BMW BLOG

It has been a while since we posted some BMW tips and trick, so we decided to to renew that tradition and make it an habit. Of course, we can’t do this without your help, so with this occasion,  we extend an invitation to all of you that would like to email us some tips, tricks or fixes for our lovely bimmers.

Today, we’re going to show you how to reset your BMW inspection light that shows up on your cluster when you’re bimmer is due for Service Maintenance. One of our friends owns a 325i and he tends to change his oil at different shops who don’t own a BMW reset tool.

Without a doubt, many of you already know this, but for the others that are still new to the BMW world or simply never had to manually reset their light, this might come handy.

BMW Service Indicator Lights Reset

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Having purchased two new BMWs myself, I have been in situations where I looked up several resources on how to track my new BMW from its early ordering stages, to production status, ship tracking and all the way to being loaded on the transport truck.

The process can be quite obsessive, but truth is that I had tremendous fun seeing the car going through all these stages. Just to give you an example how obsessive this can be, I will just mention the fact that I have been tracking even the vessel that my car was loaded on and every day I would follow its course and ….even looked up weather reports on the sea to determine if there will be any delays. YES, I am that big of a BMW enthusiast.

Now what I haven’t done was to setup a complete obsessive exciting guide that will provide all the resources needed to track your newly ordered BMW. But, another BMW fan and owner comes to my rescue and provides, by far, THE MOST COMPLETE guide I have ever seen and believe me, I have seen quite a few on several BMW forums.

Jeff G. truly is an enthusiast and you will see from his BMW Ordering Guide below; I can only imagine how much time it took to dig out all these resources and then even more, to put them all together for the BMW community.

So, sit back, take notes, bookmark the page, share it with others, print it out, Tweet it, Digg it, whatever you need to do because this article will remain as one of the most important and useful articles ever posted by us. I have no doubt that you will learn a lot from his experience; I know I did, even though I thought I knew it all.

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We’re continuing our new series of “How-To” articles and today, we’re going to teach you the basics of changing the oil in your BMW, a simple DIY guide. Changing the oil of a BMW is quite simple and not much different to any other car. Forgetting to change your oil regularly may cause sludge to build up, reduce power and most important, damage your engine.

Some BMW use synthetic oils while others organic, but many BMW technicians recommend the synthetic oil due to several benefits: friction reduction – a reduction in engine wear, and it also helps improve fuel economy. Every 15,000 miles, BMW takes care of the service maintenance, but based on your driving habits, the display on your dashboard will announce you if the oil needs to be changed earlier. From my experience, 10,000 miles is the average for many BMWs.

Instructions

1. Park your BMW in a garage or in a place where you have space to maneuver around, outside is fine as well. As safety precautions, if you have a BMW equipped with manual transmission, place the car in gear and engage the parking brake. If you drive an automatic car, make sure the shift lever is placed in the parking position and once again, engage the parking brake. Many mechanics recommend to use wheel chokes to block the tires.
2. You need some tools before you start the oil change process. Make sure you have handy an oil pan, socket and socket wrenches, and a flat head screwdriver.

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Starting today, we will have some new content on our blog, we’re looking to mix up things a bit and start a section with How-to articles. We will keep the articles short and sweet, straight to the point.

The honor to start this new section goes to Stew, from BMWF1Blog, who will teach us what KERS is and how it works.

Straight from the 2009 F1 technical regulations is this definition of F1 KERS:

A system that is designed to recover kinetic energy from the car during braking, store that energy and make it available to propel the car.

Sounds simple enough.

The full KERS regulations are hugely complicated, but in general, units will be limited to 60Kw and the storage capacity for the device is limited to 400Kj. This means that a driver will be able to call upon an additional 80BHP.

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