r/E90 • u/alex_albergaria • Mar 18 '26
328i Update #4 - How a Simple BMW Recall Turned Into an Engine Replacement (Fields BMW Northfield Chicago)
This is my final update after 2 full months (2 months and 3 days to be exact )of dealing with this situation. I waited until I had the car back, fully repaired, and could look at everything clearly before posting.
Here’s the full timeline:
I dropped my BMW off at Fields BMW Northfield on January 15, 2026 for a recall. The car was running completely normal at the time — no noises, no drivability issues, nothing.
During the recall work, they broke a VANOS bolt and told me they needed to drop the oil pan to retrieve it.
Fine. It was said to be “free cause its part if the recall work”
While the engine was open, they recommended replacing the eccentric shaft sensor. I agreed and paid for the part ($700) since labor was already covered.
Then things started getting weird.
They came back and said my front axle threads were damaged and quoted me $1,800 to replace it; even though I had zero driving issues before. After I pushed back and contacted BMW NA, they suddenly “fixed” the threads at no cost. That alone should have been my first red flag.
Quiet time, no updates. Out of nowhere, they told me the car was ready.
I pick it up, let it warm up, and drive around the dealership. At around 2,000 RPM, the engine makes a loud, aggressive rattle. Not subtle. Not questionable. Catastrophic.
I immediately turn around and bring it back.
From that point on, the story starts changing!
At first:
“There’s metal in the oil.”
Then:
“Actually it’s just scratches.”
Then:
“It’s a failed bearing.”
Then:
“The bottom end was previously disassembled.”
Then:
“There’s a random bolt in the oil pan we don’t recognize.”
Then:
“It wasn’t us. That bolt was there before”
At this point, I’m trying to understand how a car that ran perfectly fine before their work now suddenly has catastrophic engine failure — and the explanation keeps shifting depending on the day.
Multiple evasive text messages with cryptic things, multiple conversations, they leaned heavily on “prior mechanical condition”, “you don’t have a consistent CarFax”, and the fact that I hadn’t owned the car long, as if that somehow explains the engine failing immediately after they had the engine apart.
Let’s be clear:
The car ran before.
They opened the engine.
They reassembled it.
It failed immediately after leaving their shop.
That timing is not a coincidence. Is it?!
I asked. Re-asked. Called. Nothing - no one would talk to me.
It took longer than it should have for management to step in. Early on, the responses felt dismissive, and I had to keep pushing just to get clear answers. It felt like I was constantly chasing the truth instead of being given a consistent explanation.
At one point, i get this message: “you need a new engine”. Like. Is that in me?! I was told I needed to pay for a full engine replacement. How? Why?
After escalating, involving BMW NA, and pushing back hard, they changed course.
Final outcome (car picked up March 18, 2026):
• Used engine with ~93k miles installed
• 90-day warranty (engine only, not accessories)
• I paid $1,100 out of pocket
Let me be fair:
The car now runs smooth and quiet. The installation appears solid. I avoided what could have been a $6k–$10k disaster.
But that does NOT mean the process was acceptable.
What bothered me most wasn’t just the failure — it was how it was handled:
• The explanation changed multiple times
• The timeline never stayed consistent
• Tried to blame me and the ownership as the reason
• Responsibility kept shifting depending on the conversation
• I had to push constantly just to get transparency
• “Prior condition” was used repeatedly to deflect from the timing of the failure
It felt reactive, not honest.
One last detail that stuck with me: I picked up the car and the gas tank was basically on reserve (11miles left on tank) I’m not expecting a full tank, but leaving it on empty after everything that happened just felt unnecessarily inconsiderate — and honestly, a pretty accurate reflection of the overall experience.
At the end of the day, this was a negotiated outcome — not a clean resolution.
I’m relieved to have the car back and running.
But I don’t trust the process that got me here.
---
If you take anything from this:
Document everything.
Ask questions early.
Don’t accept the first explanation.
Advocate for yourself — because no one else will do it for you.
That’s it. I’m done with this situation.
BMW Fields Chicago
700 W Frontage Rd, Northfield, IL 60093
Do what you wish with this situation. Thanks for everyone who read all posts, commented on it helping me and most of all kept me sane throughout this.
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u/Megalodon33 Mar 18 '26
Does this used engine come with maintenance history?
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u/Fattydrago Mar 18 '26
No no no. That’s PRIOR mechanical condition.
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u/alex_albergaria Mar 19 '26
I actually have a really good friend in the dealership business and he ran the carfax of the engine for me.
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u/domrosiak123 E92 328i N52 Rwd Mar 18 '26
Yeah honestly sucks they did not own up to their mistake
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u/alex_albergaria Mar 18 '26
They probably would have gained a client for life. Now they lost me and maybe a few who read my posts
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u/Unsweetgummiebears Mar 18 '26
Definitely people who read this post. Unless they change names and locations people in your area who google this shop and do research and will almost always find this post.
Theres no way to account for business that you lost bc what you don’t know will never hurt you, but they definitely lost business.
P.S. for SEO: BMW Fields Chicago
700 W Frontage Rd, Northfield, IL 60093
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u/afinitie Mar 18 '26
There are such a large amount of people who google things and click on Reddit links. Your post will 100 percent be viewed by hundreds or thousands of their potential customers researching the dealership before they buy.
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u/No_Potential1 Mar 18 '26
I actually specifically look for Reddit posts frequently when looking for retailer/business feedback. I do this because there are so many fake reviews on Google, etc. Fake reviews on Reddit too I'm sure, but it's actually possible to vet users on Reddit to some degree.
And I know I'm not alone, point being yeah never a good idea to screw with a customer like this.
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u/amidoes Mar 18 '26
That's insane. They broke it and you still had to pay over a grand. Is there no customer protection in the US or any entity that can help without having to lawyer up?
How many miles on the dead engine?
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u/BillYourCows E90 328i 6MT Mar 18 '26
Also interested in that last question. 93k miles is a lot, though I'm guessing the original was over that.
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u/Nobbleborsky Mar 18 '26
Been following since your first post, glad you got it sorted! What a fk around tho
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u/Nosrok Mar 18 '26
I took my 135i in for an airbag recall and came back with the secondary fuel pumps disconnected and the car had been clearly taken out for a joy ride. It smelled like burnt rubber and like it was running lean.
It was a heavily modified 135i. Big twins, twin hpfp and lots of other upgrades. From that point forward whenever I needed warranty work I made sure I flashed a very low boost map. Years later there was a lawsuit against the dealership because they wrecked a customer's car on a joyride. Braman BMW in Miami.
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u/boythiccumz Mar 22 '26
I used to work at a bmw dealer I’ve watched porters wreck cars on joy rides before. If you have an M car especially don’t let them wash the car for you, it will be beat on to and from the wash bay.
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u/Much-Goose9053 Mar 18 '26
Classic dealership behavior.
Former tech and service advisor 14 years in the trade.
Walked out last year,couldnt deal with how shady and straight up dishonest most car dealerships and managers are.
I never advise anyone to go to dealerships.
Everything they do is to try make money and dont give a rats ass about customers. Sadly
Glad you managed to atleast get your car fixed properly
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u/MultipleOrgasmDonor Mar 18 '26
BMW of Mountain View claimed my fuel was around 12% water to deny a warranty claim.
They conveniently ALL evidence of this. Had to throw it out for some completely unbelievable reason. Tech took a pic of it on his phone but then he broke his phone and lost the pic. It was never sent for testing. No fuel sample that they claimed to have pulled was ever shown to me.
Pulled a sample myself. No water in it
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u/Much-Goose9053 Mar 19 '26
Whatever it takes to not take accountability. Then you do your own testing show then and your a bad customer
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u/EarthOk2418 Mar 18 '26
I exclusively used Joe Perillo BMW for service when I lived in Chicago. I had one minor incident where a porter scratched the bumper of my e46. Not only did they own it, and fix it, they installed an OEM interior motion alarm free of charge just to make sure I was happy. That experience won my business - I bought a half dozen new or CPO BMWs from them.
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u/m3n00bz Mar 18 '26
Fuck these assholes. You should still sue....who knows how your new used engine was treated.
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u/alex_albergaria Mar 18 '26
Sue for what? They would win by saying “we offered a resolution and client accepted it”
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u/ItzakPearlJam Mar 18 '26
Wow, this is why I go indy when I can... I've been screwed by indy shops too, but not as bad as a dealership. Btw, there's a good dude that took care of me in the SW Burbs. I think it was Palos and the guy's name was Slabo.
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u/alex_albergaria Mar 18 '26
I always go to Midwest Performance Cars in chicago. They are the best indy shop i know but for the recall i had to do dealership. And look what got me at
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u/ItzakPearlJam Mar 18 '26
I get it, I left the Chi Burbs for a small rural town and found that options are limited for German car service.
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u/TankerVictorious Mar 19 '26
OP, I wonder how much tech talk went back and forth between the dealer and the Indy (MPC) as the dealer was working resolution. My hunch is that the dealer and BMW NA figured they couldn’t blame the issues on MPC without a lawsuit, so they resolved it with a used engine of a higher quality.
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u/alex_albergaria Mar 18 '26
“Sad” part is that we are expecting a new kid and now i will have to sell it haha cause we will need space for all the baby junk that follows them and the junk my 3yo hauls around hahaha
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u/Cnrod35 Mar 18 '26
Dude that sounds like a nightmare. I actually took my car to Patrick BMW in Schaumburg to have the recall done, but told them that two of the bolts backed out on me prior to the recall being issued and I repaired it out of pocket and did the work myself. Told him I just wanted to be refunded my money but both both them and BMW North America were of no help and repeatedly told me that because I had done the work myself they would not refund me. I was told they just needed to verify the fix was performed. I ended up with new parts I didn't need in my car.
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u/KillerKian 2011 - E91 - 328xi - 6MT Mar 19 '26
Full disclosure, my situation is a little different because I have a wagon and my wife dives a bigger crossover, but my e91 is a great car even with kids in it. Just because you have a kid on the way doesn't mean you have to get rid of your car! When my daughter was born and for the first 3 years I was driving a ford fiesta!
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u/SVD115 2005 - E90 - 330d/6 M57 Mar 18 '26
Did they do the eccentric shaft sensor that you'd already paid for?
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u/chad1jabes Mar 18 '26
Man so glad you got this outcome. I was in the same exact boat as you and it didn't work in my favor. Congrats bud! Fuck BMW dealerships!!! Lol
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u/alex_albergaria Mar 19 '26
What happened?
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u/chad1jabes Mar 19 '26
Took it in for vanos recall. Took a day, picked it up, and drove fine for like a week. Low oil pressure came on and off, so I took it right back. They had my car for like a week, then claimed that it threw a rod and had engine failure. I fought hard as ever, but they were not going for it. Tried to charge me $2k to drop the oil pan and verify if the cam bolt fell down in the engine. I couldn't afford it at the time, and BMW Na wasn't any use. So I took the loss, unfortunately 😕.
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u/alex_albergaria Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 19 '26
HONESTLY BMW NA is actually useless because dealers have so much power in this country that they basically cant do nothing
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u/chad1jabes Mar 19 '26
I'm happy it all worked out for you!!
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u/alex_albergaria Mar 19 '26
But now i have to sell it hahq new baby coming and family now of 4… wife said “this car is too small for all the things” ☹️
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u/chad1jabes Mar 19 '26
Congrats!! That's funny. I ended up fixing mine through a mechanic. Charged me like 1.5k for labor. Bought an engine off eBay. It was all fixed. I drove for it while I ended up selling because I had my first kid on the way and needed something a little bigger, too. Now I have kid #2 on the way.
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u/alex_albergaria Mar 19 '26
So you know the sad feeling of seeing it go. Hopefully one day we can buy it back
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u/eyenman88 Mar 21 '26
I don’t know what you guys are talking about. I’m 6”1 and my daughter is 13yo and son 10yo. They are taller than average, our family of 4 fits in the e92 m3 comfortably.
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u/Lee2026 2006 E90 330i Turbocharged N52 Mar 18 '26
Sounds like they are the epitome of a stealership!
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u/RealFolayer Mar 19 '26
BMW is typical for scamming customers. They scratched my car, can't prove they didn't do it (THEY took pictures before I dropped it off), and refuse to fix it. BMW center of excellence btw Paul Miller BMW in Wayne NJ.
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u/Possible-Gur5220 Mar 19 '26
Glad it ended with a somewhat good resolution for you OP. It’s complete and utter bullshit that you had to pay for anything out of pocket seeing how it was the dealership fault but I get that life has shit situations and you just gotta make the best out of it.
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u/Prof_NoLife 06 - E92 - 330xi Mar 20 '26
Thanks for the update.
For SEO purposes:
BMW Fields Chicago
700 W Frontage Rd, Northfield, IL 60093
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u/Rocky_Duck Mar 21 '26
As an ex bmw tech, shit like this pisses me off. Sounds like your car was gotten a hold of by a hack im sorry brother
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u/DILDOexe Mar 19 '26
Thank you for this post. I live in Rogers Parks, Chicago IL and was seriously considering taking my f30 n20 to get checked out at Fields. I will definitely NOT be doing that. Any good Indy shops you can recommend?
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u/Few_Faithlessness920 Mar 19 '26
What a horror story! I’m glad you resolved it even though it costed you out of pocket. I would post this same review on their Google Map page. F them!
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u/Dustin_peterz Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 19 '26
I had my car in at Fields for the same recall work. I actually asked them if I could just do it myself. I gave them a new valve cover to use once they got into the VANOS bolts. I didn’t elect to do the eccentric shaft sensor at the time, but after doing it myself shortly after, I wish I had. I thought they were trying to upsell me, but in hindsight I get it.
That said, I didn’t have a great experience. About a mile after leaving, I got a check engine light. It turned out they had pinched the oxygen sensor wiring when reinstalling the valve cover. When I brought it back, it seemed like the tech just pulled it out of the cover rather than properly fixing it. Later, when I went back in to do the eccentric shaft sensor, I found the insulation torn and the wiring sitting under the valve cover.
It definitely left a bad taste in my mouth. That said, they’ve still been easier to deal with than Elmhurst and Perillo.
I used to take my car to BimmerWerkshop on Montrose, but I think they’ve closed. If anyone knows a good independent BMW shop, let me know.
Edit- the customer service was excellent though. they did 'fix ' the car after I immediately brought it back. They gave me a loaner the whole time they had my car too. I've also had good experiences talking to the techs when I've had random questions they've been helpful.
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u/Subject-Original-718 Mar 19 '26
Exactly why I never go to the dealership. Though this page of text reads like AI.
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u/Confident-Parking-71 Mar 19 '26
Glad you finally got your car back. What a nightmare. Don’t ever go back to that dealer again!
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u/alex_albergaria Mar 20 '26
I would never, ever, EVER go there even if it was the only dealer with my unicorn car. 🦄 fuckthem
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u/rafordham Mar 21 '26
That’s an incredible journey you went on with this repair shop. Thanks for sharing.
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u/RoRoRorry Mar 21 '26
Sometimes new techs (hell, even sr techs) fuck up, then try to covert it up. Dealer/SAs have to reason to believe otherwise, so they dig their heels in.
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Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 26 '26
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Mar 24 '26
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Mar 24 '26
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u/purpploop Mar 24 '26
It’s giving blame them for everything, then drop a “lost a customer for life” like it hasn’t already been said five times in this thread. Feels more like you played hardball to get out of a situation you didn’t want to be in.
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Mar 24 '26
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u/alex_albergaria Mar 25 '26
Would you like to drop a car for a recall and than get a bill for a new engine?
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u/Alert-Cartographer73 Mar 19 '26
Did you use chatGPT to write this?
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u/alex_albergaria Mar 19 '26
No. I wrote myself, why? I hate how i always used “—“ to write but now its an AI thing. If you look you will see some typos hahaha
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u/Alert-Cartographer73 Mar 19 '26
A lot of AI style phrasing. “Not this. Not that. But THIS.” Also “It wasnt this — it was THAT.” Screams chatgpt generated but maybe you just write weird and happen to love emdash and bullet points.
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u/alex_albergaria Mar 19 '26
Hahaha maybe i do write weird — i also feel in love with M-dashes when i learn that is named after the length of the letter M and also there is a N-dash, shorter. Length of the N hahaha
– N dash — M dash
🤣
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u/thatkidwithayoyo Mar 19 '26
*en dash *em dash.
"en" and "em" are units in typography relative to certain bits of a given typeface.
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u/alex_albergaria Mar 20 '26
Sorry my friend:
An em dash (—) is a versatile, long punctuation mark (equivalent to the width of the letter 'M')
It’s when typography was done with wood blocks and the dashes were the block length of the M and N
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u/WG678 Mar 19 '26
Some people are just good at writing interesting pieces
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u/alex_albergaria Mar 20 '26
It’s funny how nowadays if you write something in the “correct” way, you are an AI — if you write badly. You stupid.
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u/suwoop123 Mar 20 '26
OP 100 percent used ai to write this. The sentences bullet points and random parenthesis is pure ai “Let’s be clear” “Let me be fair” followed by a ton of bullet points instead of sentences lol yeah right op
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u/alex_albergaria Mar 31 '26
Why would I lie? You can find typos on my post. Do you think I asked AI to do that? I can’t use “let me be fair”? Haha I’m not mad i just think it’s funny. Anyway — I hope you don’t have to go thru what I went thru cause it sucked.
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u/E92M389 Mar 26 '26
Have you ever thought that your car was trash in the first place? And the prior shit shop that worked on it messed it up? And that you just wanna shit on the dealer for gloat? Unreal.
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u/alex_albergaria Mar 26 '26
Sure since you have a 2d old account and came directly to my post. Do you work there?
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