2007 BMW X5 engine bloown

[Mobster1983]

So a couple weeks ago my wife's 2007 BMW X5 died in the middle of the road. The car only has 34k miles. After a couple weeks of assessment by the BMW dealer, we have been informed that the engine was completely blown and needs to be replaced. This is a $20,000 job, which is right around the current value of the car.


I talked to our SA and he said the timing chain was completely off the rails, and had put a hole into the engine. They are not sure what happened exactly, possibly something in the VANOS system caused the timing to get off, which messed up the pistons hitting something else and jumping the timing chain off the tracks. There was no indication of a timing issue prior to this, so it was just a catostrophic failure.

Unfortunately, the car is a couple years out of warranty. We were able to get in contact with someone who will purchase the car for $8,000 as is, since he will probably tear down the engine and try to fix it himself.

I would like to get your opinions on this. It seems like extremely low mileage for such catostrophic damage. My wife is the original owner and has kept up on all the maintenance. The last few months we have been having issues with the car starting, and replaced a fuel pump (which wasnt the issue) and the fuel pump relay (which seemed to fix the issue). Other than that the car is in great shape.

Do we have any options with BMW NA? I would like to get an idea before we sell the car to a third party. I can't think of anything else.

[GraysX5M]

You should contact BMW customer relations

1-800-831-1117