Nikasil

[Ian w]

As I did prior to buying my car, lot of potential buyers find their way to this forum.

Presuming bmw offers the same service worldwide , if you are looking at a car , not just a v8 as I understand the same problem affects other engines also. Get the vin number ring bmw customer service they will tell you about any dealer work done on the car and its original spec.
If it was and still is nikasil you should probably load in £2k+ to the asking price and the risk, if you use cheap labour, of it never being write again or £3k+ for a good job.
Most likely they will tell you it's had the job done by a dealer before 100k or it was born with alusil , in which case you can just expect the normal costs associated with a car of the age and size of this one.

Service parts can be a good price, there is a lot of people keeping these cars going so all the usual places (german & swedish, europarts etc in England) do a good trade in the parts and that makes for reasonable prices.

The popularity of this forum should tell you all you need to know about how enjoyable the cars are to own.

Don,t discredit a car for a poor idle , mine's alusil , always had a lumpy idle , goes well.

[632 Regal]

I didnt have any clue about this issue when I bought mine, when I found out about it it took me 6 months to finally get the codes off the block and another 2 weeks for me to actually look up the numbers because I couldnt sleep any more.

At first I had mixed feelings but it ran good. As time goes on I rarly even think about it either.

If I would have known about this I wouldnt have purchased the car and wouldnt have had the chance to experience what a nice car these are because I dont think I would have persued one.

I drove by the car 2 weeks before I even stopped to look at it and couldnt believe I could afford it, the intention was to clean it sell it and make some cash. Well...after new tires and thrust arms, a quick tour of Michigans UP with my kid and the way he would say "Bimmer" sold me into keeping it.

Thats my FINAL answer!

[632 Regal]

I called the local BMW dealer here and they didnt even have a record of what mileage my Nikasil was replaced with Nikasil...at least I think it was replaced. They actually didnt have much information on the car at all even when I went down there to but my antifreeze (that I havent replaced yet) they couldnt find anything on it...weird.

[DueyT]

It sounds like a Suzuki TLR1000 hehe.. nah joking, a Charger of course!

BG,

Kind of funny hearing, "mine idles [Alusils or Niks] badly...etc..." and then running the Charger...with a pretty long 255/265* at 0.050 cam in it on 108* centres...half the fun is watching the whole car shake at idle! Mind you, Jeff's Regal is probably far more than that!!!

Jeff, bro...you have any sound bites of the Regal idling/scaring the neighbours?

Cheers,
Duey

p.s. I knew exactly what I was getting in to before I bought...used it to knock many thousands of the price...turned out to be a terrific deal. I'm still convinced somebody is going to prang me (worse than the idiot that did me in the HomeDepot parking lot on day #2 of ownership, see Gallery below) long before the Nikky heart of the beast goes on it.

[Ian w]

The number to ring for any UK cars is 01344 426565 which is BMW GB.

I was given that much info I asked her to skip the minor stuff, would n't imagine it works for cars not first registered here. I got the number from BMW GB website. US , AUS , NZ , Canada should have something similar.

That should keep em busy.

[Tiger]

Guys... give it a rest about Nikasil...U don't like it... fine... Then how do you explain Porche using Nikasil engine in their limited edition cars that cost $400,000? I forget what model it was...

[Tiger]

And don't every baby your Nikasil engine... it wasn't meant to be babied... The harder you drive on it... the better it will survive this problem.

[Tiger]

Flame me... flame me... whatever...

[new540iowner]

As it turns out, my original Nikasil block with 113K on the clock is now idling perfect thanks to a German Chip I purchased on Ebay a while back. The original chip in the car had been "reprogrammed" to run with a lower idle as it constantly idled in the 500-600 RPM range. Well, after replacing the OEM chip with the German M chip, the car idles perfectly at between 600-700 RPMs and I even got the RPM limiter removed too! For all you M60 owners out there with the "reprogrammed" OEM chip, you may want to fork over the $100 and buy the German Ebay chip as the idle fix alone is worth the money to me.

[Bill R.]

As it turns out, my original Nikasil block with 113K on the clock is now idling perfect thanks to a German Chip I purchased on Ebay a while back. The original chip in the car had been "reprogrammed" to run with a lower idle as it constantly idled in the 500-600 RPM range. Well, after replacing the OEM chip with the German M chip, the car idles perfectly at between 600-700 RPMs and I even got the RPM limiter removed too! For all you M60 owners out there with the "reprogrammed" OEM chip, you may want to fork over the $100 and buy the German Ebay chip as the idle fix alone is worth the money to me.