[Luxy330]

Hi all,
Contemplating purchasing a 2013 328ix for my son. It has ~85K on the odo, is pretty loaded and appears (from pictures) to be in nice shape for an 11 year old BMW. Carfax is clean, with two owners, initially leased by owner number one. Pretty regular maintenance with nothing major highlighted.

Just wanted to get other owners opinions on this year/ model reliability. The 2.0L engines seem to be fairly reliable with the typical VC leaks, Vanos issues, etc. Anything important areas I should focus on when checking out the car?

I really appreciate all feedback.

Thanks!

[ooshnoo]

Don’t even consider it unless the timing chain has been replaced.

[Phoenix704]

I would probably walk away because of the potential for timing chain issues…

[Luxy330]

Thank you for the input. After a bit of internet research, it appears BMW "fixed" the timing chain issue halfway through the 2015 model year. The 2013 was sold before I could ask about the timing chain, so now we're looking at a 2016 with 90K miles. Few grand more but supposedly the timing chain shouldn't be as big of a concern.

[Wires]

Sounds like a safer bet on a car that you don't know the history. From the other posts on that failure, it tends to be a pretty catastrophic and expensive failure.

[wishbone]

Originally Posted by Luxy330

Thank you for the input. After a bit of internet research, it appears BMW "fixed" the timing chain issue halfway through the 2015 model year. The 2013 was sold before I could ask about the timing chain, so now we're looking at a 2016 with 90K miles. Few grand more but supposedly the timing chain shouldn't be as big of a concern.

beyond the timing chain the LCI updates are worth the extra $K... as someone who has retrofitted a lot of LCI updates into my pre-LCI