Recording DIY Service

Andy,

Only my opinion but I dont see any problems with this method of recording your own services. As long as you keep the original receipts for the items purchased they are all the proof you need.

Back in the day I had an E30 325i which I kept for about 5 years. Everything which I bought for the car the receipt was kept and filed away in date order. When the time came to sell the car the bloke was well impressed and said the recepits told him alot more about the way the car was kept rather than just a stamp in the book. I kept to this method all the way through with all my other cars.

The same thing goes for the dealers, they can say what they want, but at the end of the day if you keep the receipts no one can questions you wheather the works been done. Just another point to think about, the money you spend on servicing the car from the dealers just to maintain FBMWSH will not be returned when you sell the car. If your not looking to sell it, and your gonna keep it for the forseable, as long as you know the works been done, why pay extra just for the stamp.

As you are well aware the service techs in the back of the main dealers are just young boys out of school and dont have a scooby. The care your gonna take doing the work, no dealer will treat your pride and joy the same way. There too busy with throughput and not quality.

Hope this helps (sorry for the long opinion)

Imran.     

Thanks for the replies guys.

thepits wrote: p.s. Andrew Rolland wrote: to change the brake fluid you need to strip out the off side pollen filter.  WTF?

Yes, serioulsy! 

In the engine bay (should be a piccie in this thread, I can't see them on the work pc) the pollen filter is above the brake fluid reservior.  I need to take the cover off, remove the filter element then remove the tray under the filter which sits over the reservior and the strut brace. 

That's why BMW wanted about £80 when I enquired two years ago.  There is a reasonable amount of stripping out to do before you even get to turn a nipple  Brake fluid from BMW is about £7!

It will still go to BMW for oil serivces and vehicle checks (the E60's equivalent of the Inspection type services) thus get a rubber inky stamp but I won't have a BMW stamp against things like pollen filters and brake fluid.  But yes I will have a receipt for these items.

Don't get me wrong the car will not be going without servicing at the times when it tells me it wants a service.

But as mentioned earlier, the age of my car by the time I ever do decide to trade it in, it will not matter to the price if it has FBMWSH.  It's already nearly 6 years old so no BMW dealer would want it anyway esp given the current diseased state of mind regarding proper (big engined, more cylinders than number of gears, thirsty, high road taxed, high CO2) cars. 

I don't care, it's my baby so I'll just go for it.  Cheers guys.

Quite fancy doing the spark plugs myself but I'm always scared about stripping a thread or worse snapping a plug when I've changed them int he past as it's a head off job to sort....They are located deep down inside the bowels of the head.  I need to take all the covers off the engine plus the stuff mentioned earlier that I need to take off to get to the brake fluid reservoir so that you can get a tool into the rear most cylinders on each bank.  Again that's what puts the price up.  Plugs are about £6 each I think, but its getting to them.  Atleast they last about 60,000 miles or thereabouts by the time my car decides it wants them changing.

Aye a ?35d would be atleast a slightly more acceptable way of going over to the darkside.  Twin turbos spinnng at different parts of the rev range means that you do indeed get scary power/torque figures with low low mpg figures.  The 535d comes only in auto, with flappy paddles too!

But it will still sound like a Massey Fergusson while sat idling at the traffic lights. 

And potentially you have two turbo's to replace if it ever goes wrong in the way that the E39 530d's went but I have yet to hear of an E60 single or twin turbo'd model that has had any sign of turbo failure

I can't do this at work but go on to youtube and search for "BMW 535d v 545i" and you will get Jezza's review of the 535d.  If it gets to technical for you he puts fluffy kittens up for you to watch instead.

I think for me it would have to be a V8 diesel........to get me to go over to the fuel of the devil.

Although I would love a petrol supercharged V8 as my next car, purely for the sound....drool....slobber....dream on.....

jetsetwilly2000 wrote: I do love my V8 but at some point I'm going to have to give in and get an eco-car

Aye fair enough but a 525i etc would be more economical compared to a 4 litre+ V8 BMW, you don't have to go to the darkside just to be economical. It's all about scale...

Can't convince myself that doing diy stuff on an oil burning engine will be as easy as working on a petrol engine as there will be more stuff in the way like all the turbo air cooling stuff.  Obviously brakes and suspension stuff will be easy enough.

Keep the E34 going and save the planet.  We have just had the coldest winter in 30 years so we obviously aren't warming up the planet by driving V8's

What did you think of the 520d that you said you have driven?

Andrew Rolland wrote: It will still go to BMW for oil serivces and vehicle checks (the E60's equivalent of the Inspection type services) thus get a rubber inky stamp but I won't have a BMW stamp against things like pollen filters and brake fluid.  But yes I will have a receipt for these items.

I think this is a realistic approach, particularly with a V8, especially now its out of warranty.  One reason they tend to end up at buttons prices as they grow older is because the trail often goes cold on how its been serviced and cared for.  You might take a chance on something less complex with a few gaps in the history but the costs of putting a neglected V8 right could be ruinous to a future owner so they'll bid low, or not at all, for anything that has holes in the history.  Receipts for minor or routine parts, especially dealer receipts are quite acceptable to me as history.

As a buyer of older cars, I get a lot of comfort from a car that has a stack of dealer stamps, not especially because of the quality of the dealer work but because the owner didn't try to run the car on a shoestring and cut corners.  Having said that, I'd be quite happy to see occassional maintenance supported by parts receipts rather than dealer invoices.

The only problem, as a buyer, with specialist stamps in the book is that if the car isn't local to me (and typically the cars I buy aren't) then I won't necessarily be familiar with all the specialists around the UK and Ireland and therefore can't be quite as confident of the standard of their work (not running down specialist at all, all my servicing is done with one these days). 

Dealers do have a set of standards that they are supposed to conform to (I know there are plenty of cases where they fall miserably short) so by and large you tend to know what you are getting if the car has been serviced by a franchised dealer.

The e39 I bought in late January had 41k and a full set of stamps from the main dealers that sold it to the previous owners.  The car isn't entirely faultless but the issues are basic wear and tear items, mostly age related rather tham usage and mostly obvious on inspection, but its clear its been well looked after.  As said above, its the fact that the owners didn't cut corners and the dealers conformed to standards that meant I was happy to pay a bit over the odds for a car that I can rack up lots of miles on in the next couple of years (I've increased the mileage by 12.5% already in the past 10 weeks!).

Andrew Rolland wrote: Getting everything from BMW inc a BMW headed invoice will cost me £11.32, might be worth it if I'm going down the road of recording it myself, gives extra evidence/confidence to a potential buyer that it has been done properly.

Agreed.....