BMW 330i GT M-Sport: 7th oil service & 69,000 km update

The only thing that I'm not happy about is the inconsistent brake pad life prediction made by the iDrive & the strict adherence of BMW to iDrive prediction to change the pads.

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7th Oil Service, Rear Pads and Discs Change

A couple of weeks back, the oil service reminder started popping up on the iDrive. Fixed an appointment on the 15th of February and took the car to the BMW dealership for the oil change service. Oil change was carried out as usual and the car was given back after a good wash.

At this time, I asked them to also inspect the rear brake pads for wear. iDrive was showing 5000 km of life on the rear brake pads. They did a visual inspection and said the pads had a little more than 3mm of thickness left and were still above spec to replace under BSI.

On 16th, I had a drive to Madurai which was a 450km round trip. 300km into the drive, the iDrive started showing 2700km life on the brake pads and when I completed the drive, it showed 2500km. So the brake pad life prediction on iDrive dropped 2500km on a 450km drive.

As I had another drive to Mysore on 18th and as this drive involved driving through hill roads of Dimbham, I took the car again on 17th February to the workshop and asked them to look at the pads and replace them if necessary even though iDrive was showing 2500km of life.

Below pictures show the state of the pads.

At the workshop, they removed the pads and it was found that the pads had worn out unevenly and at the edges of the outer pads, there was hardly any pad left. The inner side pads had a good amount of thickness left. The sensor is fixed on the inner side.

They replaced the rear brake pads and the discs as well.

I have been extremely happy with the ownership of this car in the past 4 years, both with the car and with the service and support from the dealership and BMW.

The only thing that I am not happy about is the inconsistent brake pad life prediction made by the iDrive and the strict adherence of BMW to iDrive prediction to change the pads. They have a very tight specification under which the pads may be changed outside iDrive. If the thickness of the pads is more by even a few hundredths of a mm, they do not change the pads. This results in frequent visits to the service center which takes me a full day. If they could have a slight relaxation in specs, they could have changed the pads and discs on the day of oil change itself and saved me another full day at the workshop.

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