Can a 10 year old BMW 535D still hit its limiter?
What happens to diesel performance after massive milage, budget maintenance and 10 years? We had no idea.
We regularly use a E61 BMW 535d when ever we need something bigger than the loyal CJ MiTo. It's a machine that hasn't seen much love in the last phase of its 10 year long life. The gearbox has issues, it slowly eats through its coolant due to a leaking EGR thermostat. Oh, and it runs on budget tires. Bystanders don't seem to have much love for the fünfer either, it regularly gets scratched or bumped into without leaving a note.
The car is soon to be replaced by a Tesla 90D and so we decided to give the Bimmer a worthy farewell after 250.000 kilometers of loyal service. A trip to a Polish wedding would send me all the way from the Netherlands straight through the land of the 'anarchist of speed.' Germany. It was only when this crossed my path when we came up with this semi-suicidal mission. Okay, the few beers and a serious addiction to speeding helped too.
After stacking up on coolant, looking up the Vmax of the budget tires, and setting out a good route with long strechtes without any speed limit, I set off somewhere in the afternoon. That way I wouldn't be hindered by too much traffic. Sadly I did hit a lot of traffic. This lastet all the way up to Hannover and at around 10ish in the evening it started to clear up. Kilometers of asphalt, 60 liters of diesel and some coffee. I was ready and so was the car. I hoped.
And it was more ready than I ever thought. Only near its limiter, which is set at 250 kph, did the car show its age. I remember a few years back when this car spurted through those last 10 figures on the speedometer, not any more. Getting to the limiter was harder than I thought, my assistent (aka GF) kindly snapped the picture when we finally hit the 250 kph mark. Countless times the car got no higher than 240 before we had to slow down.
So can a 10 year old BMW 535D still hit its limiter? Hell yes it can but not with the same elegance as it used to. But can you blame a machine which this high of a milage? I suppose not.
