[gpbeau]

The Maintenance manual for this car only contains a maintenance schedule up to 60,000 miles. I'm one of the weirdos who buys a car vs lease and really enjoy this one so I'd like to take care of it as per BMW's recommendations. I'm also one of those weirdos who does his own maintenance so things like differential/transfer case/transmission fluid changes, etc. don't scare me. BMW Customer Support wasn't able to help and the service advisor just tripped over his tongue trying to make something up. Does anyone know of a BMW publication with the maintenance schedule or can someone post some recommendations?

[SkykingUSA]

Weirdo. LOL

Sorry, don't have anything to help with your question. I guess I'm only half a weirdo because I don't do my own maintenance.

[rgw]

A coworker of mine had an E39 M5 and told me that BMWs are like mission impossible letters after 60k miles (they self destruct). Didn’t know that BMW essentially agreed.

[Blue Sky]

It’s just like any other car essentially. You just repeat the same cycles again.

But at 60k you should think hard about having most hoses replaced if they haven’t already been. 540 is a 6 cyclinder I think (it used to be V-8 in earlier 5’s), and BMW V8’s need valve seals replaced at about 80k miles, so you can forget that one.

Modern cars aren’t as much fun to work on like they used to be. They are really designed to be worked on in a shop and on a lift, often requiring tools that a casual home mechanic won’t have or can’t easily get. For real maintenance on V8’s, I just take it to my local independent shop which is very good. It costs a bit, but less than a dealer and far more trustworthy, and I don’t have to deal with all the crap like pulling the engine out in order to access and replace hoses, or deal with the million gallons of oil to drain that can overwhelm most home oil collection gizmos and then cover the floor of the garage with an eco-disaster reenactment of a tanker spill.