535i Andrew

Yes, let us know how you get on.

When my E60 went into the dealers for one of its recalls, I was told quite bluntly," its not a recall Sir, its a Quality Enhancement". Forking well sounded like a recall to me! One was for lose of servo assistance on the brakes and t'other was battery cable related which was a fire risk. That's a safety recall in my book. Dealers/manufacturers don't like the word recall as it implies your safety is at risk so they use less alarming terminology such as "Quality Enhancement". Aye right!

Exactly, its not a great situation to be in.

When mine was in getting its MOT I asked for a print out of the data from the key, really just to check the service reset of the brake fluid I had just done had worked properly. I noticed that there is a column called "Service Counter". Is this just simply an indication of number of its next service for that item? Brake fluid on mine for example was done in Dec 2015, Dec 2017 and then Jan 2020, so the next service will be the fourth service. Same for the brakes, both front and rear axles have had one set of new pads, therefore next time it will be the 2nd service. Oil was done once before I bought it and I've had it down twice at BMW since so next time will be the fourth change. While I may have an indicated 68,351 miles left on the rear pads, the discs won't last that long. Also interesting to note there appears to be a time interval applied to the brake service too. Better start saving up for the big service due in October!

Try this https://www.newtis.info/tisv2/a/en/f10-535i-lim_201301/repair-manuals/64-heating-air-conditioning/64-11-heater-controls/B9t4cICB Use your own chassis number (last 7 digits into TIS) to see if its the same, which I would assume so.

Don't go back to who ever fitted your brake pads. Sounds like they should never have fitted them in the first place without changing the discs if you are now being told only 4 months later the discs are done. They've essentially cost you a new set of pads. There are two thicknesses for the discs, one at which is the limit for new pads being fitted and one when the disc itself is scrap. Usually its about 1.6mm of wear on the disc for new pads and then 2.4mm of disc wear before the disc is scraped.

Except when its the showroom tax. Any decent G30 will be over £40k list price and the showroom tax kicks in at that amount and firmly kicks you (and then someone like me who buys it a 3 years old for half the list price) in the nuts for the first 5 years.

It's Walnut shell blasting, not beans. The carbon build up can be an issue on newer cars that have much tighter EGR systems which reintroduce nasties from the engine instead of letting them go out the exhaust tail pipe. Petrol engines don't have the washing effect from fuel over the inlet valves in the change from port injection to direct injection so they suffer carbon build up around the inlet valves too. BMW offer it as do a few other companies, google it to find someone near you. I think a few 530d owners on here have had it done. There is also Terraclean which claims to remove nasties from the fuel system too. Again they have agents around the country that do it.

I would agree with that. However mine shows the same part diagram but the reality is very different and the flap valve I pulled out of my scuttles didn't have this pipe. The white pipe on mine was very much fixed to something above, the only thing above the flap valve is the heater/blower unit, which is why I think its from there. The flap valve on mine did have a formed hole where the white pipe could pass thru and where the rubber end of the L shaped pipe Sean has could connect to if its not from the heater. What age is your car @Sean20? We know some newer cars still have the white pipe but others don't and we know ones that have the white pipe don't have any differences to the heater/blower unit.

No mine was full of water. I could see it peering down in the gap by the hinge, and it started to dribble out a bolt hole indicating that I had water well above the level of the rubber flap valve It drains into the scuttle from the windscreen. To sort it properly you need to take the wheel arch liner off. Basic tool kit is all that's needed.

Thanks for that. I have run Dunlop 3D Winters an I'm now on ContiWinter Contacts. I've noticed the Contis are definitely not as good as the Dunlops were and I'll certainly not go back to the Contis. I'm really squirming for grip at the moment with the Contis if the road surface is damp/greasy at temps of 8 deg C. I've still a reasonable amount of tread left too, 5.1mm according to the MOT health check it got on Monday. You are running the same size of winters as me, I'll look into the Goodyears.

These things are a nightmare as it could be anything and it really needs its fault codes read propably as soon as possible after it fails to start. That might give an indication of what's going wrong. If it's left after a non starting incident, it's not unknown for codes to disappear from the memory if they don't reappear again between the event and the codes being read at a later date.

@Sean20, that pipe is a drain from your heater/blower unit which is located above the scuttle drain on the nearside of the car. Matthews F11 had that pipe (that drains into the yellow grommet plenum) but very few others have it. It allows any moisture from the heater to drain out form the casing. On most other cars the white pipe drains vertically from the heater/blower unit thru a flap valve (which also blocks up) in the bottom pannel of the nearside scuttle drain. Read the post below which has pics of the white pipe and the flap valve. As that pipe is now missing from the heater/blower unit in your car, ideally you want to put it back but that would mean removing the heater/blower unit to do so. At the very least I would recommend you clean out that scuttle drain and flap valve as if water rises up in that scuttle pan as it did in mine which you can see from the post above, there is a risk that water may get into the heater/blower unit. No one has a definitive answer why some heater/blower units drain vertically and why some drain via the pipe into the yellow grommet plenum.

^Thats not good. The recalls letter I had on my E60 didn't have big bold red text like that. They must be bricking it as they know the replacements still had issues.

Good result and thanks for sharing the fix.