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Spent Rs 2.6 lakh on my 8-year-old BMW 3 Series GT in 6 months

8th August 2024, 18:06 by Brij Gawde

For the first time in the eight years I've owned the car, I had an incident while on a road trip where it left me stranded.

BHPian Axe77 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

BMW 3GT | 8 years, 10 months and 69,500 kms

It's been far too long since I've posted an update and god knows there's plenty to report. The car crossed the 8-year mark in October 2023 and has undergone its fair share of major maintenance as well as minor issues in the period from December to June.

December 2023 | Major maintenance: INR 1.65 lakh (BMW Infinity)

For the first time in eight years that I've owned a car, I had an incident while on a road trip that left me stranded. This was literally just a few weeks of my buying the GLC and we had planned a Christmas getaway to Anand Sarovar resort at Bhandardara.

Somewhere before Kasara ghat, I got the message displayed below. I pulled the car up to a nearby dhaba, parked it under a shed in their parking, and called up my local BMW SA. We guessed it was something to do with the pulley and drive belt. It's unfortunate this did not get identified in the last service I did as something that might need replacement but anyway, be that as it may, it had decided to give up at the most inopportune moment

Called Infinity BMW and they organised a tow vehicle on a paid basis. We had an hour’s journey left and could, fortunately, complete that in a hired Ertiga that we managed to get from the local village. The same cab also dropped us back to Bombay a few days later.

I used the opportunity to tick off the following while the car was at Infinity. Including the towing charges back to Bombay, my total bill came to around 1.65 lakh.

Towing (Kasara to Infinity workshop, Turbhe)
Rear Brakes changed
Annual Service
Damper Pulley and drive belt replacement.

The general odometer reading during the December trip when the issue cropped up along with the actual error message that the MID threw up.

Coming to May and June 2024, I had two more back-to-back jobs that came up, which I now decided to get done with Akshay at Redline Autohaus. The car needed its front suspension (front shocks) replaced which has been evident since a few months now. I had also planned to get my gearbox oil changed since the car had crossed 65,000 kms / 8 years. There's enough and more discussion around this despite BMW calling these 'sealed for life' - check out GTO’s 530d thread as well for discussions on this. In addition to the above two planned jobs, there were two additional issues that cropped up in close succession. One was the left door lock that stopped working. The other was the roof liner of the car which had started coming down and had to be fixed (unfortunately I missed taking a picture of the roof lining that was peeling out).

May - June 2024 Redline Autohaus | INR 95k

Suspension work; front shocks
Gearbox oil change
The door lock (left front) is not working.
The roof liner is coming out.

All in all the car's taken up a tidy sum of money over the course of this year but a lot of this was understandable wear and tear replacement for an 8-year car, some like gearbox oil were good order maintenance. As of now, I'm still inclined to keep this right up to the 11 - 12-year mark at least and mix up my usage between the GLC and 3GT. Beyond that period I’ll take a call as it comes. Have not thought that far forward yet.

With the suspension work done in particular, the car still feels like a 4 - 5 year old car, nothing worse, and that itself is a huge upside to owning a well-engineered BMW.

Enough of the mechanical stuff. Leaving some parting shots from our stay at the Anand Sarovar resort at Bhandardara - would have loved to photograph the 3GT in these lovely surroundings but that was unfortunately not destined at least this time around.