BMW Diesel Manual 525 tds SE Tourer CLUTCH PROBLEMS

this car year 1998 1st registered and any BMW bulletins re adjustments or knowledge of replacements that have been done due to premature failure.

a qualified consultant I can hire to help me.

My 2001 3 series had a new clutch at only 30k miles.

My brothers 520iSE had seven clutches in a year. First one failed at 8000 miles and always felt bloody awful, snatchy and biting at the bottom one minute, biting at the top the next, smooth and in the middle occasionally. Other six were all as bad.

BMW sent a bulletin out to dealers about it saying "Do not replace the clutch, it is a characteristic of the model".

Luckily, they sent the bulletin after he'd had his last clutch fitted.

He no longer drives a manual BMW, and I suspect after the 530d E60 that replaced it he'll never drive a BMW again.

IMHO, this has to be a hydraulic problem. Not the clutch itself. They are pure mechanical devices and can't really alter the biting point on a day to day basis. The biting point of the clutch itself might change slightly if it was overheated - and of course as it wears. But it varying *must* be down to the linkage - in this case hydraulic.

In news: snipped-for-privacy@davenoise.co.uk, Dave Plowman (News) decided to enlighten our sheltered souls with a rant as follows

Problem was, my brother - who's job at the time was very high up in one of the big breakdown associations - put the car in to a BMW main agent to be fixed. He told them the clutch was awful, and it was almost undriveable at times, and BMW told the stealership to replace the clutch every time.

As far as he was concerned, you should be able to put a car into a stealership and get it back fixed. Especially if it's a brand new car, serviced religiously.

This car wasn't even a year old, was only really used for motorway work, and it was virtually undriveable in town.

The same stealership were responsible for "fixing" the multitude of faults with his E60.

Yup. Don't get me started on BMW dealers. They - or all the ones I've used

- are total wankers. And on complaining to BMW about this, all they said was you can't call them wankers. Truly.