[Acorn]

Bonjour from France!
My son bought a 2018 118i from Germany less than 6 weeks ago, and imported it to France where we live.
Everything has been great on the car until this week....white smoke billowing from exhaust and low coolant warning light. Coolant was topped up but very quickly needed topping up again and white smoke suggests head gasket problem.
He managed to get the full detailed history of the car and it shows that the head gasket was replaced under warranty by a German BMW garage in January 2023 so I'm assuming it should still be under some sort of warranty.
He's been in touch with the dealer that sold it to him and was told that it needs to be inspected by a BMW garage before going any further. Tried to talk to a French BMW garage about it and they are being rather unhelpful stating that he needs to get an independent 'expert' or 'jurisdiction protection' involved.
Any thoughts please as the warranty repair in 2023 should still be covered I think?

[No one]

Hello!

I think you should address the BMW garage that performed the replacement of the head gasket. It's just as the warranty repair is not paid for by the customer, the service's warranty liability may be not applicable, but BMW's might be.

The French BMW garage you mentioned declined your warranty claim but it could be an incompetent person actually: if you want to explore that way you should address another official BMW service or BMW customer support. It's just the warranty conditions applicable to your car should be German ones, apparently. But if you are eligible for BMW warranty you should be able to get it in France as well.

From my (limited) experience an official BMW service should be (very) eager to perform a BMW warranty repair.

[SlimDad078]

Which Engine is fitted on the car. . . having experienced the same but only to find that on the F20 118i B38 engine/motor, the issue is with the Turbo housing (aluminium housing) which is cooled by the engine coolant and directly connected to the cylinder head cooling galleries. The engine will emit the same symptoms as the Head gasket but in this case it is something completely different.

[Acorn]

UPDATE: Thank you for the replies so far and apologies for the delay in responding.
@No one...In order to have any hope of warranty claims the car had to be assessed, inspected and diagnostics done by a BMW garage...inconvenient but understandable. So there was a 2 week wait before the BMW garage could fit it in and last week I paid over 300€ to have it towed to the nearest BMW garage (70km away). My son couldn't be there at the time as he was in college but he got a phone call the following day from the garage. As soon as they plugged it into their computer they could see that it had been 'tuned' so they refused to do anything further....not even when my son offered to pay for diagnostics. They simply told him to come and collect the car which cost another 300€ to get towed back home. My son had apparently had the car 'professionally tuned' a week after he bought it but conveniently forgot to mention it so I guess any warranty is invalidated.

@SlimDad078: that's interesting...his is an F20 B38 and he has thought about it possibly being a turbo problem instead of the cylinder head. Is there any definitive test that can pinpoint whether it's a turbo or cylinder head problem, bearing in mind that BMW won't touch it at all now? Since he's had the car back he's run some computer diagnostics but no error messages are showing up at all. The turbo appears to be in 'limp' mode and I don't know if it would do that if the problem was to do with the cylinder head?

Thank you both in advance

[No one]

I guess it's too obvious to mention, but the tuners ("professional" ones, standing by their reputation, in particular) should (must, according to the local consumer rights law?) provide some warranty on their work.

I must admit it's extremely strange to me tuning not only invalidates manufacturer's warranty (on the parts tuned only, they say), which is obvious, but allows an official service to refuse any (paid, of course!) help at all. Like undoing a tune and returning the car into a "manufacturer valid", working state, for example.

[Acorn]

Well, it's been a good few weeks since I first posted on here about what we thought was a head gasket problem...


Turns out there was a hairline crack in the turbo...