Did I Get Robbed???

[fisher99]

Yesterday I found myself stranded beside the road about 200 miles from home with a dead water pump (at only 30k miles). AAA hauled the car to the nearest town which had a BMW dealer. The bill for a new water pump and a new thermostat was $1,436.44. That seems like a RIDICULOUS amount of money! I'm curious to know if any of you have had this done on your 535 and if so, what it cost?

In hindsight, I probably should have paid the extra $$$ to have the car hauled 200+ miles back home and either swapped the pump myself or had my local mechanic do it...

[Pelican Parts]

Quick search on our site and the water pump is about $500 and a thermostat is about $100 plus misc parts - how long did the repair take on their end? Figure they charge around $100-$120 an hour. It does seem a bit high.


-Dmitry

[fisher99]

They charged $594 for the pump, $153 for the thermostat, and $650 for the labor, plus some other minor bits and pieces. They had the car for 3 hours. I'm going to see if I can get a quote from the BMW dealer that is closer to where I live, just for comparison sake.

[fisher99]

Ok, so I just talked to a friend who is a certified BMW mechanic. He looked up the prices and says that the cost for the water pump and thermostat are correct, for original BMW parts from a BMW dealer. He said that even though they did my repair in 3 hours, the book calls for 5.4 hours, which would mean that they charge $120/hr, which he thinks is a bit high, but not out of range for a BMW dealer. So... Even though this is a huge amount of money for a water pump replacement, I guess I didn't get robbed. At least by BMW standards.

[White94RX]

5.4 book time? Jeez, I'm losing money!

First, I wouldn't have replaced your thermostat unless there was a fault code stored for it. More than likely there wasn't. Some tech's just always replace them when they do the water pump. I guess it's one of those "while you are in there" replacement parts. The newer style thermostats are much more reliable than the older style (except for the 4 cylinder thermostat. It's garbage). So, I never replace them just because I'm doing a water pump. Our labor time is 3-4 hours tops on an electric water pump. Not all dealerships are full of crooks.

[Stück]

What you paid is a fair shake.

[fisher99]

@white94rx: I get what you are saying about the thermostat, but I specifically asked them to replace the thermostat and the associated hoses while they were in there. Who knows, I might have gotten another 30k or more miles out of the thermostat, but I'd have been really upset if it failed a couple thousand miles down the road, as I'm sure it was cheaper labor-wise to do it while the pump was being done. In all the years I've done my own water pump replacements (mostly on GM vehicles) I've never done the pump without doing the thermostat. Of course those thermostats are about a tenth the cost of the BMW thermostat...

- - - Updated - - -

- - - Updated - - -

- - - Updated - - -


Another question: I am really unhappy that the water pump failed at only 30k miles. Am I looking at doing this again in another 30k miles? Is this simply a poor and failure prone design? If so, I think I need to put this puppy up for sale...

[White94RX]

A water pump failing at 30k is uncommon, but not unheard of. They are electric pumps. I would expect you will get way longer out of the second one. Most tend to fail around 75k. Some more, some less. The pump on my E60 lasted 125k, but it was a 200 watt unit instead of the 400 watt that the N55 uses.

[fisher99]

Thanks for the reply. I feel a bit better now, although I do tend to put a lot of miles on my Bimmers, so I'll likely be doing this again at some point. But nice to know that it won't necessarily be in 30k miles...