Bit off topic but I know there’s some knowledgable folks here on cars. I’m looking to buy a ‘new’ car and looking at an X3 from around 2020. We don’t do lots of annual miles total but regularly do a 600 mile round trip to see family. The 2.0d engine variant seems a lot easier to find but I haven’t owned a diesel in over 15 years so I’m out of touch. I’m not interested in performance (I have motorbikes for that…) so I just want a comfortable, spacious car for the long journeys. We don’t live in London (or a low emissions zone) but is it a bad idea to buy a diesel at this point? What considerations should I factor in?

If you mostly do shorter journeys then petrol is probably best. Obviously you need to factor in the cost of diesel Vs petrol and likely higher repair costs of DPF's and dual mass flywheels that diesels typically have. You can get some very frugal petrol engines now so I don't think the MPG difference is quite as clear cut as it used to be with diesels.

Thanks. We have a 2L petrol currently and yes it’s quite economical. As far as I can see the only 2L petrol equivalent on the X3 is a hybrid which I really don’t want. There’s a 3.0L petrol and a 4.0L but obviously they’re fairly thirsty I think. I might look into how the mpg compares with the 2L diesel and 3L petrol. What’s a DPF?

Diesel particulate filter, they filter out the extra nasties that diesels emit and then burn them off in a slightly more environmentally friendly way. Depending on how you drive, DPF's can effectively clog and stop working properly and will either need cleaning or replacing which isn't very cheap. If you do occasional longer journeys then you might not have such issues.

With some diesels you have to use an additive ADDBLUE or similar=additional expense? I would also agree with@Dusk's comments on parts / servicing costs. =. not cheap items

I’m wondering more about legislations and phasing out etc. Whether we’d get to the point diesels aren’t allowed to drive in certain areas etc. Ideally I’d like to keep the car for 5+ years so want to make sure there’s a level of future proofing.

BMW make sure you have a good warranty is all ill say 😂

> @"Cuprajake"#p73901 BMW make sure you have a good warranty is all ill say Really? I’ve had two for the past 7 years and zero probs. Got a mate with a 3 series estate on 150k miles and he’s not had trouble either. I always thought they were one of the more reliable manufacturers.

@"Cuprajake"#144 you’ve got me having second thoughts now. Are they that bad? It has a years warranty but beyond that it’s a ‘third party’ warranty option which always concerns me.

dpf £1800, injectors 200 each lol id say they are expensive to fix, but these days every car is if you dont need a diesel i wouldnt get one dont know your budget but a customer got a brand new mg zs for 23k 7yr warranty same as kia, who i also rate

@"HarveyMushman"#p73889 Don’t do it. BMW build quality is awful these days and parts are very expensive. Also a seriously uncool SUV!

Implications of buying a diesel car in 2024?

JimmyP

So dull. Reading the comments here makes me think most people are determined to buy the least interesting cars they have the opportunity to buy 🫤

JahLaza

I’ve a 2015 Audi A6, 2L diesel. Great car, keep it serviced as it should, never a problem. Until.. couple of weeks ago I got the engine trouble light. It needs an egr cooler replaced and mechanic says they’ll get the dpf cleaned while they’re in there, as it’s a big job and might as well do the dpf then. This will come to about €2000, as there’s about ten hours labour. I did a bit of research and it’s common and the price is about right for the work involved. My brother has the same car, model, year, has been driving the car for two years with this fault light on. Nct didn’t have an issue. I think I will drive it around and learn to ignore the light! Although that could be dangerous if other issues cropped up I wouldn’t be aware. My brother hasn’t had any issues however in two years! My plan is to drive diesel or petrol for as long as I can. The governments and car companies haven’t made it economical enough for me yet to cross over, in my country at least. I wonder will the hydrogen fuel cell or similar eradicate this ev environmentally damaging plan obsolete down the road….?!

DavecUK

JahLaza I will drive it around and learn to ignore the light!

We in the UK cannot do this, the car simply fails it’s MOT and becomes illegal to drive, necessitating scrapping. I know someone who recently had to scrap a perfectly good car, because it failed emissions and repair costs are more than the car is worth.

Hence we have the 10 year old disposable car.

JahLaza

DavecUK the car simply fails it’s MOT and becomes illegal to drive

Aparantly not here, my brothers car passed it and it had the fault at the time. I’m also told this fault doesn’t affect emissions it’s more to do with recirculating emissions which could affect fuel efficiency but again my brother hasn’t suffered in this regard in the two years or so he’s had the issue. Tend to agree with your disposable car theory! €2k to fix this issue which is very common in these cars. The dpf burn off is meant to be automatic in my car so I’ve never carried out the ‘>3000rpm for 20 minutes’ thing until last week after the garage reset the error,it hasn’t returned yet, but I’m told it probably will! My first car was a petrol Toyota Corolla, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s still going 😊

Amberale

We have three diesel tractors ( I’d love an electric one but even Jeremy Clarkson can’t afford that ).
We also have a Chinese made, diesel, 2 ton loader that we use mainly to move 500kg bales of hay.
We have a 45 year old Diesel Landcruiser ute that is realistically farm only these days but I did recently rebuild the motor.
We also have a 2023 Ford WildTrack with a stonking turbocharged Diesel.
It has all mod cons and we only bought it because we semi-regularly have to transport 3+ ton of cattle either to other breeders or to the abs and I got sick of watching the engine temperature rise any time the cruiser saw a hill approaching. These 4wds are very popular in Oz to tow caravans but that is not for me.
There are a few motorcycles and a nice little Suzuki SX4 petrol runabout that is our main car.

We do less than 20k km per year these days.
It might sound a lot to you folk in Old Blighty but we used to do over 80k pa when we were both working off farm.

When the Suzuki needs replacing we will probably buy an electric vehicle and use it as a back up storage battery for a household solar power system. That will probably happen the next time a Skippy jumps out in front of it and insurance writes it off.

There is a lot of love for hybrid petrol/electric cars in Oz and I can understand it.
I hired a hybrid Toyota Corolla last time I went to Queensland and I think it used less than 12 litres of fuel for about 600km of rural driving.

Don’t ask me about rego and insurance. :(

HarveyMushman

Amberale

In my ignorance I hadn’t quite considered how large Australia actually is until I watched a video on YouTube recently by a chap called ‘Million Dollar Bogan’.

They rode from Broome to Geelong on Harley’s, somewhat unprepared for the heat… some of those straight roads look like they go on forever!

Elcarajillo

The EGR does what it says, the. recirculating gas has a cooling effect (less oxygen in the gas= cooler burn)
Without this the engine runs hotter and can burn out the valves.

Elcarajillo

Elcarajillo This was from an engineering paper which I read when trying to sort a problem on my daughters car EGR= covered in thick diesel crap, stripping and cleaning did nothing– changed the car!

Cuprajake

and has the added benefit of crudding up the engine too haha

JahLaza

I’m not a mechanic, but was told by some mechanically minded mates that it wouldn’t cause damage to the engine, wouldn’t cause the issues listed on the last two posts, but, hey maybe yee are! Anyway this is digressing (ish) from the threads objective👍🏼

Tal

My egr is removed and mapped out on the old Saab…..

HarveyMushman

Many thanks for the further replies. Plenty to think about.

An additional question, has anyone had experience with manufacturer’s extended warranties? As in, the one you’re offered when the factory warranty expires?

The cars I’m looking at come with a year warranty but offered extended warranties that although offered through the manufacturer, are handled by a third party.

Has anyone had experience with these and claiming from them? I see a fair few reports of difficulties getting the warranties honoured. Obviously I’m not expecting coverage of consumables and fair use things but I’m trying to factor in protection against catastrophic failures or multi-thousand pound repair bills.

DavecUK

HarveyMushman They have these things called “Road Trains” in Aus.

HarveyMushman

DavecUK

Amazing! There’s a couple of double trailers in the video I mentioned but nothing like that one in the pic!

Here’s the video for anyone interested. The guy is a bit of joker but doesn’t take himself too seriously.

Cuprajake

Egr pushes crud back through the engine for a cleaner burn problem is this gunks everything up, I black tar carbon. The dpf also gets this gunk and on short journeys there not enough heat to regen, so they added as blue which is meant to clean the dpf.

Problem after problem, expensive to fix

On the older 1.9tdi VW engine you could just blank it off, modern day cars are so sensitive they throw a fault

Not you can have a dpf removed and the system remapped, same with removing the ad blue but these are not failures.

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