BMW 330d F30 - advice needed on rust

[carbon83]

Hi, was at my father in law's earlier today looking at his new to him 2015 330d F30. I noticed a little bit of rust in the engine bay on one of the seams.
Is this something to be worried about?

Not the best photo but circled the area in green.

Cheers.

[ian332isport]

Nothing to worry about really.

That said, I'd probably remove as much rust as possible and apply a bit of touch up paint to slow it down.

[danb79]

carbon83 said:

Hi, was at my father in law's earlier today looking at his new to him 2015 330d F30. I noticed a little bit of rust in the engine bay on one of the seams.
Is this something to be worried about?

Not the best photo but circled the area in green.

Cheers.

Nah; not much of an issue. Sand it off, put some rust remedy on or similar and maybe touch up with the right colour BMW touch up paint kit

I've used this in the past and it works well: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bilt-Hamber-Hydrate-80-50...

[_Hoppers]

Have a good look at the seam on the front arches plus the rears too. I have a 2103 F30 and the rears were repaired a couple of years ago due to bubbling paint and this year it had new wings! All done under warranty without any quibbling! I noticed the defects early on so there was no doubt they weren't caused by stone chips etc.

[rottenegg]

Yeah the tyres sand blast the paint off the bumper edges and wing folded edges quite nicely. Glad to hear BMW are sorting that under warranty. VAG were adept and wriggling out of it due to a 'edge and fold' technicality, which isn't covered.

Not seen F30 wings rot up there. Could be a friday afternoon job or the wing was replaced by a previous owner?

[MitchT]

Interesting one. I'm currently on the hunt for an F32 - ideally a 69 plate or later. Is this something I should be looking out for?

[_Hoppers]

rottenegg said:

Yeah the tyres sand blast the paint off the bumper edges and wing folded edges quite nicely. Glad to hear BMW are sorting that under warranty. VAG were adept and wriggling out of it due to a 'edge and fold' technicality, which isn't covered.

Not seen F30 wings rot up there. Could be a friday afternoon job or the wing was replaced by a previous owner?

According to the body shop manager they’ve had quite a few F30s in for warranty repairs for corrosion. He showed me the (original from factory) wings after they had done the repair and they were corroding above the wheel arch lining line too. Corrosion wasn’t caused by stone chips etc, the warranty would not have covered corrosion from chips. My mate had an F30, I can’t remember which year but was probably 2018ish? The paint on his arches started to bubble but BMW wouldn’t repair his under warranty. The paint on my F30 was all original and has a full BMW service including additional oil changes at 9000 miles which I assume helped get the approval for repair?

[Mr Whippy]

I’m gonna strip my liners off and clean back and add extra protection.

The F30 seem to have some extra convoluted liner setup which is better on the arch lips but possibly worse at rubbing further up the arch (a bit like VAG Golf V with the sponge, doh!)

I’m sure if you just strip back, clean right back, and add about 5 layers of anti-rusty type medium then you’ll be ok with bi-annual strip/clear outs.


I still get frustrated with these designs. They should (given the daft cost of major services and supposed ‘checks’) have the liners a 5 min removal time and just drop, clean out, and treat, every 2-3 years… they’d probably never rust then.


Wrt bmw warranty work. I had some on my E85 Z4 but it came back 18mo later.
Imo if they’re gonna do a job, do it right. I’d have preferred to subsidise them £500 to use new panels for example.
It was a shame because they had the car a week and the paint was actually near perfect.