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| Message: | Remember: The warranty companies run a business. If the warranties didn't financially favour them on average they wouldn't offer them. At *best* you have a 49% chance of benefiting from your warranty. I believe that the value of a warranty to the buyer depends on which choice you make (I6 or V8) and what options your car has (DSP, active suspension, automatic or manual, xenons or halogen, 12-way power seats or manual sport seats, heated wheel, power sunshades, intensive wash, PDC, high end OBC etc...) I can tell you without a doubt that any extra warranty on my 4/98 528i would have been a complete waste of money. Virtually nothing that would have been covered (ie. non maintenance) has ever broken. Those things that did, weren't all that expensive. There are a lot more parts on the V8 - more sensors, more wires, more plugs etc.. because there are two banks (doubling things like gaskets, camshaft sensors, knock sensors) and a higher total cylinder count (plugs, wires, coils). The V8s are also more likely to come with more high-end doodads that may do little for the actual driving experience. All of these doodads may break. If you don't have them, they can't break. If I had a fully optioned V8 and no mechanical ability, MAYBE a warranty would have paid off. My 528i has the sport package (of higest importance), heated seats and wheel, standard power seats (I'd be OK with the manual sport seats offered in'98), halogens, cable-operated throttle (M52), CD changer and very little else. I wish I had headlight washers, and sometimes a little more displacement while retaining the cable throttle, but it's been very reliable. The only failures I can recall that might have been covered from 2001 until yesterday which is a longer period of time than most warranties: - t-stat housing - camshaft position sensor - fault in the trunk wire harness (posted earlier today) - viscous fan clutch became noisy (still operational) - auxilarly fan sticky I also had a number of "repairs" and TSBs done just before the factory warranty expired, but we're not discussing the factory warranty period. I strongly recommend you look up the TSBs for your intended purchase through a site like alldata.com and talk to your dealer about getting as many of them implemented as possible before warranty expiry. I'm very glad I did. They won't do them unless you ask. Good luck to the OP, Craig. | ||||
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