[joisce]

Hi,

I just bought an E90 320d a couple of weeks ago. It's my first BMW and I'm new around these parts so any advice at all would be very much appreciated. I'll list basically everything I know about the car and what I think has happened but feel free to tell me otherwise!

The car has some strange service history. At one point it's gone 30k miles and 3 years without a service, one service is at a BMW dealership but they haven't ticked that the oil was changed, just that the car was inspected even though it was an oil change interval. Other than the slightly strange partial service book I have no proof of any work done at all. Got the car on 139,800 miles for £2,600 from a second hand dealer who knew nothing about its history.

I looked into E90 320d common faults before looking at the car and was conscious of the service history but the timing chain was absolutely silent and the whole car drove perfectly and silently with no problems at all. The only thing I was conscious of was a panel gap between the front bumper and the bonnet. Under the bonnet there were a lot of after market part stickers making me think it has had a front end. Both headlights have been changed for sure. Other than this the interior was absolutely spotless and it drives perfect.

I just serviced it myself and found the fuel filter was not original, even though there is no record of it ever being changed. I bought new glow plugs thinking they will need changing (starts fine in the cold, just figured if I leave them in much longer they could seize) but noticed something on the top of the engine (not exactly sure what it is) has a sticker on which says Bosch and is dated 2019. So before I get out what are potentially new glow plugs I thought I'd ask for some other opinions.

Onto the EGR, and the swirl flaps. I figured I should remove the swirl flaps. I've heard stories of them falling into the engine when they fail and they get bunged up with carbon and crap however I noticed the EGR appears to be blanked, which makes me think if so, perhaps the swirl flaps will have been removed as well? Where the EGR attaches to the engine (I think?) it looks as if there is a blanking plate there. However, the EGR cooler is still attached. The EGR valve doesn't look like the ones I've seen on YouTube but it is also still there. The EGR cooler has a BMW sticker on it dated 2008. The car is registered in 2011, does this suggest someone has replaced the EGR cooler? Would you blank the EGR without removing it all together? What would be the benefit of this? Or is the EGR not blanked at all?

Finally, I went into the so called "hidden menu" and the total time the engine has been running is wrong. It just says 8 days. Which is definitely wrong. There is then 2 trips in the menu, one of which was on 49,000km and 1181 hours. This seems accurate as it gives an average speed of about 25mph but why does it only go back to 49,000km? not the 140,000 miles on the cars clock? It also didn't have a date for when the last software update was, just the letter F in every digit.

Tldr;
Has my EGR been blanked? Maybe just replaced?
Should I change my glow plugs or does it look like they've probably changed? Can you even tell from that photo?
Whys my "hidden menu" data a bit dodgy?

Cheers

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