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Posted by bert on April 03, 2001 at 23:02:13:

In Reply to: Re: should i go ahead and buy it? help Big-T! posted by Big-T on April 03, 2001 at 22:16:17:

(posted from: proxy4-external.nash1.tn.home.com (24.4.252.249))

the owner said that they "tried" to make it fail, but it wasn't close enough to the 15% figure to force a failure...i spoke with both the service manager and the technician that actually performed the test...interestingly enough, the service manager said that they hadn't seen too many block replacements and that he felt the problem had been over exaggerated--meanwhile, the tech said he stopped counting block replacements that he had personally done at about 140 (!) that is ONE technician at ONE dealership! this problem is more widespread than we will ever know!

[HERE is the REAL meat and potatoes:]

on a related note, i talked with my local independent today--who, by the way,was a dealership tech for 20 years, and he commented that the leakdown issues were not completely solved until the 1999 model year...i told him it has been well-documented that the problem was corrected in '96...seems he still has contact
with his dealership tech buddies and they have passed some super-secret unofficial "off the record" documentation regarding block failures in 96s, 97s, and 98s...

bert
'90 535i

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Somebody posted something a couple of days ago about BMW insider information on how the block problem was never actually resolved in 1996 but continued until 1999 until they introduced the new VANOS equipped engines. An attempt was made in 1996 with the new engines but apparently BMW now knows that it wasn't completely resolved due to the high number of reports about rough idling or loping engines even as new as 99.