[MajorJump]

I was driving home last night and put my foot down for a quick blast.

I immediately had the low oil pressure error flash up and I was told to come to an immediate stop. I was a mile or so from home, so just switched to full electric and made it home.

Does anyone have any insight into whether this is a common fault?

Thankfully I'm covered by a BMW extended warranty, plus emergency roadside recovery. The recovery I must admit was fantastic. They offered to have someone out to swap out the car within the hour. It was late so I postponed until today. Throughout the day the comms and service have been amazing. I had a technician out first thing who confirmed the car needed recovering to a local dealer. Within the hour the car was recovered and an hour after that I had a replacement i8 delivered (only 500 miles on the clock).

Great service all around and well worth every penny. Hopefully I'm still saying the same thing when I hear back from my dealer!

[MajorJump]

So I've now had a response from the dealer and it's apparently all fine.

I'm not convinced.

They drained the oil, filled it up, took it for a test run and surprisingly the error went away. Yes they've cleared the error, but they've actually not changed anything, so what's going to stop this happening again.

Apparently they drained 1.8 litres of oil from the car and filled it up with 4.5 litres. That's nearly 3 litres of oil that's gone which doesn't seem right.

They're assuring me that i8s burn oil at a rate of 1 litre every 600 miles. That also doesn't sound right. Plus I've had it for a year and a half and never had to top it it previously (I cover about 7k miles a year). I would've also expected some sort of "low oil" error too, warning me to top up, rather than simply tell me to stop the car. So that's also not adding up.

It doesn't feel like a thorough job, and they're keen to just push it back out and see what happens. Yes I can keep an eye on it I suppose, but I'm likely to find myself back there again soon and really risk doing damage to the engine if the oil drops suddenly again.

If anyone's got any insight into oil burn rates, or whether a low oil alert should sound I would appreciate hearing about it before I go to pick the car up.

[ericsi]

sounds like a massive pile of dealer BS to me. I would not have taken the car back.

[eswimm]

Originally Posted by MajorJump

They're assuring me that i8s burn oil at a rate of 1 litre every 600 miles.

That's absolute rubbish, it has an 11,000 mi oil change interval, are they suggesting the 4.5l oil capacity engine would consume 18l of oil in that time?

They need to explain where the oil went, even my V10 M6 burned less than 1l every 1000 mi and that engine was known for excessive oil consumption.

[MajorJump]

I've not taken it back yet, heading there tomorrow morning. I'm not satisfied with their explanation, but I'm stuck to some extent. I expect all they can do now is get the engine out to check it, which they won't do unless it's authorised, and it sounds like BMW warranty won't do that. The hire car also goes back tomorrow unless the dealer agrees to extend which they're currently refusing to do...

[eswimm]

Originally Posted by MajorJump

I've not taken it back yet, heading there tomorrow morning. I'm not satisfied with their explanation, but I'm stuck to some extent. I expect all they can do now is get the engine out to check it, which they won't do unless it's authorised, and it sounds like BMW warranty won't do that. The hire car also goes back tomorrow unless the dealer agrees to extend which they're currently refusing to do...

Don't accept a BS response. Who did your last oil change and how many miles since? 1 liter per 600 miles is obviously BS, because you'd be topping it off every month and presumably you haven't since your last change. Now, my M6 needed topping off every 1-2 months depending on how hard I drove it, but the electronic dipstick warned me when it needed a liter and I kept a couple in the trunk.

Escalate to the service manager or higher if you need to until you get a story that makes sense.

If they all burned a liter every 600 miles then it would be impossible (presumably) for you to have gone as long before adding more. If it was burning oil, why didn't you get a warning before 3 liters were gone? Was it under filled last change? Have they done a compression test to see if there's a problem?

If you have enough warranty left for this to not be an issue now, then you have some room to take the car back and watch it over the next couple months, but if you're close to expiring I'd push the issue even harder.

[MajorJump]

It's covered through to June next year, so there's a good window. It's just frustrating to be lied to.

I faced a similar situation with Jaguar. They were reluctant to investigate an engine fault under an extended warranty because if no fault was found they would be unable to issue a claim, and therefore make a loss. So they're pushing it away until there's a catastrophic failure.

I'll see how it plays out tomorrow. I'll certainly push it, and I'll put something in writing so that it's clear they screwed up if there's a subsequent fault, but I can't force them to fix and honestly, if they're that unhelpful I'm not convinced I want them to!

[emmfive]

Originally Posted by MajorJump

It's covered through to June next year, so there's a good window. It's just frustrating to be lied to.

I faced a similar situation with Jaguar. They were reluctant to investigate an engine fault under an extended warranty because if no fault was found they would be unable to issue a claim, and therefore make a loss. So they're pushing it away until there's a catastrophic failure.

I'll see how it plays out tomorrow. I'll certainly push it, and I'll put something in writing so that it's clear they screwed up if there's a subsequent fault, but I can't force them to fix and honestly, if they're that unhelpful I'm not convinced I want them to!

What a sleazy dealer. They know a litre every 600 miles is absurd.

Any other dealers in your area?

[MajorJump]

So I've collected the car. I pushed for a more reasonable explanation. The service rep went to speak to the technician and I got the following as a response:

"The car has an issue with an incorrectly calibrated oil level sensor. We've issued an update to the software to correct the problem"

A software update has apparently fixed a leak. That did almost get a smile from me. I pushed again asking where nearly 3 litres of oil went. Again they went off to speak to the technician:

"The car engine is often only fired up for short periods at a time and isn't reaching ideal temperatures, as a result it is burning through the oil. We have checked with BMW and the oil loss is within normal tolerances"

They're aware the i8 is a hybrid right? The engine will often turn itself on and off short short periods. I do do some short runs, but these are so short they're usually on all-electric. I have about 2 drives per week of 50 miles plus, mostly motorway, so the engine gets a good run there.

This doesn't explain why this hasn't happened before (driving habits not changed) or why there was a sudden loss of oil pressure. I was getting nowhere and it's clear they weren't interested.

I've collected the car, measured the oil level and kept a record. I'll run it and monitor what's happening. I just hope I don't have a catastrophic failure at a really inconvenient time and location.

There are other dealers in the area, but they're all part of the same chain. I will be taking it elsewhere though in future.

Thanks all for the support

[MichaelJohn]

Originally Posted by MajorJump

"The car engine is often only fired up for short periods at a time and isn't reaching ideal temperatures, as a result it is burning through the oil. We have checked with BMW and the oil loss is within normal tolerances”

By this logic, running the engine for longer periods will burn less oil? Yeah, right.

Btw, I have been through 2 oil changes and according to the electronic dipstick (which I got in the habit of frequently checking with my M5 which did burn oil) I have burned zero oil. 10,000 miles on car. Lots of starts and stops with the gas engine. Normal tolerances my a - - .

[patsgarageonline]

I do my own oil changes. After 6k miles, I got the same amount of oil out of the car that I put in (4L). The oil container I used had calibrated marks on the side. I was shocked to see it was exactly the same, since I usually drain less than what I put in on every other car I own.

[Louv]

33,000 miles on mine. I don't think I've burn ANY oil. At least not enough to require any top-offs between regularly scheduled changes.

Your mileage may differ... but a litre in 600 miles?!? Even my e39 M5 never burned that much. (It took a whole 1000 miles to burn a quart!)

[ChiTownM]

I have a 2014 for nearly 5 years with regular oil changes. Not once happened to me, my X5M uses a full liter the entire year or maybe more though. I use the electronic oil sensor at least once per week since I am paranoid too and the oil level has never moved, I do drive a lot in electric.

[jcpca356]

same here 5 years ownership, no oil burning

[MajorJump]

So it's been 5 weeks since my car was tipped up. I checked at the time and the level was set to Max.

The first photo is from a week ago on the 11th. As you can see it had already dropped.

The second photo is from today, so another week later, and it's dropped again.

I've no idea what that would equate to in terms of litres, and unfortunately it didn't note the mileage. But to me there's clearly an issue.