[bimmerguyxyz]

I've been experiencing an extremely frustrating and dangerous problem with my 2012 528i that basically renders it unsafe to drive. I took it to a reputable BMW dealership in my area to get the issue diagnosed & repaired but have had a nightmare experience with the dealership not taking accountability for their negligence. I need some advice. Please see below for details, any advice would be appreciated.

Here's my story:

Basically, at random moments a "Drivetrain Malfunction" & a "Fuel Pump" warning would simultaneously pop up on my navigation and I would lose all power to the engine. Once these warnings pop up, I then have about 5 seconds to pull over somewhere safely as my car slows to a stop with no ability to accelerate. It then jumps into neutral and then park. Extremely unsafe & scary, I know. Once I'm broken down on the side of the road, I'm unable to turn the engine back on. The first time this happened to me, I did a couple searches and found a few posts on here about people having similar issues. One of the suggestions was to exit the vehicle, lock it, wait 5 minutes, then try starting it again. I gave this a shot and was able to successfully turn my car back on & drive home with no issues or warnings on the dash/nav.

The next morning I call a local, reputable BMW dealership to schedule an appointment & drop my vehicle off for a diagnosis of the problem. A couple more days go by and I get told by the service advisor that my car needs a new Fuel Pump to cure the issue and that it would cost me around $2,300 total. With a need to get this repaired ASAP, I agree to the costly repair and let them get started. I get the car back days later, and when paying the invoice, see that whoever had filled it out wrote that upon testing the car after replacing the fuel pump, the warnings did come back on (likely due to a typo as there were many others, but I needed to make sure). I point this out to the advisor who then goes and talks to the mechanic and comes back confirming that it was just a typo. Accidents happen so I brush it off and he prints me a new revised invoice. I pay the $2300 and am just glad to be on my way home. Later that night my car breaks down on the side of the road, again. Next morning, I head back to the dealership and demand some answers. Service tech apologizes and says he'll get it all taken care of and gives me a loaner to drive. Over the span of the next few days, I get small updates from them about seeing VANOS faults and that they've swapped the solenoids for testing. They later get back to me and say that the faults still remained after the swap and that more testing & test driving was needed. Few more days go by and I get told that all looks to be good and that it could've been possible that the mechanic forgot to "plug some things in" when finishing the fuel pump repair couple weeks prior. He assures me they've test driven the vehicle and that all is good. I pick my car up the same day and head home. The next morning on my way to work I break down again. I immediately head straight back to the dealership after getting my car started again and was told they would continue to diagnose and resolve whatever the issue was, at no additional cost.

Few more days go by and today I'm informed that the issue with the VANOS faults is due to the slack in the timing chain and that the timing chain & guides would need to be replaced to resolve these faults. Service advisor tells me sorry for the bad news and that this repair is gonna cost me $6500 if I choose to proceed. He then says that the faulty fuel pump (that they initially told me would repair whatever was wrong with my car) was preventing the car from running properly so there was no way for them to know that the VANOS faults were coming from a timing chain issue. He continued to say that once the $2300 replacement of the fuel pump happened, "the car began to run properly and that's when the issue of the slack on the timing chain started to occur." - Pretty much not taking responsibility for missing this on the diagnosis initially when I was told it was just a bad fuel pump.

I feel pretty gutted by this whole experience and need some advice on how to proceed. Is it true that there was no way to catch this issue without having a functional fuel pump? Should they have verified that it was the fuel pump that would have corrected this issue before quoting me the initial repair? This whole nightmare has been over the span of 21 days & I've broken down multiple times since the initial repair. Service advisor want a response back from me tomorrow about how I want to proceed so any kind of feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[TuckerE36]

This is a tough one, you can get BMW North American involved and open a claim against the dealership, a rep from BMW will contact a liaison within the dealership that will work with the service director and you to determine the best resolution. I have done this process with Audi, Lexus (twice) and Toyota. As for the car… I would consider dumping to carvana or similar if you can get it to run properly enough, this isn’t the most ethical route but $6500 is steep for a pre-lci unless you can find a good Indy shop that can do it for much less.

[Trian]

Get a 2nd opinion. You have a dealership so I assume you must also have qualified/decent indies.

[ChiNorm]

There is a reason for the term 'Stealership'.

Good luck.

[StradaRedlands]

Originally Posted by bimmerguyxyz

I've been experiencing an extremely frustrating and dangerous problem with my 2012 528i that basically renders it unsafe to drive. I took it to a reputable BMW dealership in my area to get the issue diagnosed & repaired but have had a nightmare experience with the dealership not taking accountability for their negligence. I need some advice. Please see below for details, any advice would be appreciated.

2012 engines are ones with the bad timing chain guides. So that causing issues does sound plausible. Those problems went all the way to 2015 IIRC. Even getting new timing guides at an indy garage is going to be expensive as it's a full tear down of the top and bottom of the engine. You're going to have to decide based on the mileage of the car and how much disposable income you have to put into it (might still be cheaper than a payment). If it really is the guides causing the problems, they may not be hosing you. The thing is, guides may or may not be the problem based on my experiences with my local dealership. They hugely mis-diagnosed my problem which I'm still dealing with. As suggested, find a quality recommended indy in your area and get that second opinion and repair quote. Let us know which way it goes!

[Matgsand]

The faulty fuel pump causes the blue fuel pump relay to burn out, which needs to be replaced in conjunction with the new fuel pump otherwise the burnt contacts on the relay will cause these intermittent fuel starvation issues. If its a n20 engine between 100 000 / 150 000km it is guaranteed that it needs timing chains as well, which is a major repair, however a bmw specialised indy shop should be able to manage it at half the price of the dealer, if not less, using FEBI chain kits