[avelvin]

Thought I would share this as it is really quite interesting from BMW.

I bought a high spec 530 D M Sport Touring F11 last January with a list price of £59,000 UK pounds, it had 1720 miles on it. From day one the brakes squealed under light braking such as in traffic. The noise was quite loud and nearly every day. The dealer had the car back 4 times for the issue (under warranty) but could not resolve. In the end they wrote to me a few weeks back and said they could do no more and BMW AG would not pay for anymore warranty claims on brakes, not least they are parts subject to wear and tear. If I wished to pursue the issue I would personally have to pay for the work !! Naturally I was irritated and reminded them that this noise should not exist on a £59k car with 1720 miles on it from back then nor now even though it has currently got 8500 miles on it, and that I had been very fair in letting them try to cure the problem over the last 12 months. They had heard the noise and I had submitted to them 3 minutes of audio recordings of it too.

They agreed to take one more look at it. I believed at this point that they would probably replace the brake pads as there seemed no other obvious culprit. They rang me the following day to say that they had submitted a PUMA report to BMW AG, and they had instructed them to not only replace the pads, but also the discs and the callipers too, but get this, they also instructed them to upgrade the discs to the M Performance discs, and also fit the same callipers as fitted to the 535 D M Sport. The dealer showed me all the paperwork and correspondence to prove it as they were as surprised as I was. Sure enough they finished the upgrade 2 days later and all seems fine so far. BMW AG have also update the original build spec of my car on their systems to reflect the upgrade so future owners and other dealers will fit the new parts automatically should they need service or change in the future. Apparently it is due to a resonance issue on some 530 D M Sport F11s. I am told by the dealer that IF I had had to pay for this upgrade it would have cost me around £4000 pounds !!

Obviously this is a very good result for me, but I would be interested in any readers comments on this or similar stories as I am certain that BMW initially hoped I would put up with the issue and go away. This is obviously a known problem or why else agree to such a draconian upgrade from the original brake spec ?? I have to say I am quite shocked at what they did for what was just squealing brakes, but at least they did come good in the end even if I did have to be very persistent !!