Faulty Injectors

[KrisHorton]

So I had quite a scare on Friday evening in the X5M. I was getting on the freeway and at the top of 2nd gear, the iDrive came up with an "Engine Malfunction" warning and the car dropped into failsafe mode. Needless to say, my life flashed before my eyes and I eased off the gas quickly. I pulled into the nearest gas station and by that time the car was spluttering and surging. I had the car towed to my house since I was right down the road and I read the codes which showed a misfire on 2 cylinders. I had the car towed to the dealer the next morning and on Monday it was diagnosed to be 2 faulty fuel injectors which had in turn fouled all 8 spark plugs. I was told by my service adviser that they've had so many cars come in for this issue that they barely needed to diagnose the car...so I was glad to hear this wasn't a fluke. Care came home this evening and is running great and I'm very relieved the issue wasn't a big one.

I wanted to see if anyone else has had this problem and if they ever had it happen more than once. At least in the future I won't stress as much if it happens again.

[mrpcar]

Search for my old posts, I reported injector issues awhile back but no one seems to have the same issue. My guess is that people just don't know, if the injector problem left unattended they will eventually experience what you've experienced.

[mrpcar]

Here, saved you the time to search.

http://www.xbimmers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=722935

[KrisHorton]

Thanks for the link, that's really interesting. I'm glad I wasn't the only one with this problem. I believe what happened in my case is that the two injectors went bad and fouled all 8 spark plugs by making it run too rich. The dealer tech reported all 8 plugs were "fuel fouled."

[mrpcar]

Just curious, where do you buy your gas? One of the things the dealer did was pulling the plug and they did find signs of fouling to indicate that I had leaky injectors.

Other symptoms you should have seen is that the car is difficult to start after parked for 1-2 hours. Not cold over night, but just 1-2 hours after driven. Basically what happened is that the fuel continues to drop from the injector and causes the fuel line to loose pressure and will take extended long cranking before the engine will catch the next time you start.

[KrisHorton]

I don't recall any hard starts or anything, so mine might have failed harder and faster.

I'm not too terribly picky with gas as our M5 has thrown a fit with Shell V-Power premium and run great on Arco premium. I know some people are super gas snobs, but I'm generally okay with most brands aside from the super budget ones.

[mrpcar]

I've always used Costco for all of our cars, with all the recent injector problems I no longer go to Costco.

http://www.city-data.com/forum/autom...e-good-11.html

[BiG22DuBz]

Glad your dealer didnt try and hassle you and handled it right.....knock on wood, havent had any issues yet and i use arco and 76 gas and shell and i drive like a mad man