Service book advice - help

[Pete-r]

Morning all.

I'm looking for opinion on two Z4Ms I've been looking at.

Once has a service book which is laid out like this (seems specific to an M car):

The other one has a service book which looks like this instead:

The second car is the one I prefer but before I commit would this put any of you off, or be seen as a serious concern etc? Could I buy the other style book and get it completed? I don't want a labelled "replacement" book if that makes sense.

 

[srhutch]

The second one appears to be the newer style of book to coincide with the newer form of condition based servicing.

Perhaps the book was lost and recreated. Would need to see what has been recorded in it and them get confirmation from the relevant dealers to be sure. It's not hard to forge a service history.

 

[Pete-r]

All the info and receipts are available so I could confirm but would that book put you off the car if it's all been done?

 

[MrPT]

All the info and receipts are available so I could confirm but would that book put you off the car if it's all been done?

Not as much as the actual history or the condition of the car.

It's tempting to think that a truly passionate owner would never lose the service book, but everybody loses things from time-to-time, and it's perfectly possibly that the car has been well looked after.

Would be worth grilling the garage about, nevertheless. If it's actually been serviced in accordance with the wrong instructions then walk away or be prepared to ask for a few grand off!

 

[Mr Tidy]

All the info and receipts are available so I could confirm but would that book put you off the car if it's all been done?

If I had all the receipts the state of the book wouldn't bother me - in fact I'd rather have the receipts than the book as they are usually much more detailed! :lol:

Only yesterday I was looking into the history of my 2006 E91 and it seems that it had a full service by a main agent that took it in as a P/Ex in 2013 but they never stamped the book! Then it was serviced by another BMW dealer in December 2016, but again there is no stamp - but if I take the book to them they'll stamp it up - result!

So it turns out it has full main agent service history to 130K miles.

Barons and Sytner very helpful with detailed records, but although Vines were helpful they don't seem to keep the same level of detail.

 

[Pete-r]

Thanks for the replies so far, this is where I am at present.

The book is stamped for the run in service then on the servicing is 4x bmw main dealer and 3x well known specialist so I can check the history tomorrow with a few phone calls hopefully.

Annoyingly two of the services at the same dealer are entered into the book in the wrong order, so this must be a replacement and they have put two services in together and messed up. So reading from top to bottom on the same page they go something like 31k, 28k, 33k then carry on.

I have seen the invoices for the two insp 2 services at 33k and 54k (which is very recent) but not the inspection 1s or oil services.

So I guess my questions are:

Should alarm bells be ringing?
Can I get another oem book and send it around for correct stamping?
Would the bmw dealers be able to confirm the inspection 1 info over the phone if they can't regenerate the job sheet?

I'm probably coming across over cautious but I don't want to be caught out.

 

[Mr Tidy]

Would the bmw dealers be able to confirm the inspection 1 info over the phone if they can't regenerate the job sheet?

Well my experience suggests they can usually confirm the date and mileage that things were done, but not anything they recorded at the time.

If I was planning to get another book I'd rather visit the dealers in person and get it stamped while I was there - sending it around sounds like a recipe for it going missing.

 

[srhutch]

I have one stamp missing, but do have the receipt. I won’t send the book to Leeds though in case something happens to it’s as mr tidy suggests.

It’s also possible that the service book was incorrect from day one, some dealer idiot picked up the wr9ng book.

As has been said before, trying to find one of these cars with 100% correct service history is near impossible. Even some dealers don’t understand the correct service schedule these days.

Running in service is regarded as very important. Inspection services should be done around 25k intervals alternating between 1 and 2. In between those are oil services, and it must have an oil service around 13k or every 2 years if mileage isn’t reached.

Inspection schedules are done on mileage only though, not time.

As a result I have 2 oil services between each inspection instead of 1 because I’m not doing the mileage, but it still fits the bmw service schedule.

 

[rally-chris]

You can ring up BMW, or pay £20 to a guy on eBay, to give you a list of dates and mileages that the car went into a main dealer for work, and the name of the dealer concerned. You’ll then need to phone each dealer in turn to get them to look up what work was carried out on each visit. Due to GDPR nanny state regulations don’t expect to be able to get hold of copies of any invoices though.

Chris