mr wilks said:
Bit of a hissy fit response Steve but just to highlight where i am for future reference as you seem to have taken my comments slightly off centre
1) I have said that its very likely the work carried out by some enthusiastic (but untrained) individuals may well be to a better standard than that carried out by some professional
2) Contrary to what you believe & what you have written above i am not "wary of ANY car that has ANYTHING other than a gold plated service history " in fact that couldn,t be further from the truth . I always buy a car on current condition & if the history is flawed factor that into a true figure that i feel happy paying
What i said was if you fast forward a few years + a few owners if i waltzed up to view a prospective M car that the then current owner stated had full history only to find that a few owners back there was a clutch of receipts & a note saying all valve clearances had been checked then at that point ( & this is my own personal stance ) i would look at that car has having "iffy" or incomplete history :?
Now rewind to when you started your own search for a car , i would like to bet that in your top 3 criteria from the off that service history was either 3 , 2 or 1 ?
Whether i write it or i don't DIYing fundamental service requirements like valve clearances will have a detrimental effect at some point in that car,s future whether its regarding price or a potential sale or no sale from a cautious buyer .
Aside from the above i have been following your winter upgrade thread with genuine interest ( in fact on the back of it i ordered a vanos filter + ring service kit for my own car that i hadn't even considered needed doing ) ,
I do genuinely applaud your obvious skills & talent to tackle those tasks yourself but the fact i know my own limitations so therefore never tackle anything mechanical has zero bearing on my comments as to why i think longterm DIYing some tasks will have a negative affect . That is simply my opinion as is yours to do your own work
Best wishes going forward
Yeah fair point, I could have worded it better. Wasn't supposed to be THAT hissy fittish!!!!!
I will stand by what I said though regarding Service History. In a lot of threads you are "wary" or consider things to be a "black mark", and while in some ways you're right, however, as SRHutch has said these are getting more and more into enthusiast territory and so a lot more people will be doing DIY servicing. This is bourne out if you look on cutters, a lot more people are looking after these cars themselves.
When I bought my own car I didn't actually know the Z4M existed, and I didn't have any idea that this forum even existed. Shocking I know. I originally wanted an E46 M3, so all the information I went in armed with had been gleaned from places like the cutters forum.
From a service history point of view, I waned to make sure it had been given its running in service at the correct time, which it had, and had services at the correct intervals.
The servicing was fairly correct, in terms of intervals an the services it has received, except the oil changes between inspections had been done by a non-specialist. Now if you follow the advice on this very forum a lot of the guidance is "Must be BMW or an INDY stamp in the book". Well, I don't agree. Any halfwit, even me, can put the right oil in the right hole, and change and old filter for a new one, so why wouldn't any mechanic not be able to do the same??? As long as you know its been done, which the stamp in the book confirms I don't see why the fact the mechanic wasn't wearing BMW or BMW specialist overalls should make a difference.
The only thing that has come up since buying the car is that the INSP2 came up at about 61k, which you yourself said you'd consider to be a black mark in the cars history. Now while I accept that the servicing may not have been exactly bang on when it should have been, that can be said for most of these cars given the age and we have to, in my mind, be a little more accepting of the fact that people won't always be servicing these exactly when they should. As long as the service hasn't been missed by thousands and thousands of miles, or missed completely it really isn't an issue.
With regards to DIY valve checking, you see a lot of people paying for this to be done but end up with no evidence that it actually has been done. I'm fairly sure we also have anecdotal evidence that some dealers just listen to the engine and decide that the valves don't need checking. When I had my INSP2 done I was given a shim report, but even so how do I know it was actually done??(I have no doubt it was, for the record!). If you check them yourself, and can provide photographic evidence of such along with a report or what you measured each clearance to be, and invoices for the parts used, is that not as good, if not better than having it done by a dealer or an Indy with only a scrap of paper with some numbers and a big bill to show for it?? I know its a bad example but if we look at older cars, some of which are now considered classics, they are generally rebuilt and maintained by the owners (Exotica aside of course), and they don't seem to have a negative impact on the cars value.
With regards to my winter upgrade thread. I'm glad you find it interesting and its got you to have a crack at the vanos filter. Its really satisfying to get the work done, and if you break it down its really just nuts and bolts at the end of the day. You probably have a lot more ability than you realise!!
i'm putting a few things together to give my indy ( qualified BMW master tech ) such as diff , gbox & engine oil & now the vanos filter + drive belts , the car last had ins2 28k ago at 49k but for the £ difference between 1 & 2 i would rather start off from Ins2 & know all the fluids are right