[zugellos]

So I was at lunch earlier today and was reading through a few different articles online.

Came across one about BMWs catching fire for no apparent reasons.
Anyone heard of this before?

I did a quick search...and wow... quite a few articles came up.
Here are some.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/bmw-m...ry?id=47335778

http://jalopnik.com/abc-news-big-inv...a-b-1795121798

https://bmwproblems.wordpress.com/

Should we be concerned? I've had a few BMWs before this one...and have tried to keep up with any news relating to these vehicles but have never heard of this before.

Just thought I'd check with you all.

[turbo16lbs]

I saw an X5M on the article I was reading. Dont know they didnt go into detail as to the models other than BMW NA is undergoing an investigation.

[ezaircon4jc]

My son's '87 Mustang GT caught fire while he was driving it. A friend had his catch fire in his garage. Turns out there was an issue with the alternator and it could arc whether off or on. Weird! It was a wide spread issue and Ford was aware of it. I never heard of a solution or recall...

[zugellos]

I looked around the web a little more, and it seems there's not really any car make/brand out there that's immune to catching fire.

What's troubling though, is in one article that I read, a BMW was off for quite a while before it went up in smoke.

What's up with that?

[ezaircon4jc]

Originally Posted by zugellos

I looked around the web a little more, and it seems there's not really any car make/brand out there that's immune to catching fire.

What's troubling though, is in one article that I read, a BMW was off for quite a while before it went up in smoke.

What's up with that?

Same with my friend's Mustang. He said he was in the garage and heard a popping sound coming from under the hood. He popped the hood and saw the alternator arching. IIRC he said he pulled the battery cable to stop any electrical flow. That stopped the arching. The alternator suffered fatal damage. Still don't know what's wrong with some of the Fox bodies...

[mko9]

The article I saw showed a few different events, including an e36 M3. So we're talking about cars that are 20-25 years old? Most of the others looked to be recent/current model cars though. That said, 40 or so incidents out of millions of cars sold in the last 20 years seems like MUCH ado about nothing.

[zugellos]

Originally Posted by mko9

The article I saw showed a few different events, including an e36 M3. So we're talking about cars that are 20-25 years old? Most of the others looked to be recent/current model cars though. That said, 40 or so incidents out of millions of cars sold in the last 20 years seems like MUCH ado about nothing.

Unless of course....it is your car, right? It would really suck.
Especially if BMW doesn't compensate somehow.

[Surly73]

I remember that a certain group of E39s and E46s went through something like this too.

Keep in mind that with the way current auto electronics work, an increasing number of devices are connected to power all the time with heavy gauge wiring. Combine this with the fact that stuff breaks from time to time, and now you have fires.

In the case of the E39s and E46s, I think it was a PWM-controlled electric engine cooling fan that caused the fires. They were powered all the time and the DME used a PWM signal to control the fan. When something failed and the fan decided to power itself on or do something else with the hundreds of amps of current available, bad things happened.