E30 Zone

Thinking of getting back into the BMW fold with an e39 530d (I fancy a Touring, the mrs wants a saloon ).

Is there anything in particular I should be looking to avoid ?, faults specific to this model etc ?

Can't lay my hands on a diesel/touring specific buying guide in old TBMW issues, just general e39 stuff.

Cheers,

Iain T

Best advice is buy a petrol 530. No injector issues,no pump issues, no swirl flap issues,no turbo issues ,25% cheaper and barely 5mpg difference in the real world.

If it were me, id be buying a 540 touring and the biggest lpg tank that will fit

Economy wise the 530 d was not as good as I was led to think and when you consider the extra cost per litre for the derv its only really down to personal taste as alot of people still think diesels are agricultural which is no longer true. 530d's do run on cooking oil but!

Tourings are pretty good, but around 80-100k the rear subframe bushes need doing. You need a proper tool for it really, but a chap on the bmw5forum lends it out. Bushes are £200 though. Pixelated dashboards seem quite common. They drive very nicely, but you don't really know what speed you are doing until you look at the clock. Fuel gauge senders seem hit and miss, but an easy DIY fix. Basically lots of little electrical gremlins, bar the dash most are DIYable.

My 540i touring returned 27.4 REAL mpg on longer runs and 25.5 combined. The 530 petrol should be able to achieve pretty good MPG I would have thought.

Load space is good compared to an e30 touring, but not really a patch on something like a mondeo or vectra estate. You do read quite a lot of horror stories on the diesel and with the inflated price of it at the moment, i'm not sure it is worth the bother. A remapped 530i would probably be a lot of fun. Trying to find a manual is probably the hardest bit...

I got lucky

Thanks for the replies peeps

Test drove a couple today, one auto saloon and one manual touring. I wasn't too keen to be honest, nothing wrong with them but they just lacked that 'buy me' factor.

I reckon we'll stick with what we have for a while yet.

Cheers,

Iain T

pacerpete wrote:Best advice is buy a petrol 530. No injector issues,no pump issues, no swirl flap issues,no turbo issues ,25% cheaper and barely 5mpg difference in the real world.

+1. Speaking to a mobile BMW specialist in Camberley the other day and he was quoting horrer stories of the swirl flap issues. It's all in the original top gear hype back about 9 years ago. When new the 530d was an awesone car and made a lot of sense. Now?

Price of diesels through the roof. All the issues Pete mentions and a buyers premium on price.

I looked at them......for all of 5 mins of surfing the web and bought the 530i. 25.5mpg on average and thats pure mixed urban and motorway. I recjkon thats pretty good. Goes like stink as well and my hands don't smell when I fill it up.

Ian, I have a 525tds its a good family wagon.
Its not cheap to fix, and I have had a few issues recently.
Leather & Auto on a derv. A 530 sport with toys would be a good choice.

B7 wrote:

pacerpete wrote:Best advice is buy a petrol 530. No injector issues,no pump issues, no swirl flap issues,no turbo issues ,25% cheaper and barely 5mpg difference in the real world.

+1. Speaking to a mobile BMW specialist in Camberley the other day and he was quoting horrer stories of the swirl flap issues. It's all in the original top gear hype back about 9 years ago. When new the 530d was an awesone car and made a lot of sense. Now?

Price of diesels through the roof. All the issues Pete mentions and a buyers premium on price.

I looked at them......for all of 5 mins of surfing the web and bought the 530i. 25.5mpg on average and thats pure mixed urban and motorway. I recjkon thats pretty good. Goes like stink as well and my hands don't smell when I fill it up.

+1
The petrols are far easier to look after,would only consider a derv if it was still covered by the BMW warranty,otherwise would steer clear!

As B7 and pacerpete says,lots go wrong and are ££££'s to fix!

The specialist i use in chelmsford told me to avoid as he sees plenty with allsorts of problems!

Interesting stuff. My uncle has been on about getting another car to replace the e36 320i he scrapped last year (he uses a van day to day), and said he fancied an e46 diesel and asked what I thought. My argument was, far from being prejudiced against diesels, I just think that aging used diesels aren't as economical over their whole life as the fuel consumption makes it seem - you usually pay a premium to buy over the petrol equivalent, diesel costs considerably more relative to petrol compared to when the diesel boom began, and the likelihood is that maintenance costs will be higher. Frankly I think diesel only makes sense in any vehicle if you are doing over 20k miles a year, or you simply prefer the diesel power delivery etc and are prepared to pay for it (I'm thinking caravan owners!). Furthermore, I had a go in a 330d a few years ago and was pretty disappointed with it - I thought it would be pretty pokey, but it felt merely adequate - I bet the same donk really ain't all that in an e39.

I have heard horror stories regarding both the 4- and 6-cylinder BMW diesels, the intake flap thing on the fours and turbo failures on the sixes mostly - the thing is, is a BMW diesel a better or worse bet reliability wise at this sort of age (6-10 years old) when compared to other marques (particularly merc & audi)? I know I've started to walk around with BMW blinkers on since my e30 fetish started in earnest, so I'm not always sure if the things that make me go 'AVOID!' are really that bad in the grand scheme of things.

Frankly, the 25mpg that Trev quotes for his 530 sounds pretty agreeable to me - we're talking about an automatic, large executive saloon with a 3-litre, 200bhp-plus engine after all.

go and buy an audi a6 avant 1.9 tdi 130. good cars and ticks all the "family car" boxes.

murran wrote:go and buy an audi a6 avant 1.9 tdi 130. good cars and ticks all the "family car" boxes.

Wash your mouth out! This is a bmw forum!

djk wrote: Frankly, the 25mpg that Trev quotes for his 530 sounds pretty agreeable to me - we're talking about an automatic, large executive saloon with a 3-litre, 200bhp-plus engine after all.

Picked up a refurbed set of wheels for mine yesterday and the guy had a 530d sport. MPG hes getting mixed? 32.5mpg!

Mines flicking between 25.6 and 25.9mpg at the mo. Compared to 32mpg and a shed load of issues? I know where my money's staying.

I had an E39 525d manual for 3 years, bought at 70k and sold at 140k. Bulletproof, reliable, averaged 45mpg (admittedly mostly M4 work), and was plenty fast enough for real world driving.

I have not heard of any issues with the 525d turbos, and they are substantially cheaper than the 530d's to buy initially though often less well specified.

Don't overlook the 525d. Magnificent car.

Martin.

murran wrote:go and buy an audi a6 avant 1.9 tdi 130. good cars and ticks all the "family car" boxes.

Curiously enough, my cousin (stepson of my 'uncle') owns a diesel Audi A4 Avant - it's a very practical and cheap to run car, with a surprisingly wear-resistant interior, but it is absolutely as dull as ditchwater, both to drive and to behold. He bought it to replace his e30 325i Touring - sold to me!! - I've yet to be convinced it was a smart decision. All VAG cars are excellent in a 'ticking-boxes' way, but could you fall in love with one?

Having said that, there are those who would substitute 'VAG' in the above for 'German' - perhaps we're all a bit utilitarian already as BMW fanciers.