| Message: | | Sorry for the long post. We're on a long road trip from Austin TX to Monterey CA (where we are now, go Nicky!) then up along the coast to Vancouver, across to Banff, and back down through the mountains and across west Texas to Austin. Coming into Monterey the check engine light came on. We took it to the local dealer who scanned it. The service writer was busy so he said to the tech "Tell Mr. Canon about his car." The tech said that it was one of two things: The ECU was showing a false positive for bad cats, or the cats are indeed going out.
Relieved that it wasn't a trip ender in any case, we asked what our options are. The tech said that we could try a $300 reprogram of the ECU released for the E46 M3 S54 engines that was never specified by BMW for the Z3M S54 cars. He said that it was the most expedient option, but might not work. If we have the time, he suggested just having the cats replaced under the emissions warranty. We said what the heck, Monterey/Carmel isn't too bad a place to have to spend a couple of extra days, let's do the cats. I know we can drive the car for the rest of the trip like this, but I'm concerned about driving through some fairly remote areas and not being alerted to additional engine problems because my CEL is already lit from the cat issue.
From that point forward the service writer has been less than helpful and even passive aggressive. He said "first we have to see if the cats are even still under warranty. I'll call you tomorrow." In the mean time I emailed my service writer in Austin and was told that the federal mandate for emissions warranty was 8 years/80k. The local service writer didn't call me back all day so I called the parts counter to see if the cats were available. They aren't at the dealership but they are at the local warehouse and can be at the dealership in a day or two. I called the service writer back at the end of the day and he said that he still didn't know if the cats were available, I told him the were because I checked with parts. Then he said that I [I]had[/I] to pay for the reprogram before they would replace the cats under the emissions warranty. I pointed out that the ECU reprogram wasn't specified for my car by BMW and that they weren't even promising it would work. He maintained that it still had to be done first.
We have an appointment early Monday morning. I think I want to have his boss there and request that they warranty the cats like the tech said from the beginning. Any comments or suggestions? Anyone had a similar issue with CEL/cats that they were able to get the dealer to resolve satisfactorily?
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