rev up your engines you might think a BMW is a good car to buy yes they are packed
full of modern technology but that's the reason I tell people not to buy these
bmw's because under the hood our layers and layers of Technology and as
you can see the hood struts don't even work anymore those are broken so we'll
get our plastic stick out yeah all technology for new technology let's take
this BMW as an example and a pretty much a sterling example of the high
technology and the problems I have this is a 2008 335i it has all the bells and
whistles it's a straight six cylinder engine but a puts top 300 horsepower
using technology what's an inline six kind of an old design it has two turbo
charges on it to make it have power and if they go bad and bad they do the turbo
chargers are over three thousand dollars a piece over two thousand dollars labor
so you're looking at over eight grand if they go bad now the original owner of
this car paid forty five thousand dollars up for this thing and my
customer bought it for $13.5k and he had like forty thousand miles on it so
you think oh what a deal well the price alone tells you it's not a deal before
he met me they said Scotty I thought I was getting
a deal but then every time I take it it's $1,000 for this two thousand
dollars for that now yes they are maintenance heavy vehicles it cost a lot
of money to maintain anybody who actually knows how to work on these has
to have some extremely sophisticated equipment that cost a ton of money and
as far as I'm concerned a lot of it has to do with the overuse of plastics in
these things one of the first companies used plastic for just about everything
with these BMWs it doesn't matter the mileage age destroys the plastics heat of
the engine under the hood starts cracks and comes apart if you ever
have to work on one of these when it gets to be older this one's twelve years
old now you got to be really careful working around the edge
because you can easily start snapping off plastic parts they're so brittle now
when you find these little plastic parts cost three hundred five hundred some of
them well over a thousand dollars when you include labor cuz you got to take
half the car part to get to them these things are known for
getting oil leaks around the oil filter you might think oh no big deal they're
just gaskets in there well some of these things it's over $1,000 labor taking all
the crap off to get to the stupid gasket now in the case of this particular one
it's here because it's not shifting right now I have equipment for this
stuff and as you can see we're now in the transmission you can check variables
shifting you can check solenoids you can see what the adaptation values are even
find all the code numbers so you can look it up if perhaps there's a recall
for your particular vehicle most guys that have this equipment they're paying
a ton for the stuff you're gonna pay it's time to have your car work done and
a lot of guys won't even touch it nothing take it to the dealer and you
know what they charge at the dealer now in this case I did a lot of testing go
it around it says you can see there's a lot of data that needs to be looked at
while the car is being driven I was able to do a bunch of actuation tests to see
if the solenoid valves are working right what kind of data is in it and
unfortunately in a case of this one there were no error codes for the
transmission the data was all relatively normal so I thought well I know how
these things are I took a sample of the transmission fluid not to seal
transmission so even out was a pain in the butt there's no dipstick I had to
go under or open up some stuff to take a sample and I took it to a good friend of
mine who analyzes oil he said that there was too much metal in the oil
meaning parts of the transmission we're starting to wear out it hasn't yet
tripped any codes and the adaptation so far is normal for 12 year old BMW but
this tells me transmissions starting to wear on oil analysis is a great tool for
seeing what kind of a shape of vehicles in both engine transmission differential
whatever when it's analyzed by somebody who knows what they're talking about
they're gonna find it out and you can know ahead of time it's a good predictor
so in this case the occasional missed shift and stuff hey that's a sign of
internal wear when I checked those solenoids driving
around would activate them they were all working and there weren't any codes
any of them going bad starting to wear out not for this particular wants 12
years old BMW offers what they call a fully remanufactured factory
transmission it's about $6,500 and with labor at least at the BMW dealer that's
pretty close to what the two turbos cost to go 7,000 something dollars you buy a
beautiful looking car like this used you are playing with dynamite you never know
what's gonna blow and when it's gonna go yes the Germans put an interesting
technology these lower profile tires they really handle well but being lower
profile guess what in the city these things are destroyed the rims get
destroyed all that stuff costs a small fortune when it goes out now the
technology is fine at the racetrack because racetracks
are pretty smooth there go really fast they make them well they're smooth
didn't have giant potholes and them curbs that you're gonna smash into in
this particular model being a beautiful convertible
there are convertible modes there's a module for the convertible top
fault codes you can even read the data stream of the convertible system we are
talking uber rocket science technology even on a convertible top
system for this thing now maybe you just love the technology one
of these things if you really love it and have to have it take Scotty's
advice lease one don't buy it if you feel you could afford the lease payments
you're not gonna have to repair the thing you have to worry about all that
stuff if something breaks hey the generally don't break that fast if you look at their
insanely low resale value I mean this thing was well over $40,000 new and we
had 40,000 miles it went for thirteen five reason behind that low resale value
and if you would have bought it new and sold it to somebody with 40,000 miles
and lost 30 something thousand dollars on the deal
you'd have wished hey I should lease that thing I shouldn't have bought it now I do
have to say I have customs with bmws that are totally happy with the cars
but most of them are doctors lawyers they lease the vehicle under a business
scenario where it's pre-tax money so they don't have to pay tax on some of
their salary or the business itself is leased in it and they're getting the car
for free what do they care one or doctors lawyers they have tons of money
and two it's a business write-off but if you're counting your pennies and you're
thinking about one of these things use my advice is just keep saying to
yourself endless money pit endless money pit endless money pit now I had
a mechanic friend years ago met at an auto parts store one day and he said hey look
at this great deal I got on this BMW from one of my customers he didn't want me to
fix it anymore so he sold it to me at a really good price well the problem with
my friend there was he mainly worked on American cars even know that much about
BMW I saw him about a year later I said how's that BMW working out for and he
said that plastic piece of crap I got rid of it last month I couldn't stand it
anymore all the flesh and stuff kept breaking the parts cost a fortune
I'll never buy another one of those and this is the mechanic granded he worked
mainly on American cars you like to look at a BMW convertible and think
oh what a cool car but in the long run not so cool and if you're thinking about
getting a diesel BMW here in the United States realize hardly anybody knows how
to work out of things and of course the parts cost a small fortune but they are
probably the most complex diesel systems out there
when I get them in here invariably after I scan it tell the customer well
here's what we're gonna start with they say ah I'm just gonna get rid of the
thing I'm sick of this car anyways now yes they are beautiful cars
but sometimes beauty can be deceiving so unless you like expensive aggravating
cars as they age my advice stay away from bmws and here's some
bonus questions and answers mr. Douglas saysScotty I got a 2000 insight one hundred
sixty three thousand miles a hybrid battery is starting to fail and it's over
$2,000 to replace I really just started a new job that requires a hundred and
eight mile commute five days a week it's good idea to replace it thanks here is
the problem two thousand dollars to replace that hybrid battery is not a
brand new battery that is a recondition battery ask about the warranty most of
the ones that I seen it came with a year warranty you're paying all their money
for a one-year warranty that's pretty stinky deal
realize you're not buying a new battery all those hybrid batteries they're made
from a bunch of little batteries like little computer batteries all hooked
together and when they start to go bad guys get a computer program and they
check them then they see Oh cell number 16 is bad cell number 27 is bad and yada
yada then they replace those cells they don't replace them all they only replace
the ones they say are bad so the recondition once they stink
look at the price of a brand new one and it's gonna be a lot more in two thousand
dollars and that's too high I wouldn't do it if I were you because if you want
to keep it and driving a long time put it in a rebuilt one in it's kind of
stupid it's probably gonna go out in a short period of time
that's the scam of these rebuilt hybrid batteries and I tell people generally
you're better off staying away from them unless you just plan on keeping a car
for the warranty period if it's a one or two year period and you're happy with
that go ahead if not don't, so if you never want to miss another one of my new
car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell