40,000 miles a year super beater LPG
Discussion
I've recently started a long daily commute and as we all well know... any change of any kind justifies buying a car.
My criteria for making a decision on what to get looked a bit like this:
1. Only going to use it for driving to work
2. A bit of grunt for an easier time on the motorway
3. Reasonable feature list
4. Not on finance due to the mileage. I'm sure you can get a deal if you hunt around but I noticed if you took a reasonable monthly cost and recalculated it with a "40k per year" mileage allowance it made a very substantial difference to the monthly price
5. Good / acceptable fuel economy (the 5.0 v8 gets 25mpg and that's good for the size of it... but the bills were stacking up fast)
6. Nothing where mileage would be a problem. i.e. no cool low-mileage exotic stuff.
7. LPG - as far as I could tell it was cheaper than diesel. As the fuel itself is expensive for diesels the savings in additional MPG are not enough to offset the high fuel cost so LPG wins.
For a while I was looking at a Merc c180 kompressor but it only has a piddley 1.6 and I imagined that would be pretty gruff. The quoted fuel usage of this car is 46mpg. £3299 on Autotrader.
LPG cars are easy to find as the three letters aren't common so goes into the search on Autotrader or eBay and you get a selection of cars with LPG and you pick one.
There were lots of cars that caught my attention. A CLS 500 with LPG was very tempting but the figures didn't stack up. 2 or 3 Lexus LS400/430s were showing, same problem.
I didn't want anything bluff like a KIA or Corsa or anything like that. No huge off-roaders either.
A new listing popped up on Autotrader for a BMW 330i with LPG for £1200
It was "spares repairs" due to noisy engine which probably required a timing chain. WHAT_COULD_POSSIBLY_GO_WRONG.
It was an 8 hour train journey to go and get it.
I scrolled past this car once or twice because the stupid "PERFORMANCE" sun strip across the top and the horrible wheels really put me off.
But then I started thinking the sunstrip could be peeled off and wheels for the E90 are so plentiful and cheap I could choose from a range of styles if I wanted.
I liked that it had an aftermarket stereo because it looked like it would do bluetooth music / handsfree calling.
Other essential features were cruise control and a nice thumping 3.0 250hp motor. The quoted MPG for this car is 41mpg v.s. 46 for the 1.6l Merc.
The only feature the car does not have which I'm concerned about is the lack of heated seats. Can they be retrofitted?
The E90 BMW has so many parts available for it you can get anything easily. I found you can even get new wood dash inserts... watch this space!
I bit the bullet and went for it. I was committed from the point of paying for the train ticket on Thursday for travel on Saturday.
When I got there there was a small rust patch at the front of the offside rear wheel arch. If you look closely you can just about see it in the photos. Other than that apart from being dirty the body has no dents at all... not even little ones that I've noticed. Completely straight. I checked out the MOT history and that seemed remarkably clean.
Got the key and started it up. I was disappointed that the noise from the engine was not what I hoped it would be. The N52 in this car has a rep for noisy hydraulic tappets which will clear with lots of motorway driving... would have been perfect for the use I had in mind.
I took a gamble on the engine noise. It seemed to me like an external accessory... not a timing chain. So I ignored that and carried on.
The test drive started okay... but after about 50 car lengths I could tell the automatic gearbox was kaput. The revs were flaring and it was having a hard time finding gears. After a couple of laps of the block driving it really gently the red warning came on the dashboard for transmission problem.
At this point I was beginning to have second thoughts.
I said to the owner that I was really disappointed that transmission problems were not mentioned in the advert. I think it was pretty reasonable after traveling 8 hours to say that it was a bit of a let down.
The owner assured me this was the first time there had been any problem with the transmission and had no prior knowledge of this fault.
YEAH RIGHT - with bells on
So I managed to get the car for £800. A BMW 330i for £800. That's alright, even if it was a bit broken.
The LPG kit was fitted in 2020 so I thought that was good. Basically a new kit with a certificate.
While I had been on the train I was looking for wheels nearby and I found some in S
horpe (well censored!). Not a million miles out of the way... on the way home - ish. The guy who was selling them said I could pick them up and he would sell them for £150 as I was collecting and he wouldn't have to post them.
On the way there a new major fault appeared. The engine started misfiring and the big engine warning light was showing. So the gearbox was knackered at the engine was playing up as well. I was feeling a bit silly.
I decided to see what the guy selling the wheels was like when I got there. I thought I might as well suggest he fit the new wheels for me and take the old ones to do whatever he wanted with. This worked. I figured the ball-ache of advertising the wheels on eBay... driving 200 miles home with a set of wheels in the interior of my car and then having to package and post them off to somebody just wasn't hitting the right notes. Likewise having them hanging around in my garage wasn't attractive either.
While he was fitting my new wheels I pealed off the sunstrip.
I nursed the car home. It's quite exciting and reminds me of driving crappy cars as a kid trying to drive around problems and hoping you're going to get home without a breakdown.
I managed to pair the phone with the stereo and cranked up Spotify. The subwoofer is utterly ridiculous. I'm a bit of a hifi nerd and have a nice system at home and I'm sensitive to bad stereos. The power the amp and subwoofer supply is painful and tiring to listen to. The bass you hear with my mild 60s to 80s rock tastes is insane. The thumping coming from the boot was like something out of Goodfellas with someone trapped in there banging away trying to get out. The rest of the standard BMW system does not match the power of the subwoofer so the bass is thumping to the point of pain on medium volumes. Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves sounded fine when I put on my classical list. So the sub will be coming out once I've verified the system will function without it.
I had a quarter of a tank of petrol and the LPG tank had something in it as well. With the combination of the two fuels there was enough fuel on board to get all the way home for free. 270 miles in total.
I got in about 11:30pm and went to bed. That was the end of Saturday.
In the morning I decided as it was a BMW of a certain era the misfire would be coils and plugs. I did a tour of the "within reach" branches of Euro Car Parts which were open on Sunday. I picked up 6 coils and 6 plugs. I got a drive belt and two door mirror glasses for right and left.
I got a set of "fitted" mats from Halfords which are very good quality. Surprisingly good for Halfords. I also took it for a valet. I pulled off the boot spoiler before getting it washed.
Diagnosis of the engine noise I think is the AC compressor. After fitting the coils and plugs there is no misfire on the initial test drive. I'll find out on Monday if the misfire has really gone. I have done over 500 miles from 4pm on Saturday to midday on Sunday collecting the car and picking up the parts.
I found one plug which looks pretty suspect with a cracked insulator. I also saw that there were two kinds of coils fitted with a mismatch indicating someone had been there to try and fix problems before. I consider coils and plugs to be consumables on these cars and as I'm planning to drive it for at least 40,000 miles in the next 12 months I now enjoy the peace of mind that these parts have been renewed. Even if it may just have been one cracked plug at this point.
I'm of the view that the gearbox fault is fluid related as the strange behaviours occur at all speeds and all gears. It also seems to be temperature related. I had to push it this morning as it wouldn't reverse by itself. Later on after it had warmed up reverse gear was fine.
It has the ZF 6HP19 transmission. I'm pretty familiar with this unit and I know the 'bridge seal' is a weak point on the BMW version. The bridge seal goes from the valve body to the rest of the transmission so if it fails and fluid pressure can be lost at that juncture it will have trouble in every gear and when setting off. I've ordered fluid and all the seals (inc bridge seal). These can be changed with the gearbox in the car and will take less than an hour. Sump off, valve body down... switch the seals, reassemble and fill transmission. After that I can reset the adaptions so it can learn the hardware after fluid and seals are renewed. If this does not work I have some spare transmission solenoids which might fit... but I don't think it's going to get that deep.
I've peeled off all the stuck on tatt now. The sticker on the boot lid, the trims across the rear lights, spats on the top of the door mirrors and the 'eyelashes' on the headlamps.
I had thought about buying new headlamp units but decided to give them a quick polish instead. Glad I went with that option as they came up perfect. I was surprised to find they were actually xenons.
Many people might say why go to so much trouble and why spend so much money on an old heap like this. My view is that I go to work to earn money and I should therefore keep my cost of doing business to a minimum. There are cheaper ways potentially of doing this commute... a very small number of tiny diesels will do 80mpg but this is at low speeds in complete discomfort. They won't get the same economy at full motorway speed and will be noisy and horrible while doing it. At least the BMW for all its faults is quiet and comfortable and the fuel cost differences are insignificant.
I also did the 'man maths' thing where I used the 5.0 v8 as a baseline. It would cost £9k a year in petrol so if I spent anything up to £9k in year one I would be saving money. Buying the BMW, fixing it and the projected fuel cost all-in will be significantly cheaper than just the fuel for my current car. I'll keep two cars so I have a backup if required. I also made sure I got breakdown cover included with my insurance.
Here's what it looks like with normal BMW wheels. There's still the gearbox to sort but once at a steady speed on the motorway it drives fine. I'll fix the gearbox next weekend. I'm pretty chuffed to have got it from gangster spec to respectable in less than 24 hours. There will be a lot more parts to buy and maintenance to do and I probably won't document that. Things like oil changes aren't worth mentioning. Fingers crossed it has what it takes to survive the beating it is about to get!
My criteria for making a decision on what to get looked a bit like this:
1. Only going to use it for driving to work
2. A bit of grunt for an easier time on the motorway
3. Reasonable feature list
4. Not on finance due to the mileage. I'm sure you can get a deal if you hunt around but I noticed if you took a reasonable monthly cost and recalculated it with a "40k per year" mileage allowance it made a very substantial difference to the monthly price
5. Good / acceptable fuel economy (the 5.0 v8 gets 25mpg and that's good for the size of it... but the bills were stacking up fast)
6. Nothing where mileage would be a problem. i.e. no cool low-mileage exotic stuff.
7. LPG - as far as I could tell it was cheaper than diesel. As the fuel itself is expensive for diesels the savings in additional MPG are not enough to offset the high fuel cost so LPG wins.
For a while I was looking at a Merc c180 kompressor but it only has a piddley 1.6 and I imagined that would be pretty gruff. The quoted fuel usage of this car is 46mpg. £3299 on Autotrader.
LPG cars are easy to find as the three letters aren't common so goes into the search on Autotrader or eBay and you get a selection of cars with LPG and you pick one.
There were lots of cars that caught my attention. A CLS 500 with LPG was very tempting but the figures didn't stack up. 2 or 3 Lexus LS400/430s were showing, same problem.
I didn't want anything bluff like a KIA or Corsa or anything like that. No huge off-roaders either.
A new listing popped up on Autotrader for a BMW 330i with LPG for £1200
It was "spares repairs" due to noisy engine which probably required a timing chain. WHAT_COULD_POSSIBLY_GO_WRONG.
It was an 8 hour train journey to go and get it.
I scrolled past this car once or twice because the stupid "PERFORMANCE" sun strip across the top and the horrible wheels really put me off.
But then I started thinking the sunstrip could be peeled off and wheels for the E90 are so plentiful and cheap I could choose from a range of styles if I wanted.
I liked that it had an aftermarket stereo because it looked like it would do bluetooth music / handsfree calling.
Other essential features were cruise control and a nice thumping 3.0 250hp motor. The quoted MPG for this car is 41mpg v.s. 46 for the 1.6l Merc.
The only feature the car does not have which I'm concerned about is the lack of heated seats. Can they be retrofitted?
The E90 BMW has so many parts available for it you can get anything easily. I found you can even get new wood dash inserts... watch this space!
I bit the bullet and went for it. I was committed from the point of paying for the train ticket on Thursday for travel on Saturday.
When I got there there was a small rust patch at the front of the offside rear wheel arch. If you look closely you can just about see it in the photos. Other than that apart from being dirty the body has no dents at all... not even little ones that I've noticed. Completely straight. I checked out the MOT history and that seemed remarkably clean.
Got the key and started it up. I was disappointed that the noise from the engine was not what I hoped it would be. The N52 in this car has a rep for noisy hydraulic tappets which will clear with lots of motorway driving... would have been perfect for the use I had in mind.
I took a gamble on the engine noise. It seemed to me like an external accessory... not a timing chain. So I ignored that and carried on.
The test drive started okay... but after about 50 car lengths I could tell the automatic gearbox was kaput. The revs were flaring and it was having a hard time finding gears. After a couple of laps of the block driving it really gently the red warning came on the dashboard for transmission problem.
At this point I was beginning to have second thoughts.
I said to the owner that I was really disappointed that transmission problems were not mentioned in the advert. I think it was pretty reasonable after traveling 8 hours to say that it was a bit of a let down.
The owner assured me this was the first time there had been any problem with the transmission and had no prior knowledge of this fault.
YEAH RIGHT - with bells on
So I managed to get the car for £800. A BMW 330i for £800. That's alright, even if it was a bit broken.
The LPG kit was fitted in 2020 so I thought that was good. Basically a new kit with a certificate.
While I had been on the train I was looking for wheels nearby and I found some in S
horpe (well censored!). Not a million miles out of the way... on the way home - ish. The guy who was selling them said I could pick them up and he would sell them for £150 as I was collecting and he wouldn't have to post them. On the way there a new major fault appeared. The engine started misfiring and the big engine warning light was showing. So the gearbox was knackered at the engine was playing up as well. I was feeling a bit silly.
I decided to see what the guy selling the wheels was like when I got there. I thought I might as well suggest he fit the new wheels for me and take the old ones to do whatever he wanted with. This worked. I figured the ball-ache of advertising the wheels on eBay... driving 200 miles home with a set of wheels in the interior of my car and then having to package and post them off to somebody just wasn't hitting the right notes. Likewise having them hanging around in my garage wasn't attractive either.
While he was fitting my new wheels I pealed off the sunstrip.
I nursed the car home. It's quite exciting and reminds me of driving crappy cars as a kid trying to drive around problems and hoping you're going to get home without a breakdown.
I managed to pair the phone with the stereo and cranked up Spotify. The subwoofer is utterly ridiculous. I'm a bit of a hifi nerd and have a nice system at home and I'm sensitive to bad stereos. The power the amp and subwoofer supply is painful and tiring to listen to. The bass you hear with my mild 60s to 80s rock tastes is insane. The thumping coming from the boot was like something out of Goodfellas with someone trapped in there banging away trying to get out. The rest of the standard BMW system does not match the power of the subwoofer so the bass is thumping to the point of pain on medium volumes. Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves sounded fine when I put on my classical list. So the sub will be coming out once I've verified the system will function without it.
I had a quarter of a tank of petrol and the LPG tank had something in it as well. With the combination of the two fuels there was enough fuel on board to get all the way home for free. 270 miles in total.
I got in about 11:30pm and went to bed. That was the end of Saturday.
In the morning I decided as it was a BMW of a certain era the misfire would be coils and plugs. I did a tour of the "within reach" branches of Euro Car Parts which were open on Sunday. I picked up 6 coils and 6 plugs. I got a drive belt and two door mirror glasses for right and left.
I got a set of "fitted" mats from Halfords which are very good quality. Surprisingly good for Halfords. I also took it for a valet. I pulled off the boot spoiler before getting it washed.
Diagnosis of the engine noise I think is the AC compressor. After fitting the coils and plugs there is no misfire on the initial test drive. I'll find out on Monday if the misfire has really gone. I have done over 500 miles from 4pm on Saturday to midday on Sunday collecting the car and picking up the parts.
I found one plug which looks pretty suspect with a cracked insulator. I also saw that there were two kinds of coils fitted with a mismatch indicating someone had been there to try and fix problems before. I consider coils and plugs to be consumables on these cars and as I'm planning to drive it for at least 40,000 miles in the next 12 months I now enjoy the peace of mind that these parts have been renewed. Even if it may just have been one cracked plug at this point.
I'm of the view that the gearbox fault is fluid related as the strange behaviours occur at all speeds and all gears. It also seems to be temperature related. I had to push it this morning as it wouldn't reverse by itself. Later on after it had warmed up reverse gear was fine.
It has the ZF 6HP19 transmission. I'm pretty familiar with this unit and I know the 'bridge seal' is a weak point on the BMW version. The bridge seal goes from the valve body to the rest of the transmission so if it fails and fluid pressure can be lost at that juncture it will have trouble in every gear and when setting off. I've ordered fluid and all the seals (inc bridge seal). These can be changed with the gearbox in the car and will take less than an hour. Sump off, valve body down... switch the seals, reassemble and fill transmission. After that I can reset the adaptions so it can learn the hardware after fluid and seals are renewed. If this does not work I have some spare transmission solenoids which might fit... but I don't think it's going to get that deep.
I've peeled off all the stuck on tatt now. The sticker on the boot lid, the trims across the rear lights, spats on the top of the door mirrors and the 'eyelashes' on the headlamps.
I had thought about buying new headlamp units but decided to give them a quick polish instead. Glad I went with that option as they came up perfect. I was surprised to find they were actually xenons.
Many people might say why go to so much trouble and why spend so much money on an old heap like this. My view is that I go to work to earn money and I should therefore keep my cost of doing business to a minimum. There are cheaper ways potentially of doing this commute... a very small number of tiny diesels will do 80mpg but this is at low speeds in complete discomfort. They won't get the same economy at full motorway speed and will be noisy and horrible while doing it. At least the BMW for all its faults is quiet and comfortable and the fuel cost differences are insignificant.
I also did the 'man maths' thing where I used the 5.0 v8 as a baseline. It would cost £9k a year in petrol so if I spent anything up to £9k in year one I would be saving money. Buying the BMW, fixing it and the projected fuel cost all-in will be significantly cheaper than just the fuel for my current car. I'll keep two cars so I have a backup if required. I also made sure I got breakdown cover included with my insurance.
Here's what it looks like with normal BMW wheels. There's still the gearbox to sort but once at a steady speed on the motorway it drives fine. I'll fix the gearbox next weekend. I'm pretty chuffed to have got it from gangster spec to respectable in less than 24 hours. There will be a lot more parts to buy and maintenance to do and I probably won't document that. Things like oil changes aren't worth mentioning. Fingers crossed it has what it takes to survive the beating it is about to get!
Edited by ingenieur on Thursday 6th June 12:04
Good luck. I hope it serves you well. You sound capable of nursing it where needed. Get the myLPGeu app and pay £10 for a Flogas key and set up an account with Calor. They are currently 60.3 ppl for LPG but beware the VAT they add when processing your card payment. Still cheap enough at £0.7236 ppl though.
Jhonno said:
Have you plugged the car into the XHP software and read the clutch pressures? I'd be careful about resetting the adaptives on a troublesome box, it can brick them.
I tend to take the view that if it is as close as that to being knackered then better to find out sooner rather than later. The solenoids adapt to the condition of the box and if they get out of the range of their most extreme adaption then the box is toast. i.e. if they can't adapt far enough to keep the performance smooth then the box is past it. Having driven it to work and back today I think the most likely situation is that it's low on fluid. Perhaps somebody accidently drained some or it wasn't properly filled after a service. The reason I think it's low on fluid is that the problems with the box are far more pronounced when turning corners. Also when cold so the cooling circuit is isolated meaning there's less fluid in there than there would be at full running temp.
As the adaptions can be done any time it is worth testing it without a reset initially. If it's all fine then it will adapt by itself over time anyway.
Mikebentley said:
Good luck. I hope it serves you well. You sound capable of nursing it where needed. Get the myLPGeu app and pay £10 for a Flogas key and set up an account with Calor. They are currently 60.3 ppl for LPG but beware the VAT they add when processing your card payment. Still cheap enough at £0.7236 ppl though.
Got LPG for 79p a litre today. That's not too bad. Mikebentley said:
I’ve been doing 25k a year on LPG in a Duster for two years now. It’s saved me £125 Pw over that period and dropped £1500 off the price I paid so been very happy so far.
I checked the figures before taking the plunge. LPG v.s. diesel v.s. electric. I guess once you're in the economy ball park you're going to be doing okay but I thought LPG edged it when all things were taken into account. The real MPG of the 41mpg BMW 330i is 31mpg tested over 145 miles. However... that is with old tyres of unknown pressure, rain in one direction which I think causes poor mpg and then having to contend with gearbox problems.
When it's fixed and is properly serviced with good tyres I reckon it might get 35mpg over the run but it's unfair to test it in the current state.
When it's fixed and is properly serviced with good tyres I reckon it might get 35mpg over the run but it's unfair to test it in the current state.
Interesting one OP. I'm in a similar situation (not quite as much miles) - but didn't want something new and expensive to depreciate.
I went for the high-mpg city car (Audi A2 TDI) which is awesome on fuel, but falling apart quite quickly. Can get 70 mpg on my 200 mile commute however.
I'd be interested seeing your equivalent MPG using LPG. I'd much rather commute in a slushy petrol than my current tin can..
I went for the high-mpg city car (Audi A2 TDI) which is awesome on fuel, but falling apart quite quickly. Can get 70 mpg on my 200 mile commute however.
I'd be interested seeing your equivalent MPG using LPG. I'd much rather commute in a slushy petrol than my current tin can..
For £800 that looks like a total bargain.
Re the noise, if you haven’t tried this, a quick and dirty noise ‘narrower downer’ is to pop the aux belt off and fire the engine up. If the noise continues you can disregard anything driven by the aux belt (alternator, ac compressor, pas pump etc). If it stops, you know it’s not a major mechanical issue and is simply one of the ancillaries.
Re the noise, if you haven’t tried this, a quick and dirty noise ‘narrower downer’ is to pop the aux belt off and fire the engine up. If the noise continues you can disregard anything driven by the aux belt (alternator, ac compressor, pas pump etc). If it stops, you know it’s not a major mechanical issue and is simply one of the ancillaries.
Just read all that; very interesting! What is your other car? You mention the engine but not what it's in.
I was expecting to see some M Sport wheels to be honest, as I think they're a really nice looking wheel, but would probably be at least twice the price.
Regarding the sub in boot, can you not just turn the gain down? Worth looking into for just a subtle addition of bass. Then again your boot is looking a bit full!
I was expecting to see some M Sport wheels to be honest, as I think they're a really nice looking wheel, but would probably be at least twice the price.
Regarding the sub in boot, can you not just turn the gain down? Worth looking into for just a subtle addition of bass. Then again your boot is looking a bit full!
Limpet said:
For £800 that looks like a total bargain.
Re the noise, if you haven’t tried this, a quick and dirty noise ‘narrower downer’ is to pop the aux belt off and fire the engine up. If the noise continues you can disregard anything driven by the aux belt (alternator, ac compressor, pas pump etc). If it stops, you know it’s not a major mechanical issue and is simply one of the ancillaries.
Brilliant!Re the noise, if you haven’t tried this, a quick and dirty noise ‘narrower downer’ is to pop the aux belt off and fire the engine up. If the noise continues you can disregard anything driven by the aux belt (alternator, ac compressor, pas pump etc). If it stops, you know it’s not a major mechanical issue and is simply one of the ancillaries.
paulyv said:
Limpet said:
For £800 that looks like a total bargain.
Re the noise, if you haven’t tried this, a quick and dirty noise ‘narrower downer’ is to pop the aux belt off and fire the engine up. If the noise continues you can disregard anything driven by the aux belt (alternator, ac compressor, pas pump etc). If it stops, you know it’s not a major mechanical issue and is simply one of the ancillaries.
Brilliant!Re the noise, if you haven’t tried this, a quick and dirty noise ‘narrower downer’ is to pop the aux belt off and fire the engine up. If the noise continues you can disregard anything driven by the aux belt (alternator, ac compressor, pas pump etc). If it stops, you know it’s not a major mechanical issue and is simply one of the ancillaries.
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