Living with a 335D: Updates

Well, it’s been an expensive few weeks, that’s for sure! Over the past two month, my car has been in the garage 4 times, and taken the best part of £900 out of my wallet. After 11 months of epic fun and not a single issue, it seemed like I’d run out of luck (and money) and was considering the worst…selling the car.

So here’s a little update on what happened, and where things are now.

About a 6 weeks ago, I noticed the car was feeling a little sluggish under acceleration when driving in the Midlands, and about a mile from my destination, complete power failure ground me to a halt. After limping it the last mile, I abandoned the car for a week (insert crying face here) until I was able to get it recovered. Gotta love project cars stepping up to help out!

The BM had not long had a replacement charge airline fitted due to leaking and a new intercooler because of a split in it, so I was surprised to find out from the breakdown guy that it the problem was not to do with the turbos as I’d feared, but the intercooler system. Turns out the garage that did this work managed to mangle the return pipe from the intercooler back to the engine, stopping it from push-fitting properly. I won’t name the garage as I don’t want to bad mouth them, but it’s safe to say I wasn’t best pleased with them, and am still waiting on a response for how they managed to balls up a simple job so badly.

This time, I took it to a different garage a bit further from home, but one I knew was good. Not a BMW specialist, but the owner is a proper BMW fan. A few days after recovery, and a few hundred quid lighter, and the BM was back with a replacement pipe fitted, running quieter and smoother than ever. All was well.

Wrong again.

The same sluggish low end performance was there. Top end was back, but it felt like the small turbo wasn’t spooling; the only reason it wasn’t crazy slow was the ridiculous torque of that engine.

Back to the same garage again, as I trusted them to do a good job.

Queens Cross Garage, I salute you!

A few hours after dropping it off, I get a call asking me to come test drive it and see if I agree they’ve solved the problem. Turns out it was a simple fix; the waste gate was jammed wide open, so the small turbo was dumping all it’s pressure and never spooling. They fixed the waste gate, and boost is back!

After 150 miles since the waste gate repair, the BM seems to have settled back into her ways of kicking me back in the seat when I step on the loud pedal. It’s made me realise that it’s been a little sluggish for more than 6 weeks, but as the issue had gradually gotten worse I hadn’t noticed.

Before all of this happened, a friend and I recorded a 0-62 run (on a private road obvs) and it’s noticeable now that as I shift to 3rd, there’s a flat spot in the acceleration. Not much, but enough to notice there’d been an issue for a while. I’ll get a new video soon now she’s fixed, but for now, here’s that timed run. Fingers crossed this is the end of my issues!