[singular9]

Hello everyone. To preface, I have stayed away from german cars for a very long time, ever since around the 90's when I actively worked on cars, every german/american made car was the biggest piece of junk to work on, and so we stuck to rebuilding honda's/toyota's which proved to be a reliable and easy way to make money at the time.

I am pretty comfortable working on my own cars, although, due to changing my line of work, I really didn't want to work on cars anymore for a long time, and the easy way to do that is to just buy a lexus and let it run with minimum maintenance till 200k miles+. I have pretty much only owned honda's and toyota's which probably says that I don't work on my cars a lot, but I am more than comfortable of doing a trans fluid change or something like that in my garage to save money and to make sure its done right. I simply don't trust mechanics.

That out of the way...

I have been looking at the M440i with the b58 for a while. Ever since BMW released this engine, it seemed like they were going in the right direction to make a solid engine that with regular maintenance wouldn't crap the bed for some random reason. Now I know, everyone here will probably tell me that "the unreliable bmw" stereotype is overblown, and that with enough love and care, any car can go 100-200k miles. But trust me when I say, I can go buy a 100k mile lexus, never look at the maintenance history, take one look inside the engine bay, and be comfortable going another 100k. I simply cannot do that, and you can't either, with ANY bmw, period. I am looking to buy low mileage under 20k miles.

What I can't seem to find, is any directive from BMW on what the regular maintenance schedule is. I have tried looking through owners manuals (which are literally glorified nail polishing instructions) and various forums where people debate this stuff at nauseum and get nowhere.

Is there any thing that I need to know about taking care of a newer BMW OTHER than changing the oil every 5000 miles and inspecting all the filters and fluids and brakes, etc.

For example;
When should one change the transmission fluid on the ZF8?
I assume every 30-50k but is there a required limit?

Any kind of sensors, spark plugs, coil packs, injectors, and etc?
I am used to toyota land where most of these can last the lifetime of the car unless neglected.

PCV system? Catch cans? Any preventative mods?

How does the B58 react to using things like injector cleaner/crc valve cleaner, etc? Are they hyper sensitive to this sort of thing?

Is there anyone who has done a valve inspection? I tried looking, can't find any photos. At what mileage are the valves absolutely need to be checked and cleaned?

Any items I should simply expect to break and change in the future regardless of how hard I try to take care of the car?

Stuff like that.

Its easy in toyota land, open manual, read ever 5k mile schedule, check off boxes as you go along and done deal. But here it seems like its like pulling teeth to get any REAL definitive answers.

Otherwise, I plan on using valvoline 0w30 or 0w40 euro spec (should I use dexos/api sp instead?) every 5k miles. Not my first turbo car, I don't trust these things to go 10k on an oil change. My honda 2.0 after a few oil tests shows that past 6500 miles the oil is pretty much diluted and out of spec.

Thanks for any feedback or links to posts I may have missed.

[Seba77W]

I just recently picked up a 2021 M440i xdrive with 17k miles and will be doing most of my own maintenance as well. I am coming from a 435i xdrive which was tuned for about 5 years had 110k miles when I got hit and it was totaled out, car was pretty much good as new 9 years old and had never been in the dealer for any issues at all, just regular maintenance done. As far as oil I used Motul 5W40 8100 xcess 100% synthetic along with genuine BMW oil filter every 5k miles, and I will do the same here. Spark plugs I changed every 20k miles due to the tune. Without a tune I’m sure 50k miles are fine on B58 for spark plug service, for sure no less then 30k miles at least if you want to check on their condition. As far as transmission I emailed ZF directly and they replied that they recommend service every 8 years or 60k miles. I agree it would be nice to have some sort of maintenance schedule we could follow directly from BMW but I guess they don’t want us working on our own cars unfortunately.

[Emily172013]

Just my two cents, but how many old Lexus do you see on the road compared to BMWs?
My 2005 BMW with 100k has been the most maintenance free car I've ever owned. I do my own maintenance.
My 2020 M340i has been issue free.

[rmedina]

Originally Posted by Emily172013

Just my two cents, but how many old Lexus do you see on the road compared to BMWs?
My 2005 BMW with 100k has been the most maintenance free car I've ever owned. I do my own maintenance.
My 2020 M340i has been issue free.

You are correct my friend..

[dshiromoto]

Originally Posted by Emily172013

Just my two cents, but how many old Lexus do you see on the road compared to BMWs?
My 2005 BMW with 100k has been the most maintenance free car I've ever owned. I do my own maintenance.
My 2020 M340i has been issue free.

If you remember, do you mind sharing the list of things you did as a schedule?

[superfuel]

Originally Posted by Emily172013

Just my two cents, but how many old Lexus do you see on the road compared to BMWs?
My 2005 BMW with 100k has been the most maintenance free car I've ever owned. I do my own maintenance.
My 2020 M340i has been issue free.

I see a lot of old Lexus cars on the road and very few 10 year old BMWs. All those old Lexus cars go forever, LSs, ESs, GXs, RXs, GSs, ISs. 100k is nothing for those cars, just oil changes.