Hello everyone!

It brings me great sadness to be posting under these circumstances, but I figured I could lean on the community for a little bit of support and advice.

Before I get into the story, I want to say that I have searched everywhere for someone who's had a similar problem and I've come up completely dry. I also want to say that I understand that it's really hard to diagnose things like this unless you're actually standing in front of the car, elbows deep in grease.

I am mostly looking for individuals who know the limits of our engines, which points like to fail, and what it takes to get them back up and running.


My story:

About two weeks ago, I was in a huge rush to get my little brother back to our mom's place after spending the weekend with my wife and I. I was racing a snow storm that was forecast last minute, and my main priority was to get home before I ended up stuck in the snow (my mini is on BC Racing Coilovers and sits pretty low right now).

As I left town, my car gave me a generic CEL. I had my wife look it up on my bluetooth OBDII reader, and she said it just said low coolant. The car was still driving completely normal at this point, so I made a mental note to fill it when I got home and went on with my drive.

A few miles later, my car threw 3 CEL's rapidly. Low Oil, Urgent Low Oil, and Temp. I pulled over, turned around and started to carefully head home. Immediately after this, my car would only give me about 40% power. I up-shifted and drove a gear high the rest of the way home and took it really easy. I got about 4 blocks away from my house then it died at a complete stop at a stop sign.


When I got it up onto the tow truck, I noticed that my radiator hose was hanging from the bottom of my car- NO WONDER I OVERHEATED!

We got the car to my local BMW specialist and he took a look at it. Ran a compression check and reported:

Cylinder 1. 140psi

Cylinder 2. 120psi

Cylinder 3. 160psi

Cylinder 4. 130psi


He told me that he thinks I have friend 2 rings, and possibly warped a head or two. He also told me that my best bet for repairing it is to replace the whole engine- about $5,000 for parts and labor.


What I want to know is

A) Do you agree with my mechanic's diagnosis? Do you think he's trying to get paid more money to preform an easier job of replacing the engine rather than getting in there and addressing a smaller problem that is just more work for him?

B) Have any of you experienced anything like this before?

C) What would YOU do? Sell it to someone who wants a project car? Attempt to fix it?


I also want you guys to know that I understand that as soon as anything heat related happens, it's always best to shut the car down immediately and address the issue. If the weather circumstances were different, that's exactly what I would have done.


Thank you all so much in advance for any input and insight that you have into this situation!