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Howard 
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Did I say thaaaat? Joined: 14-October-2002 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 735 |
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 Topic: E61 Toruing commentsPosted: 20-August-2012 at 09:00 |
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I recently returned from the BMW Motorrad meet in Garmisch, where I was working in the BMW Classic tent for three days. All work and no play - 9.00am to 9.00pm.
To save costs I shared a car with a friend who has a 3 year old five series touring. What interested me was the changes to the controls for the indicators and gears. For the last 52 years, almost every car I have driven had an indicator stalk that stayed where you put it, and only returned to the centre position when it automatically cancelled or you did it manually. This one hardly moved, and returned to the centre position when you let go of it. To cancel a turn, you pressed it the other way. 9 times out of 10 this resulted in the other direction being selected. The gear stick was an automatic with a version of Tiptronic. To put the car in gear from park, you have to pull the lever back three times before you reach drive. Each time the stick centers itself so you don't know from looking at it where it is. The tiptronic seemd to work a little better, as it was very similar to my E38 728i. The cruise control was stuck out on a stalk instead of being on the steering wheel, and had a weird sort of display with a needle on the speedometer and a series of lights. After some 300 miles or so I eventually got used to this, but its a backwards step. My friend has had the car from new and has done 14K miles in it. He still has problems with the indicators.so its not just me. One other comment - the altimeter shows the height above sea level in YARDS. Apart from this, the diesel car was comfortable, fairly quiet and returned an average fuel consumption of around 51mpg. Considering the fact that my 2001 728i averages 32mpg on a run such as this, using LPG which is about half the cost of diesel, the mpg would have been the equivalent of 64. Next time we will travel in style at a much lower cost!  |
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UweM3
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Joined: 11-February-2003 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 5445 |
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Posted: 22-August-2012 at 13:31 |
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I bought an E61 520d and share some of your views.
It took me a while too to get used to the indicator stalk. To cancel it you DON'T pull it in the opposite direction, you tap it down in the direction it already flashes! Sort of ON/OFF switch. I actually like the cruise control. If you push the lever forward without going over the "click" it add 1mpg to your speed. If you push it over the click it add 5 mph and the first time it round's your current speed up to the next 5 or 10mph. Also find it very helpful that the little indicator on the outside of the speedo dial show where the cruise speed is set to. Only thing I dislike is the missing water temp gauge. The "red zone" of the rev counter is used to indicate a cold running engine by placing itself at different revs depending on engine temperature. Work s well if everything is working as planned. I found my water temp only to be 72deg C after clicking into the menu on the dash cluster due to a broken coolant thermostat. All started with the heating not working as I would have expected. Apart from this, I really like the car! |
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E61 520d, slow and buzzy but my wallet likes the mpg.....
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Howard
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Did I say thaaaat? Joined: 14-October-2002 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 735 |
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Posted: 22-August-2012 at 20:18 |
Just shows that the owner of the car had not realized this. He never told me. I like the car also. |
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Andrew Rolland
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Go away rain Joined: 19-August-2004 Location: Scotland Status: Offline Points: 6579 |
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Posted: 31-August-2012 at 18:47 |
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What you are describing is just BMW progress.
The indicators have a touch position and a fully on position, like a two stage switch. You can alter the indicator stalk settings via the iDrive. You can have it set to click 3 times with the first touch position(chuffin' annoying and is well turned off in mine) or just have a single click on the first touch position. The auto stick you are describing is the one fitted to facelifted E60/1 chassis. It falls much easier to hand but it is actually a switch rather than a gear lever, the stick doesn't actually move and stay in that position it always returns to the centre postion. If the cars electrical power fails you have a complex task of getting the autobox out of Park and into Neutral to allow the car to move. In my prefacelift E60 the gear lever is just that. No electrical input required to allow it to move other than foot on the brake of course. But the three biggest gripes I have with the E60 over the E39 are the lack of a curry hook in the boot, no boot release switch on the dash and the biggest one, no sodding temp gauge. The most important dial in the car that informs the driver of engine condition is the temp gauge. Mercs don't have temp gauges but then again the Merc handbooks are written along the lines of..... As a Merc driver you needn't concern yourself with what's under the bonnet or how the cars works. All you should do is top up the screenwash (when prompted by a warning light of course) anything else should be left to a qualified Merc mechanic.
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Be exclusive and drive a Petrol 5 Series!
Current '13 62 F10 535i MSport Auto Previous '04 04 E60 545i SE Auto '03 53 E60 545i SE Auto (Stolen) '98 S E39 523i SE Auto |
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E61 Toruing comments
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UweM3 wrote: