Two years have passed unnoticed and during this time the information about more than a thousand vehicles equipped with N43/N53 series engines is gathered. Quite an impressive number of F series vehicles have supplemented the statistics. In this entry – about changes/new things. Basic situation in described the Statistics 2018 entry.
Naturally, even more and more vehicles have true HPFP problems, but on the problems’ common background, only several % of all cases. Yes, the desire for unqualified service centers to replace HPFP without justified reason is still present – such cases still are dominating.
During the last two years, several E series with still working OEM NOx systems were identified. For the F series, the situation was a bit better, but the number of positive cases does not exceed 5% of all cases.
In the context of the F series, we have to keep in mind the nuance – based on a pitiful experience with the E series, BMW AG has made a range of “improvements”:
a. all problems with the NOx system are carefully hidden; even the direct information, when and if the engine uses Stratified charge, is not available. For more information read here;
b. in case of NOx system problems, the engine runs a bit more correctly than for the E series.
Considering the last obstacle, many users are driving with a car, which runs on emergency mode (the car does not use Stratified charge due to some problems of the NOx system), and they don’t even know that. Due to an incorrect fuel mixture in cylinders and misfires, CO catalytic converters are damaged due to overload, also – the NOx catalytic converter is destroyed prematurely.
Insufficient performance of the CO catalytic converter for the F series is even more common. It happens faster than for the E series. Even after restoring the NOx system, the engine (typically – after reaching 100’000 .. 150.000km) regularly is not using the Stratified charge because the performance of the CO catalytic converters is weak. DME makes the decision to turn off the Stratified charge and starts to forcibly heat up the CO catalytic converters, to at least somehow reach the acceptable exhaust norms.
One more interesting nuance: on the Internet, the sellers of “restored”, cheap and as if “new” injector sellers/resellers have activated. More and more information regarding problems after installing such injectors are reported.
In the Peoples Republic of China, unknown “workers” started to manufacture (or simply repacking, or even worse – steeling) spare parts, as if compatible with OEM NOx sensors. Unfortunately, these sensors’ software does not correspond to the required one; accordingly – it is not even possible to evaluate the performance of these sensors because the DME does not “recognizes” these sensors. Although – even if the DME would not recognize these sensors, but they would work, the car owner would “get” the next problem – the error message regarding the reduced performance of the NOx catalytic converters (for the E series). As I already mentioned in this entry, in the case of the F series, BMW AG has decided to hide the NOx system problems – the error message for the insufficient performance of the NOx catalytic converters would not be recorded, but… DME simply would stop (will not restore) the use of a Stratified charge.
With a wider F series prevalence in independent service centers, more and more vehicles with strange damages appear: defects of HPFP; completely destroyed CO and NOx catalytic converters and similar defects by the mileage of 50.000 .. 100.00km. It should be noted here that usually, these vehicles had 4 ..6 or even more changes of the brake pads, 10+ oil changes. Yes, it is elementary for the F series to modify the odometer’s mileage – I mention this not without reason.
Good news for the E series users – the number of vehicles with a mileage of 250.000 .. 300.000km for the N43 series and 300.000 .. 400.000km or even more for the N53 series without any engine problems, increases. Yes, sometimes by the mileages above 300.000 .. 400.000 km, the HPFP should be necessary to replace, but no deeper interference is not required.
