Highest Mileage Cars?

[S3diment]

Do not get tired of this car or BMW orange.

[Arith2]

Reminds me of a Taycan...

[Robert's_BMW]

This usually means the headgasket breaks loose. Pulling a valve cover or oil pan is not separating the engine apart. Doing bearings is not rebuilding an engine unless it's a Subaru or Porsche. Don't become Mr. Technically. Changing oil is "TECHNICALLY" opening your engine. I would love to see how long an S54 would go on one oil change.

Rebuilding an engine isn’t a special term based on the type of vehicle. You are fixing an engine that either had a failure or you are preventing a failure. Didn’t your engine blow up due to spinning a bearing? Does that mean you didn’t rebuild the engine afterwards? The S54 is a great engine, but it has some pretty serious flaws considering the majority of us need to rebuild the Vanos or change the rod bearings for it not to explode. Not to mention, if you look on the UK M3 forum, most of them have headgasket failures in which they rebuild the top end of the engine. So whether it’s the head or block, that’s still a rebuild. Therefore, I would say that the 911 mezger engines, which aren’t without their problems as well, are at least as reliable as the S54.

[Obioban]

I feel like there's different categories of reliability:
1) Toyota/honda engines, which only oil changes to go forever
2) Engines like the S54/Mezger, which can happily go forever certain specific upkeep, but can't without (in the case of the S54, rod bearings and vanos).
3) engines that can't be made reliable
4) engines that are fine for street reliability but can't be made reliable (cool) on track (most forced induction)
5) engines that are reasonably reliable in their warranty period, but so complex that nobody will ever bother keeping them maintained long term (most modern BMWs, like the S63 pictured below)


Categories 1 and 2 are probably the hardest to do. The S54 is pretty close to being very reliable, imo-- the vanos tabs and cam bolts are the only real design flaws to the engine (rod bearings should be considered a wear item on an 8000rpm engine). Happily, they can be addressed in an afternoon of DIY work, after which it's pretty much just great. The overwhelming majority of street car engines don't hold up well on track with a reasonably quick driver-- be it overheating, oil starvation, whatever. The fact that I'm at 160,000 miles, with 10 years of daily driving/winter use, 20,000+ track miles, hitting the rev limiter every drive, and it's needed... one set of rod bearings (and preventative vanos lockdown) in that time is, imo, exceedingly impressive.

[Icecream]

This usually means the headgasket breaks loose. Pulling a valve cover or oil pan is not separating the engine apart. Doing bearings is not rebuilding an engine unless it's a Subaru or Porsche. Don't become Mr. Technically. Changing oil is "TECHNICALLY" opening your engine. I would love to see how long an S54 would go on one oil change.

Gotta agree with 'bert on this one. Our engines would have all grenaded themselves without vanos work and rod bearings. Both major lubricated internal parts that are critical parts of the "engine". But I see your point too, we don't burn oil (my old s54 had 210k on it and didn't burn a drop) so the rest of the top end was good but now we are being technical. At what point do you draw the line? If the Porsche has bad rings but good bearings how is that worse than good rings and bad bearings? I guess for mine, by the criteria above (which makes sense) went around 170k without touching any internals, that's when I found out the vanos tab had sheared.

[Arith2]

Well, then most S54’s fall out of that category since you need to change the rod bearings, by opening up the engine, or they will destroy your block.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This usually means the headgasket breaks loose. Pulling a valve cover or oil pan is not separating the engine apart. Doing bearings is not rebuilding an engine unless it's a Subaru or Porsche. Don't become Mr. Technically. Changing oil is "TECHNICALLY" opening your engine. I would love to see how long an S54 would go on one oil change.

[MTiz]

Lets get to 200k

[NaM3]

194k miles on mine and will continue to climb as I daily drive it. Blackstone oil analysis came back excellent. Subframe have not been reinforced but looks fine. Vanos have been done at 175k miles

[Robert's_BMW]

I agree.once you open up an engine that's it,the car died.its only impressive if it's the same unopened engine.

Well, then most S54’s fall out of that category since you need to change the rod bearings, by opening up the engine, or they will destroy your block.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[benzthis]

High mileage Porsches are extremely rare. I'm sure his engine has been opened up. You can make most things go a million miles if you rebuild or replace engines.

I agree.once you open up an engine that's it,the car died.its only impressive if it's the same unopened engine.

[Arith2]

High mileage Porsches are extremely rare. I'm sure his engine has been opened up. You can make most things go a million miles if you rebuild or replace engines.

[Robert's_BMW]

Porsche and reliability are polar opposites. Good luck finding a sports car that made it to 200k. You'll sooner see a unicorn.

I'm really glad I own an E46. No one at work believes the S54 will easily 200k-300k miles yet here we are. None of us are spending thousands upon thousands in one sitting maintaining the car.

Not really, depending on the Porsche, they can be very reliable. 996tt for instance. My friend is about to hit 195,000 in his.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Arith2]

Porsche and reliability are polar opposites. Good luck finding a sports car that made it to 200k. You'll sooner see a unicorn.

I'm really glad I own an E46. No one at work believes the S54 will easily 200k-300k miles yet here we are. None of us are spending thousands upon thousands in one sitting maintaining the car.

[Flex408]

194k and just did my Inspection #2, Rod Bearings, and a few preventative maintenance upgrades.

[Geroz1]

Damn, I have a long way to go with 63.5k miles so far... glad to see these cars are fairly bullet proof with proper maintenance