I was driving home from Germany back to the uk on saturday morning. When on the A6 autobahn near the hockenheim ring i experienced severe power loss. I was cruising at 220kmh, and the road was getting really nice, so i opened her up. 5 seconds later i look down and see 220kmh still, which is really odd as i was expecting to see 245kmh or so...
Long story short, i got the car to BMW Mannheim who have just diagnosed the car with a hole in one of the cylinders and head gasket....
But thats not the shocking thing, they called alpina and have checked prices with them to make the necessary repair and it will 10,000 euros!
Does anyone know what course of action should i take? I think these are the routes available..
1) Scrap the POS.
2) Sell it as is and get maybe peanuts for it,
3) Repair it.
Anyone have any ideas?
best
adam
edit: also it just clicked over to 140k km which is when i believe everyone said the b8 has gasket problems?
__________________
1995 Alpina B8 4.6 #10-(engine blew up. sold)
2001 BMW ///M5(sold)
2003 RUF R turbo
1990 RUF CTR
2006 VW Golf R32 DSG
2005 e60 M5 (sold)
2007 997 GT3 RS Carrara White
2008 Renault Clio 197
"You know it is kinda ironic, these old people are being kept alive by the organs of the young people they ran over" - Chief Clancy Wiggum
thats a real bummer. So sorry to hear about this.. Luckily it did not loose all power on the autobahn, that woudl have been a even more worrysome situation I guess.
I think that you should either repair it (Maybe see if you can get cheaper prices from somewhere else) or just sell it and get some of the money back. I think such a nice car deserves a chance.
I was driving home from Germany back to the uk on saturday morning. When on the A6 autobahn near the hockenheim ring i experienced severe power loss. I was cruising at 220kmh, and the road was getting really nice, so i opened her up. 5 seconds later i look down and see 220kmh still, which is really odd as i was expecting to see 245kmh or so...
Long story short, i got the car to BMW Mannheim who have just diagnosed the car with a hole in one of the cylinders and head gasket....
But thats not the shocking thing, they called alpina and have checked prices with them to make the necessary repair and it will 10,000 euros!
Does anyone know what course of action should i take? I think these are the routes available..
1) Scrap the POS.
2) Sell it as is and get maybe peanuts for it,
3) Repair it.
Anyone have any ideas?
best
adam
edit: also it just clicked over to 140k km which is when i believe everyone said the b8 has gasket problems?
Adam,
This is really bad news...I would first contact Axel Rimpler at Alpina (+4982 41 500 5156) to see what he thinks you should do. €10k is a lot of money and I would think there must be a way of repairing the car for less.
I had my head gaskets replaced by Alpina last March even they didn't need replacing (at 115,000km). I just felt that some preventive maintanance was better than taking the risk of something going desperately wrong. But I have heard of cars doing much higher mileage with nothing having gone wrong (I think Bruno in Paris had his B8's head gaskets changed - also as a preventive measure - but found out that even at his relatively high mileage his original gaskets were in good condition). So I don't think all gaskets necessarily go at 140tkm...
My suggestion is that you give Axel a call; it could be that Alpina may be able to repair your car at the factory for a more reasonable price.
Imad
Have often contemplated what I would do with the Bi-Turbo if anything like this happened - funds (with family concent) probably wouldn't allow a full price rebuild so I've prepared myself for dropping in a Chevy V8 with 400BHP.
In your case, could you find a second hand X5 4.6 engine and swap over the ancilliaries? Might save thousands?
you have not been very lucky with your B8. Lots of minor problems and now this major engine damage caused by the well known head gasket failure.
Please all B8 (and also b10 4.6) owners, do the preventive head gasket upgrade, if your car is still running with the original organic head gasket.
Repair is very expensive. At least the whole cylinder block / crank housing needs to be replaced. If the engine has the Nikasil coatings, it would probably be wise to change to Alusil now.
Some Swedish B8 owner found a shop that repaired the block: Repairing a B8 engine
Depending on how severe the damage of the block is, a repair of the block might be possible.
there are some shops in the UK, who can repair or replate alloy motor blocks:
Please don't scrap it - angry as you may be, the world has too few B8's in it - if you can't face the repair process, at least sell the car to a fellow aficionado!
I'm not sure the X5 engine will slot straight in - even if it does, the engine management reconnections are likely to be quite tricky - the E53 is a much newer car than the E36. You might have more joy if you can find the engine from a wrecked B10 V8.
__________________
2005 Nissan Armada LE 4x4 (in the US)
2004 BMW X5 4.8is
2004 Subaru Forester 2.0XT
***former toys***
2007 MINI Cooper D ("Manfred")
2005 BMW Alpina B5 Touring Nr.007 (now owned by member Heihei)
2004 BMW 530iSE
2000 Lotus Exige
1999 BMW 840Ci Sport Individual ("Rommel")
1999 Subaru Impreza Turbo 2000 AWD RB5 Prodrive WR Sport (its official name!)
1996 BMW Alpina B8 4.6 Touring Nr.014 ("Lucie" - sold to member JoniP, currently owned by member Bernard)
1989 Lotus Esprit Turbo
I considered the 4.6 from the X5. But the Alpinas 4.6 and the X5s are very different. Remember this was the last engine built fully in house by alpina...
Thanks for the kind words guys.
Also the quote i got was the very very best price possible for the repair.
Also if alpina were to make the repairs i believe they could fit me in around june 2008...they are pretty useless in that respect.
If i were to sell it in its current state what would you guys think i could sell it for? Around 4.5k euro?
but actually that car looks too good to cannibalise!
Once repaired, surely the car is worth more than €14.5k?
Also, I'm having a hard time believing that a BMW main dealer is the best price you can achieve for this work. With a good independent, the parts may cost the same, but the labour will surely be cheaper?
but actually that car looks too good to cannibalise!
Once repaired, surely the car is worth more than €14.5k?
Also, I'm having a hard time believing that a BMW main dealer is the best price you can achieve for this work. With a good independent, the parts may cost the same, but the labour will surely be cheaper?
I'm not convinced that taking an even higher mileage B10 V8 engine and putting it into the B8 is a good solution. The cost of buying the B10 and then removing and fitting the engine into the B8 will certainly push the bill higher than €10k. Adam is probably going to have more piece of mind by paying up for the repairs for his engine - even if they cost €10,000...
Given the lack of well-maintained B8 Coupes on the market, I would think Adam's car could easily be worth more than €20,000 once the engine is fixed. Personally I believe that well-kept B8's will only increase in value; I would certainly encourage Adam to fix it, perhaps through a specialist rather than a main dealer as Hythe suggested. Labour costs at BMW dealers are hard to justify.
Adam, sorry to hear your troubles. From what you said before your car had a hard life before you had it.
£6k to fix, is actually not that bad! you could at the same time swap the clutch and replace all rubbers, and you'd have a new car! (ish) I'd fix it if you can afford to. Whatever you do you are going to lose £6k, so keep it.
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