Cheers all. I'm in Brighton although the car was bought from the Horsham (West Sussex) area. In 3 hours hopefully I will have some fault codes. I have read and re-read the warranty and because of the car I have as good as the top cover with a £2500 maximum claim. It's 'The autogroup' by the way. My cover is good for a new head, skim and gasket etc as well as diagnostics. I'm taking it calm right now, even though I have to lose as good as a days pay plus 100 miles of super unleaded for a round trip to the dealer.
Advice noted regarding the compression check and leak down.....
Vines in Redhill (Surrey) or Munich Legends spring to mind off the top of my head if any major work has to be done.
Thanks for the advice....

I'd be extremely wary and deffinatley get a leakdown test rather than a standard compression test.

Mine did exactly this and it turned out to be head gasket gone........ It had lunched itself between all but 2 cylinders and actually managed to warp the block at the same time so a new engine was fitted under the BMW warranty :thumbs:

I was told by BMW that the head can't be skimmed or they won't do it anyhow.

Leakdown test a must !!

The car was running absolutley fine with the pinking for a while and then on the way to the dealers to get it looked at it started to misfire very occaisonally.

Matty.

Mine was pinging, (2009) at Snett with Bealo and then over the day it actually lost a bit of power and Bealo started to catch up :bigcry:

Then on the drive down to Simpsons it go worse, so test and slight head shave and thicker gasket and it was alright for about a year till it blew up :thumbs:

Well the fault reader threw up completely dead lambda sensor(s) so this is being sorted on Thursday. I must admit the pinking is very light and intermittent, in fact it was hard to get the car to do it when the dealer came for a drive with me. IF new sensors don't fix it the car is going up to park lane BMW to be diagnosed and whatever the issue is, fixed under warranty.
I must say the seller has been extremely helpful and confirmed it won't cost me a penny. Can't really argue with that.
Update end of the week!

Good news :thumbs:

Not the start you want to see but sounds like it will be covered whatever. Interesting its not going to BMW Brighton/ Worthing being local to you. I'll look out for you as im Brighton based also.

Yes Chandlers would have been good but the dealer has contacts in park lane apparently, as long as its done ! But I'm hoping its not going to come to that.
I'll look out for another local car then, I'm in Ovingdean but the car won't be about if there's a hint of rain :-D

Finally fixed! after two visit from the dealers 'technician' with new sensors and still not curing it, finding one wire to a post cat sensor almost split in half after being welded to the exhaust nothing fixed it. One visit to Chandlers BMW for a diagnostic check and all four new sensors showing as not working :banghead:
Cut a long story short, the dealer agreed to pay for 4 new genuine sensors fitted by them (existing new ones were 'outsourced') a large part of the connecting wires had been chopped too not giving a good signal back, all of these were replaced. I knew it had to be fuelling as the tail pipes were sooted up like a diesel! also when idling it was 'fluffing' as if the plugs were getting sooted up or fouled.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7.../photo47-1.jpg




Anyway, car fixed and running better than ever :notworthy:

good to hear that it was just some silly sensors and nothing that would rip a hole in the wallet. :smokin: