Mad insurance

[Monkeylegend]

Not all bad.

My 2015 528i is £250 with Saga currently and LV have just quoted me £392 for a 2018 540i M Sport.

I do live in a good Post Code area though.

[rottenegg]

milu said:

Didn’t know about the fires.
Good point about the headlights though. This one has the full ready to go wrong at any moment versions lol

I'm afraid so. EGR cooler failure melts the intake and or swirl flaps, or even burns a hole right through the intake in some cases. Leaking cam cover gaskets also drip hot oil onto the roasting hot exhaust manifold. It was well publicised when the UK police had issues with 530d patrol cars, sadly resulting in the death of a police officer.

Honestly, the price of BMW parts when it comes to accident repair is astronomical. Don't ask how I know!

But as you asked, lol, I slid my 330d into my garden wall last winter at 3mph. Frozen block paving + rock hard run flats = ice rink central. The cost to replace 1 x wing and 1 x LED headlamp was £5500. The headlight was replaced due to them being so deep, the folded in wing snapped the mounting tabs off. The wing was about 300 quid, the headlight was £1500. So that leaves 3.7 grand in 'paint, materials and labour'. It was a BMW bodyshop that did the repair.

Absolutely bonkers. In hindsight, I should have got a wing and light off ebay and sorted it myself, but hey ho.

That is why BMWs cost so much to insure.

[rottenegg]

Monkeylegend said:

Not all bad.

My 2015 528i is £250 with Saga currently and LV have just quoted me £392 for a 2018 540i M Sport.

I do live in a good Post Code area though.

Ooh yeah, I forgot about SAGA. I'm 51 and should perhaps exploit that. I live in Suffolk which is uber low on the risk ratings, but they still rip my wallet open with a pry bar.

[Monkeylegend]

rottenegg said:

Monkeylegend said:

Not all bad.

My 2015 528i is £250 with Saga currently and LV have just quoted me £392 for a 2018 540i M Sport.

I do live in a good Post Code area though.

Ooh yeah, I forgot about SAGA. I'm 51 and should perhaps exploit that. I live in Suffolk which is uber low on the risk ratings, but they still rip my wallet open with a pry bar.

I live in Suffolk also so worth a try with Saga. My other half has her C3 Picasso with them again for just under £250

[cerb4.5lee]

I wasn't aware of the fires either, and you definitely learn something new everyday.

[rottenegg]

Monkeylegend said:

rottenegg said:

Monkeylegend said:

Not all bad.

My 2015 528i is £250 with Saga currently and LV have just quoted me £392 for a 2018 540i M Sport.

I do live in a good Post Code area though.

Ooh yeah, I forgot about SAGA. I'm 51 and should perhaps exploit that. I live in Suffolk which is uber low on the risk ratings, but they still rip my wallet open with a pry bar.

I live in Suffolk also so worth a try with Saga. My other half has her C3 Picasso with them again for just under £250

Cool. My 330d costs £1250 to insure which is mental, so I will definitely try SAGA on renewal. I have a Golf 2.0 TDI as well which only costs £300 to insure, so there's definitely some BMWness at play, in my situation at least. Possibly due to a fault claim last year. A very very minor knock on my own property, but the repair cost was silliness.

[milu]

It was Saga that I had my Aston insurance with. They wanted £950 to change to 640. For 9 months remaining

Unbelievable. I was in a low risk area for the last 5 years. Cheap insurance generally.
However I have had money back on all policies since moving presumably because it’s even lower.
But no dice with this car. Oh well, I’ve got it now so best stop moaning lol

[rottenegg]

cerb4.5lee said:

I wasn't aware of the fires either, and you definitely learn something new everyday.

If anyone has an N57 diesel, I urge them to do weekly bonnet lifts and check the cam cover oil for leaks. BMW insured warranty will cover it. They replace the entire cam cover and reseal the injectors etc etc. £2000 job!

Another simple check - on the front of the engine, you will see the EGR valve with a clip on plastic cover, pop that off and move the actuator by hand to check it still moves freely. If it's jammed fully open, the constant hot exhaust can overload the EGR cooler, which can lead to melted and or catch fire intake manifolds.

There is a chap on F30 bimmerpost currently with a big hole in his intake because of that. He was lucky he spotted it before the engine cover and sound insulation etc caught fire.

The Police fires were also partly due to a situation consumer N57s are unlikely to see, which is idling the engine for absolutely ages whilst attending an incident, and then suddenly nailing it off full throttle on a pursuit call. That caused a con rod to create an inspection hole in the engine block, resulting in hot oil flooding the turbo/manifold.

It's far from an epidemic as far as civilian N57s are concerned, but its enough of an historical issue to cause insurers to have twitchy bums.

it's just annoying that Brussels forced these emissions controls onto car manufacturers, but didn't also didn't mandate a cost effective repair scheme at the same time, hence why so many people gut DPFs and map out EGR valves which defeats the whole purpose! The under bonnet temperatures when a forced DPF regen is in progress is scary. Even the tailpipes are too hot to touch.

Sigh, rant rant!

[jamckeown]

Had a Bmw 640d for a few years. Always around 700 pound or there about to insure with Direct Line. Then in December with no changes in circumstances they hiked it to 1850!! Searched around and the cheapest I could get was 1200.

[CoolHands]

There is no reason it’s just all absolute bullst

[rottenegg]

CoolHands said:

There is no reason it’s just all absolute bullst

Yup. Even non fault claims go on your record and can bump up your premium. Insurance has to be the biggest modern day scam going. Totally driven by fabricated 'statistics' engineered to discourage honest people from claiming. Better off just doing 3rd party only I think.

[Stillstand]

Same story for me with G31 530d. I'm 35, own home, good postcode, 12 years ncd and it's 1k / year. I'm doing 5k personal and 15k business. It doubled in the last two years and no sign of it coming down.

Complete scam, I know. Insurance in this country is effectively the wild west. but who are the specialists that people are using that aren't on the usual comparison sites? Are they usually competitive here for BMW's?

[Court_S]

My wife’s insurance renewal landed this morning…..£641 for an old 330i up from £400 last year.

Quick visit to Confused and the lowest price is £195 although that’s with the RAC who get bad reviews. Lloyds seem to get decent reviews and that’s only £230 (I’ll get £30 cash back too).

[Mr Tidy]

That sounds more like it!

I'm getting on a bit so I renewed my 330i with Saga in April for £284.