Hi all, I've has a few BMWs over the years - got my first E46 in November, 2003 316i manual 133k mles, dark green metallic w/ beige leather.
She looks lovely, and behaved well during the test drive, but...
Within a day or so I realised that the central locking was kaput, fortunately Colin @ bmwgm5.co.uk was a star, and that was fixed no problem - gm5 module relays were shot.
Not long afterwards the yellow oil lamp came on, so I added oil, but the oil filler cap was a weird split / hinged type, and I didn't re-fit it properly, leading to yellow warning lights on the dash, and oil sprayed all over the top of the engine..
Can't remember if this happened before or after the above, but an intermittent idle fault appeared - during driving, once engine was warm, idle would suddenly switch to oscillating between 1000 - 1500, making driving in traffic very unpleasant. I took the car to a well-recommended indie, who said 'oh no, not the N42...'
£930 pounds later (new pedal module, throttle housing, crank sensor, oil separator, vent hose, connecting pipe, return pipe, rocker cover gasket), I collected it, and a day later the yellow oil light came back on, so I added 1L oil. About 10 mins later there was a smell of hot oil, & the revs went back to bouncing...
To the mechanic's credit it took it back, and took off & re-fitted some of the parts, and kept it for a fair bit of test driving, & was unable to repeat the fault, and the idle has been fine since. He recommended to remove the engine cover, as it impacts on some pipes.
I've had the car back about a month now, and it's broadly OK, although the other day the yellow check engine light came on, and one of the codes was suggested an air leak - I replaced the weird split oil filler cap with a new normal type, and so far so good.
The oil level sender seems to be faulty too, and there is a TOENS fault code to back this up.
The car is eating a lot of oil, I've just added a forte seal conditioner to see if this helps. It looks like there's a leak around the oil filer housing.
I wonder if over-filling, due to the faulty level sender, has contributed to any of the woes?
Performance is OK I think, it's not really enough lump for the weight of car, but it goes nicely if you wind it up.
I'm still stressed every time I drive it, in case it turns on me again.
Phew! Feels good to share.
Any comments welcome, cheers, Jamie