Re: New $4

[Luis Marques <marques@ti.com>]

From: quk@isham-research.demon.co.uk (Phil Payne)
> > I believe most of the complaints about "high sulfur gasoline"
> > problems came from owners of the early (1989 - on) 5-series cars,
> > not from the 3-series cars.
>
> It seems only the UK is affected - all you others can feel smug :-)
> However, it seems the problem is not really fully understood, yet.

All alumin(i)um-block WMB engines were affected by this accelerated
wear.  In the UK this included both the new (then) V8 engines, as well
as the new small I-6 engines.  In the US, the only ones affected were
the early V8 engines as the I-6's had cast iron blocks.  It seems that
this wasn't a problem on engines used in the continental european
countries.  The affected engines had Nicasil-coated cylinder bores, just
like the motorcycles.  The material had been tested on motorcycles
throughout the world for years without problems and was introduced into
car engines without a lot of testing thinking that if it worked in the
motorcycles, then it would be fine for cars.

It turned out that the high sulfur content of american and UK fuels was
not very compatible with the new engines and accelerated cylinder wear
was the result.  They are now using some Alusil alloy instead and
apparently so far so good.  The european 3-series are getting the
aluminum block, but for now the new 3-series sold in the US have
cylinder liners in the aluminum blocks, just in case.

In any case, the company will install a new (updated) block on your car
if it fails this way, even if the warranty has expired.

Luis Marques