Simply put, the car was working one minute, stopped to go the bank, yellow EML came on when I went to start the car so switched ignition off & on and it went. Started car, car had lumpy idle indicating a misfire so switched off again and dash showed same yellow EML.
Called BMW Assist who told me I'd have to drive it to the nearest dealer as it was "only a yellow EML". Refused and eventually got them to send a patrol "to humour me".
Patrol spent 45 minutes starting/revving/stopping/resetting the car to no avail, and again repeated the it was "safe" to drive to the dealer. I refused, they relented and I got flat-bedded to the local dealer.
Dealer couldn't look at it immediately so was given a hire car for 4 days (seems weekends don't count towards the 48 hour limit).
Got a call on Tuesday to say that they couldn't find any problem initially and would have to start a tear down to investigate further. This was when I was told that I'd have to put a leave a CC authorisation with them in case the fault was traced back to something I'd done that was not covered under warranty. I had no problem with this as I'd not done anything to cause this.
A couple of days later I was given a list of everything they'd supposedly found and the news that it wasn't going to be a warranty claim, but they'd "see what they could do".
After being handed a potential bill of £23k for the engine, initial diagnostics and labour here & there, I was mightily relieved to receive a call to state they it had been sorted out and BMW UK would be footing the bill as a goodwill gesture. However I'd have to foot the bill for the initial diagnostics, which at the time I was more than happy to do.
However, as time has gone on and I've tried to get a clear answer from them about what actually caused the failure, I've been given nothing but the runaround, getting different answer depending who I speak to, and BMW UK have no record of my car being in that dealership at all, neither do they have any record of authorising a new engine via goodwill or warranty.
The first report was that the intake valves were stuck open and were letting the explosion from the cylinder into the intake and had damaged it beyond repair.
The second report was that a valve shim was missing and had scored the camshaft - 'scoring' turned out to be an oily fingerprint.
The latest is that some foreign body has entered the engine and bent a valve which has touched a piston and scored the cylinder. They can't tell me what that foreign body is or where it came from, but on that basis they are stating it's not a manufacturing fault and thus not covered by warranty.
The dealership will not return my calls and will not supply me with an invoice for the diagnotic work, nor a job sheet for the engine replacement so that I can add these to my service history come selling time - as there is now a nice gap in my service book due to the last 3 dealers not bothering to stamp it (10,000 oil service, new engine when Insp 1 due, running in service on new engine).
The latter part of this week will be spent driving between these dealer to hopefully resolve some of these issues - pity the car is not big enough to carry a posse larger than 2 people.
I first noticed a few splashes on the ground in my car park space at work, then where I park at home there was a huge patch of oil which is really noticeable with all this rain. Then when I filled it up Saturday morning I noticed the petrol station forecourt was covered in the stuff. I've checked the level and it's marginally above the Min level so I'm pretty sure it's coming out of mine from somewhere 
Liverpool
