightly scared of premature engine failure...

That made me chuckle.

I'm still with Tom's basic premise. The longer the running in oil has been left in, past the recommended mileage. The shorter the life of the engine there after. But for all I know that could be 1 mile less or 50k miles less. That's the hard part to calculate.

PerryGunn wrote:

Yorkie Z wrote:So if it had the service at 1199 then that's brilliant. If it was serviced at 1201 you wouldn't touch it with a barge pole!!!

What if the car was serviced at 1150 miles but it was driven by some spoilt rich kid who couldn't give a flying f**k about the 3000rpm limit? I totally agree that correct servicing is important, but it all has +/-tolerance. Perfect history does not make a prefect car.

Precisely, and suppose someone had their running-in service done at 250 miles or 300 miles because they were going on a long trip.... is that worse than having it done at 1500 miles or 1800 miles?

If manufacturers quote 1200 miles, you can be sure that they've allowed a very wide margin for error and someone who's done, say, 2,000 miles before the running-in service will not have done irreparable harm to their engine...

Have to agree with this. What's your acceptance mileage of failure anyway? Is it ok it pops at 80k, 120k 150k? Are all the engines built to exactly the same tolerances no matter how tiny? I would think a slight difference on build would make more difference than another 1k on a running in service.

Bottom line is if it sounds ok, isn't blowing smoke and has a good service record even with the odd discrepancy then that is all you can hope for. As said there's no way of knowing how the cars been treated from new.

Just imo.

Interesting - makes sense to me that there is a tolerance in the bedding in oil being changed. I'm from a generation when most vehicle engines were expected to be run in on the road and one of the most important aspects was not just the mileage that was covered as part of the running in process but also the WAY in which it was done. Simply running an engine at constant revs was said NOT to be the way to run an engine when bedding it in - it was expected that the owner would run at varying revs and loads and that these would be increased over a period of time/miles. I get the logic but think that there are so many variables in this process (short journeys where engine temperature would be lower than longer journeys for example) that a mileage tolerance +/- makes sense.
I've a vested interest in this as I was surprised to see that the initial oil service on my M was late (but well within the +/- mentioned above). I was less concerned when I was told that the M's initial owner was BMW . . . . I'm assuming they would have changed it within spec and tolerance.

There is a tolerance anyway - the "real" distance is 2000 km, which is not 1200 miles

john-e89 wrote:

PerryGunn wrote:

Yorkie Z wrote:So if it had the service at 1199 then that's brilliant. If it was serviced at 1201 you wouldn't touch it with a barge pole!!!

What if the car was serviced at 1150 miles but it was driven by some spoilt rich kid who couldn't give a flying f**k about the 3000rpm limit? I totally agree that correct servicing is important, but it all has +/-tolerance. Perfect history does not make a prefect car.

Precisely, and suppose someone had their running-in service done at 250 miles or 300 miles because they were going on a long trip.... is that worse than having it done at 1500 miles or 1800 miles?

If manufacturers quote 1200 miles, you can be sure that they've allowed a very wide margin for error and someone who's done, say, 2,000 miles before the running-in service will not have done irreparable harm to their engine...

Have to agree with this. What's your acceptance mileage of failure anyway? Is it ok it pops at 80k, 120k 150k? Are all the engines built to exactly the same tolerances no matter how tiny? I would think a slight difference on build would make more difference than another 1k on a running in service.

Bottom line is if it sounds ok, isn't blowing smoke and has a good service record even with the odd discrepancy then that is all you can hope for. As said there's no way of knowing how the cars been treated from new.

Just imo.

This is absolutely my point.

To dismiss a car because the running in service was at 1400 miles is stupid in the extreme. Its probably had no bearing on the engines health and how many other variables can you find that will impact the longevity of the engine but you will never know about.

Ultimately if its done within the BMW tolerance of 1200 +/- 600 then its not an issue.

Sad thing is, and I've said this before, certain idiots spread this misinformation and it makes newcomers very very wary of these cars for no good reason. Its all well and good on a Porsche forum where we all know the engines aren't built properly, but in comparison the S54 is a very reliable old lump.

VRSteve wrote:

tomscott wrote: So basically if you run the car for longer than 1200 miles, you WEAR THE ENGINE EXCELSSIVELY and the engine "ages" prematurely.

The engine is most vulnerable when new and "as they get higher milage" is all well and good but once they get to 60-70k you may find the engine may be worse with bore scoring etc and essentially the likelihood of a failure is higher. 12k+ for a new engine and labour... just saying

I wouldn't touch one with a bargepole.

"EXCELSSIVELY".....wtf does that mean.

I think it was you who decided a car that had the running in service at 1400 miles wasn't worth buying.
What evidence do you have for the above statement, or are you just spreading misinformation on the back of your own assumptions??

Oh god heres the typo police. Sorry ...

The car in question was at 1500 miles and that is 25% over the guidelines so why take the risk? Maybe you should read my other findings of said vehicle.

Im not really bothered what you deem acceptable. I dont think that servicing on time is too much to ask and if anything if the first service isn't hit on time then its not unreasonable to think that there is negligence afterward. If thats something you would take a risk with then fine, I owned an M for 3 years put plenty of miles on it and had no issues probably because it was a decent one a well serviced.

VRSteve wrote:

john-e89 wrote:

PerryGunn wrote: Precisely, and suppose someone had their running-in service done at 250 miles or 300 miles because they were going on a long trip.... is that worse than having it done at 1500 miles or 1800 miles?

If manufacturers quote 1200 miles, you can be sure that they've allowed a very wide margin for error and someone who's done, say, 2,000 miles before the running-in service will not have done irreparable harm to their engine...

Have to agree with this. What's your acceptance mileage of failure anyway? Is it ok it pops at 80k, 120k 150k? Are all the engines built to exactly the same tolerances no matter how tiny? I would think a slight difference on build would make more difference than another 1k on a running in service.

Bottom line is if it sounds ok, isn't blowing smoke and has a good service record even with the odd discrepancy then that is all you can hope for. As said there's no way of knowing how the cars been treated from new.

Just imo.

This is absolutely my point.

To dismiss a car because the running in service was at 1400 miles is stupid in the extreme. Its probably had no bearing on the engines health and how many other variables can you find that will impact the longevity of the engine but you will never know about.

Ultimately if its done within the BMW tolerance of 1200 +/- 600 then its not an issue.

Sad thing is, and I've said this before, certain idiots spread this misinformation and it makes newcomers very very wary of these cars for no good reason. Its all well and good on a Porsche forum where we all know the engines aren't built properly, but in comparison the S54 is a very reliable old lump.

Yes I am an idiot and have no idea

Im sure your contributions across the forum are very astute.

Well that was a good laugh for a Monday evening. Forum hyperbole and conjecture at it's best.

I went down to the M factory a couple of years ago with a friend who has a big composite technology firm and he had a meeting with some of the bosses etc. I wondered around asked some of the engineers this exact question having owned a few M cars in the family some from new.

They leave the factory with fully synthetic oil. Not Joe Gibbs running oil, mineral oil etc. The M engines are hand assembled but factory line built. These are not 50k honed bore blueprinted engines as much as the die hard M fans would like to think.

The reason they ask for a 1200 mile running in is because they know a lot of users won't follow the instructions of varying engine speeds, not accelerating harshly etc during the running in period. This causes heat build up and although the tolerances are pretty good as most factory built engines are these days there may still be expansion causing increased wear in the early periods. The 1200 mile service is purely precautionary due to the lowest common denominator who won't follow the guidelines. If you follow the guidelines and the engine beds in well there is no need for an oil change but for the manufacturer it's simple precautionary guidance.

Also random engines are picked from the factory and run on an engine dyno to pretty much full engine speed but not for enough time to cause full thermal expansion so something like 1/5 M engines will have been ragged before you've even driven your new M car

Babw wrote:
Also random engines are picked from the factory and run on an engine dyno to pretty much full engine speed but not for enough time to cause full thermal expansion so something like 1/5 M engines will have been ragged before you've even driven your new M car

Ooooooh fastforward to forum ///Meltdown
Wormcan well & truly blown open

mr wilks wrote:

Babw wrote:
Also random engines are picked from the factory and run on an engine dyno to pretty much full engine speed but not for enough time to cause full thermal expansion so something like 1/5 M engines will have been ragged before you've even driven your new M car

Ooooooh fastforward to forum ///Meltdown
Wormcan well & truly blown open

Truth hurts as they say.

I emailed my engine builder when I was reading this earlier, I'm speccing a 950-1000bhp very cool and expensive build on my R35 GTR. It will be run in on Joe Gibbs running in oil for 200-300 miles and he would never ever let the customer do the running in!

Just checked mine - it was done at 1,172 miles, phew! I can now sleep soundly.

Babw wrote:Well that was a good laugh for a Monday evening. Forum hyperbole and conjecture at it's best.

I went down to the M factory a couple of years ago with a friend who has a big composite technology firm and he had a meeting with some of the bosses etc. I wondered around asked some of the engineers this exact question having owned a few M cars in the family some from new.

They leave the factory with fully synthetic oil. Not Joe Gibbs running oil, mineral oil etc. The M engines are hand assembled but factory line built. These are not 50k honed bore blueprinted engines as much as the die hard M fans would like to think.

The reason they ask for a 1200 mile running in is because they know a lot of users won't follow the instructions of varying engine speeds, not accelerating harshly etc during the running in period. This causes heat build up and although the tolerances are pretty good as most factory built engines are these days there may still be expansion causing increased wear in the early periods. The 1200 mile service is purely precautionary due to the lowest common denominator who won't follow the guidelines. If you follow the guidelines and the engine beds in well there is no need for an oil change but for the manufacturer it's simple precautionary guidance.

Also random engines are picked from the factory and run on an engine dyno to pretty much full engine speed but not for enough time to cause full thermal expansion so something like 1/5 M engines will have been ragged before you've even driven your new M car

Sanity at last

ocrx8 wrote:Just checked mine - it was done at 1,172 miles, phew! I can now sleep soundly.

Maybe, but was your car one of the 1 in 5 that's been larraped on the factory floor?
Rob