PROJECT EX

It has been interesting to read about your BMW E61 530d project April to September 2019) as I owned one myself until last year. As you have found, they do have their foibles and common faults. The idrive can be a pain, but you do get used to it after a while.

One thing I used to do was keep a regular check on the DPF back pressure, as a fair amount of my journeys were quite short, so I wanted to make sure the DPF did not get blocked. It did regenerate fairly regularly on a run, but as a preventive measure I put a bottle of Cataclean DPF cleaner in the fuel once a month, which seemed to work very well.

Another thing I did was to ignore the BMW oil service interval and change the oil every 10,000 miles, as I can’t believe any oil will last for 18,000 miles. The BMW specialist I use also recommends a 10,000-mile interval to keep the turbo in good order. Richard Drake