Why are modern cars so complicated?

My car (BMW 520d) got me to France and back without incident, another 1600 miles on the clock, but it has not been running right for about six months.

It’s in the garage now to try to sort out a problem where it will sometimes almost stall when pulling away or fail to pick up when you put your foot down.

It’s had new glow-plugs, the particulate filter checked and now may need a throttle position sensor or mass air-flow sensor replacing (we’re not sure which, both or neither).

Older cars were less reliable but more resilient – instead of a throttle position sensor, you’d have a cable connecting the pedal to the carburettor; now it’s a drive by wire connection to the fuel-injection system.

When something goes wrong, it’s a holy mess trying to find out the cause and, instead of a £15 throttle cable, it’s probably a £200 sensor.

I’m getting to the stage with this BMW that, if it’s not sorted out soon, I feel like just scrapping the bloody thing. This is its fifth day in the garage this year and it’s still there – six days tomorrow!

Update (20.2.14): Still not sorted, but four sensors on order - throttle position sensor, mass air sensor, engine temperature sensor and outside temperature sensor. They should be delivered tomorrow or Saturday and the car is back in next Tuesday to have them fitted.

Update 2 (6.3.14): Hooray, the car is back to normal. All the parts arrived last week, so Andy Bunyan took the car on Monday to fit them. There was a slight hitch with the wrong throttle position sensor being supplied, but the correct one was re-ordered and arrived the next day. I now have the car back and it's running perfectly. I haven't had the bill yet, but it's looking around £600 (if I'd taken it to a BMW garage, it would be more like £1,600).

Update 3 (24.3.14): The car is back with Andy. After it came back, the radio wasn't working. I thought it was a disturbed wire under the bonnet. Andy says it is a broken wire running into the tailgate, which is why the rear wiper, rear window catch and reversing light are also not working (the radio aerial is the heated rear window). Apparently this broken wire is a common problem on BMW Touring models (estates). It's a simple fix (new bit of wire) but it's a right royal bugger to get to.

Update 4 (28.3.14): Andy Bunyan replaced the wiring and I now have working rear wiper, etc. However, the central locking isn't working and the car won't open without using the key. This means that to unlock the car you have to dismantle the key fob, pull out the hard key, open the door (which sets off the alarm), then push the key into the ignition (which silences the alarm). Andy wondered if the battery might be out in the fob, but I know that something funny is going on because the on-board computer resets itself every time your start up.

Update 5 (31.3.14): So to give Andy the benefit of the doubt, I thought I'd replace the battery in the key fob. Now, you wouldn't think something like a battery could be so complicated! Google BMW key fob battery and you get back a mass of contradictory advice - some people say you can replace the battery, others say it's a sealed unit and it recharges itself automatically. I found a video on YouTube where a man replaces the battery in a 5-Series. It looked easy and the battery was the same as I'd just bought for the kitchen scales, but when I tried to follow the instructions, it was clear that our key fobs (although they looked identical) were different. His had a replaceable battery and would come apart; mine was a sealed unit. BMW UK and BMW USA obviously have different batteries. I called the parts department at Sycamore (the Peterborough BMW dealer). These are always pretty good (in fact the whole garage is pretty good, just massively expensive) and they said the key fob is sealed, it does recharge in the car, but they could supply a replacement key fob for £150.

Update 6 (2.4.14): The key was there next day and I had to take along my passport and registration document in order to get the key. It didn't work. The parts man called one of the engineers, who said it looked as if the central locking unit, which was sited near the tailgate, had been damaged. He said they sometimes suffered from water damage on estate models.

Update 7 (9.4.14): Have we finally made it? Andy took the car back. He said the central locking unit was water damaged. He repaired it and resealed it and it now works. The computer is also not resetting itself every time. Fingers crossed!

In praise of winter tyres

A snowy house and car this morning

This is my third winter with a rear-wheel-drive car (and one with high-performance tyres). It’s not that I have a high-performance car, but because it’s a BMW, they fit high-rated tyres with a sports tread.

Great for grip on warm tarmac, but combined with rear-wheel drive, pretty useless for the two weeks of an English winter when it snows.

And snow it has for the past two winters! I almost had winter tyres fitted last year, but the snow was quite late - February - and I thought I’ll only have the tyres on for a few weeks before it was spring.

This year, we’re taking the car to the Isere Valley for a skiing holiday and so I decided to have winter tyres fitted good and early.

KwikFit had the option of some really cheap winter tyres (made in Italy) at about £100 each, some Japanese-made tyres at £150 each or Dunlops (made in Germany) at £223 each. KwikFit said they were all good, but the Dunlops looked to have a much better tread pattern and they were on a four-for-three offer, so I had them fitted. Total price, with wheel balance, new valves and nitrogen inflation (and VAT) £721.

It’s expensive, but it should (of course) be cost neutral. When I have the winter tyres on, I’m not wearing out my summer tyres, so I’m saving there. I can only wear out one set at a time.

Anyway, a nice young lady tyre-fitter put them on, did a good job of cleaning the corrosion from the front, offside alloy wheel which always lets a bit of air out around the rim, and I slung the summer tyres in the back and stacked them in the garage ready for refitting come April.

I could feel a difference straight away. The ride was better because I was now on standard tyres, not run-flats like my summer tyres, which have a much stiffer sidewall. I’ve not noticed any difference in fuel consumption (around 40-45mpg) and the tyres don’t sound any noisier on a motorway.

We’d not had a bad winter, wet but not too cold, until this past fortnight and the tyres have now really come into their own. The grip had been noticeably better when the road is cold and wet, or a little frosty. I hit a patch of ice on Bourges Boulevard heading to the station the other morning. On the summer tyres, it would have really let go and then gripped, but with the winter tyres it was a steady slide, I could feel it going and correct every so gently. A similar thing happened coming off the roundabout onto The Causeway into Thorney. I just felt the back end coming round ever so slightly; I just eased off and it came back in line.

On Friday it snowed heavily and Chestnut Drive was covered in snow. Coming home from the station, I put my foot down in second to see if the wheels would spin, but they didn’t. The traction-control light didn’t even flicker. On summer tyres, it would have been on/off, on/off. I then tried braking quite hard, not an emergency stop, but so hard that I knew the standard tyres would have lost grip. The car just stopped, no judder at all to suggest the ABS had kicked in.

I thought this was quite impressive on two or three inches of snow.

The tyres are not going to tempt me into taking risks, but if I know I have reliable grip, I will drive a bit faster. Is that lulling me into a false sense of security? It might be, but only if the grip suddenly goes, which it would on ice, but then so would any tyre, except a studded one.

On Sunday, heavy snow was forecast in London, spreading north during the afternoon. We’d planned to go to Sam’s and did so despite the weather. It was his 30th birthday on Thursday, we had his presents and I’d baked him a cake. It was quite snowy on the way down and continued to snow heavily all afternoon. We left about 4pm, with roads starting to whiten over. On the hill from Stroud Green to Crouch End, I was being followed by a VW 4x4 and when I stopped to let a bus through, I saw him brake and lose control. Fortunately, he steered sideways into the kerb and not into my back. From Crouch End up to Muswell Hill there is (as the name suggests) quite a steep hill. The road was fairly clear and I took it steadily in second at about 20mph. It’s a narrow road with traffic parked and side roads, plus crossings, so it’s not a hill you can take a run at.

Halfway up a BMW saloon had stopped, its rear wheels spinning uselessly and sliding slowly back down. I was able to slow and steer around it. We passed a Mercedes which had also given up and was being gamely pushed by a couple of blokes (good luck to them). Steering around these obstacles had slowed me down, so I had to engage first and was now stuck behind a front-wheel-drive Peugeot 3009, which had also lost momentum and it was slithering about like a dog on wet lino, front-wheels spinning like mad. I was worried because the hill is steeper there, so I fed the clutch in slowly and kept the throttle as low as possible. The car sailed up, no traction-control light, absolutely no wheelspin.

On the A1, there was a fine covering of sometimes slushy, sometimes soft, sometimes crunchy snow. I know from experience, that I would have had to slow right down on the summer tyres and would have been having kittens even then. I was nervous, but nowhere near so much, and had to be alert because visibility wasn’t great, but the car was rock solid - no side slides, no skidding under braking (ABS didn’t kick in once) and no wheelspin.

Some people’s winter driving skills are dreadful. People drive too close, some folk just have no idea about how long it will take them to stop or how to avoid wheelspin. The VW driver was an idiot, thank god me missed me; the Peugeot driver was being much too heavy on the throttle, but having used winter tyres myself and felt the difference they make, I’d say with confidence that, if everyone fitted them, the BBC would have to look really, really hard for some video of a car spinning its wheels and having to be pushed started.

And why wouldn’t people fit them? It’s no extra cost long term. You’ll really notice the difference when it’s snowy, but even in cold or cold and wet conditions, winter tyres significantly shorten your stopping distances in an emergency. I’m a convert; I’ll be at KwikFit every October getting my winter rubber on.

They may have a harsher test in the French Alps, where we have a very steep road up to our chalet, but I’ll have a secret weapon in the glovebox - my AutoSock. I hope I don’t need it, but if I do, I’ll give a full report.

Mugged - by a car dealer

When I've had my car serviced, the garage always phones next day to ask if I'm happy and if everything is all right.


This time when they called I wanted to say no, that I'd taken my car in for an oil change and come out with a bill for £900 and I felt as if I'd been mugged. I should have given some negative feedback, but I didn't. The girl calling is their receptionist and she's not the one to be moaning at.


I've always had my last few cars serviced by Andy Bunyan in the village. He's a good, old-fashioned engineer, who will repair rather than replace and will always find you the best deal. When I got my current car - a 1996 BMW 520d Touring - I thought it all seemed a bit complicated and high-tech for Andy.


He's well versed in the world of sensors and electronic-management systems, but the BMW takes things to a new level. It has a smart key which stores all faults and alerts and which can be read by inserting it into a special terminal at the dealer; also the car has an on-board computer and display which gives information about service requirements. It's not one of the simple, mileage-based counters, which just take the current mileage, count down 10,000 and then say it's time for a service. This tells you when your oil is due to be changed; how many miles you have left on your brake pads and when your MoT is due. It even gives you a count-down on the diesel particulate filter - and that lasts 100,000 miles.


So I took the view that the BMW might be better taken to the main dealer despite Andy saying that he did several BMWs. Well, I've paid dearly for the lesson, but this last one took the biscuit, mainly because I wasn't prepared for such a bill.


The computer said I was due an oil change, so I booked it in and also asked them to repair the rear tailgate window catch, which had been diagnosed as a faulty switch at £70 plus fitting. BMW estates have a nice feature where the rear window is hinged as well as the main tailgate. It means you can just open the window to drop something in the boot, which is very convenient, and it also means you can really pack the boot solid when you're going on holiday or moving house and then keep adding things through the back window. On other cars you'd be pushing stuff in with one hand and trying to close the tailgate with the other.


Anyway, I thought I'd have that done as I was only expecting a small charge for the oil change. When I got to the dealer, the key told the receptionist that my brake fluid was due to be changed in a couple of months and also there was just a couple of hundred miles before the front brake pads needed to be changed. Did I want those doing at the same time? I said yes to the brake pads, but the brake fluid could wait until the MoT was due in June.


After a hour, the receptionist came to tell me they had taken the brake pads off and checked the thickness of the discs and they were a couple of mm below the minimum recommended thickness. Did I want those changing too? I said OK. A little while later, the message was that they'd fitted a new tailgate switch, but it hadn't worked. The problem must be a bad connection or broken wire and not the switch. Because their engineer had misdiagnosed the problem, they wouldn't charge me for the switch, but did I want them to try to find the problem (with the warning that it might take some time as they'd have to remove some trim)? I was a bit miffed, because, clearly, the chap who diagnosed the fault had not tested the switch, he'd just assumed that was the problem. Now, they were assuming that it was a broken wire and wanted me to pay them £100 an hour to see if that was the case. I said no thank you.


Anyway, the bill for oil change, new brake pads and new front discs was £906 including VAT. That included £395 for parts and £360 for labour. The oil change also requires a number of other filter changes. I was charged £83 for oil (fully synthetic) and there was just under 6 litres of that, plus £15 for an oil filter, £21 for an air filter, £34 for a fuel filter and £67 for a microfilter (I think that goes on the air-conditioning). Brake pads were £85 and brake discs £147.


So you can see why I feel as if I'd been mugged. For its MoT in June, I'll take the car to Andy. It might be cheaper to buy him one of those key readers for his PC than to continue to take it to the main dealer.