Highest mileage Nikasil engine?

Phillip wrote: Do you think its just a matter of time?

Phillip

Through the experiences I read about on the board and elsewhere, it does not seem that its inevitable.  Whether its luck or something else that a particular car avoids it, I don't know.

I'm like you, my car gets serviced according to the lights and I don't do intermediate oil changes, but I do keep a close eye on the dipstick.  In my case the level virtually doesn't budge between services and has never needed to be topped up (I've put 40k or so on mine in 2 years).  If oil consumption is the symptom of a bad engine, then it seems that mine is fine.

The only precaution I take is to make sure I buy reputable brands of fuel.

have a look at this about someone having to get a new engine at 160k because of the nikasil block

http://www.e36coupe.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25577&hi ghlight=

the car has not been to a main dealer since 92k

does not mean that its not been serviced else where

mines has done 124344     as of today      ....of on a bizness trip so i bet you will see me stranded on the m62 at about 3 pm today  ....so if you see a silver 98 323 on the road side .please dont stop by and tell me      i told you so    lol

untill the day comes     .but mine has nikasil block but i only run it on optimax ..fingers crossed chaps

Paul

I agree with you to a point.  In the early years of the problem, many of the engine failures were happening at fairly low mileages, presumably when the quality of fuel was still an issue. 

My concern is that in this poll, admittedly based on a very small sample, is showing the highest directly owned mileage as 130k (I've discounted Del64's report only because its a secondhand report rather than a direct owners experience).

Over the past 6 months or so on this forum there have been a number of reports of engines letting go in recent times in the 70-100k mile ranges.  I have no doubt that a lot of the damage to these engines occurred in the earlier years, but as far as the current owners are concerned, these are still premature failures versus expectations for this brand.  Also, how many owners ran their engines out of oil, because they weren't expecting a consumption rate of a couple of litres every thousand miles or so and replaced their engines assuming the problem was down to their own carelessness and were never aware of how common the issue is?

If an e30 with an m20 engine let go at these mileages owners would be shocked and the number that are around with 150k+ miles is astonishing.  Admittedly, these have their own special issues with cooling and resultant head gasket issues.

To your point on motorcycles and other engines using nikasil (including Jaguar on their V8's up to 00 or so and Porsche) and the fact that this doesn't seem to be as big an issue for them, maybe it points to something that BMW have long denied, that is that there was a fundamental weakness in their implementation of this technology?