[xXxKoalaNipplesxXx]

Hi guys,

New to Bimmerpost but thought this would be the best place to get a definitive answer on this.

What happened was I was cleaning my car on my drive and opened the bonnet to fill it up with washerfluid and noticed white crusty stuff like as if a bit of chalk had been grated and sprinkled around the engine bay.

I thought 'WTF?!', then cleaned it - knowing I'd research it online later.

When I got back into my car, my drive is fucked at the moment so I'm on an incline and I had the BMW ping and it said 'coolant low stop immediately' or something - this is the first time it has done this.

I thought 'OK, so I'm on an incline, I'll turn off the car then back on when I'm parked on flat land', did this and the ping didn't come back. Then I read online and seen it could be a coolant leak on the cap.

I checked the coolant level and it was WAY BELOW MINIMUM - so I didn't want to drive I couldn't even see the coolant in there when you unscrew it.

So then I sent a friend to a car parts shop locally, who came back to me with coolant but it's this;



He said the guy in the shop said this can be mixed with the coolant already in there so it's fine. But he said 'dont mix it with water'...

So I filled it upto minimum and then took it to BMW, not a specialist actual BMW because my car is under BMW warranty until August.

In BMW - they sent me a video saying 'there was a bit of dried coolant around the cap so I assume this is spillage from when it was being filled', saying they also did a compression test and found no leaks. I explained to the girl to check the bottle in the boot (in the pic) and like 3/4rds of it was used so there will be a leak and I wiped away the crust. She was argumentitve saying WE WONT POUR IT OUT TO MEASURE IT and I was like what? Just feel it in your hand you can estimate to get an idea of how much I've put into the car...

Anyway, in the video the mechanic said he's 'topped it up to full', but didn't mention if he's used deonisised water for this, or coolant.

So - if BMW just put water into the coolant tank effectively my car will have had like 0.75litres of Granville and maybe 0.25litres of water...mixed with the BMW coolant already in there that came in it from previous BMW services or top ups by BMW (it's full BMW service history).

I also bought a coolant cap from BMW when I was there and it feels much better. It isn't 'tight' unscrewing it and screwing it on, it 'clips' into the locking position, so I really do think the o-ring on the other one was fucked and that's why all the dried coolant was escaping but the mechanic just assumed it was dried coolant due to lack of communication and not dealing with him directly.

I also bought another 2 bottles of real BMW coolant just in case it wasn't leaking from the cap or I need to top it up so I've got a load in the shed lol, anyway my car may have the below three things in it;



It's a 2017 120i F20 2litre B48 engine.

It's really a beautiful car and I paid £9k for it so I want to treat her nicely and make sure she's looked after.

Is having these three things in the coolant bad? I've got 3 litres of actual BMW coolant so if need be I can go back to them, buy more of the official coolant and then take it to a garage just to empty all the coolant however they would do this and then top it up with only the best official BMW coolant. Or is this uncessary and the car is OK to have those three things in it?

Advice much appreciated thank you.

[BMWnoob520D]

Hi,

If you only topped up a small amount, it won’t harm the car. But it’s not 100% according to BMW’s official coolant specification.

You can always check the owner’s manual to see exactly which specification BMW requires for your model when it comes to oils and fluids.

[No one]

Hi,

Granville is only good to be used the way you did: emergency filling. It seems compatible but anyway it's low quality. There should be a reason you chose BMW over "any other car". So even though about 1 liter doesn't look much compared to 7(+) liters in total it should be best to replace it with the recommended "official" one after you've solved the leak issue completely. That is, keep driving for a while and make sure the new cap is all it took to fix the issue. Then replace. You might want them to use BMW Genuine Distilled Water to dilute but this shouldn't be important over any distilled water (distilled water is not the same as deionized water, even though very similar ). My official BMW servicemen used the BMW coolant to top up a bit without diluting it with water, but that could be because I was standing next to them, watching.

[M5Rick]

Just use the BMW A/F 50/50 with distilled water to be sure.

[Scoffer]

You should use G40 type coolant.

[bimmermookie]

Originally Posted by No one

Hi,

Granville is only good to be used the way you did: emergency filling. It seems compatible but anyway it's low quality. There should be a reason you chose BMW over "any other car". So even though about 1 liter doesn't look much compared to 7(+) liters in total it should be best to replace it with the recommended "official" one after you've solved the leak issue completely. That is, keep driving for a while and make sure the new cap is all it took to fix the issue. Then replace. You might want them to use BMW Genuine Distilled Water to dilute but this shouldn't be important over any distilled water (distilled water is not the same as deionized water, even though very similar ). My official BMW servicemen used the BMW coolant to top up a bit without diluting it with water, but that could be because I was standing next to them, watching.

Agree with this. I wouldn't sweat it if it was my car -- you used actual coolant designed for wide compatibility and only a little.

However, as said above, I'd replace all the coolant as some point to BMW spec. After confirming you have no leak, it was just a worn out cap. Which is what it looks like.

Personally, I wouldn't be in a rush to do it. But I also wouldn't live with this non-spec mix for more than several months.

Might never be a problem, but changing it would at least be peace of mind. Which is worth a lot.

[25 V8 IS]

Reminds of when I crashed my 2004 Mustang Cobra. When the repair shop fixed it, they added a different coolant than the one already in it.

Well, that coolant mixed, turned into sludge, and melted down my V8. Repair shop was then out to the tune of $18K for a new crate engine.

[jonnyjet]

Yikes, this always makes me so cautious about mixing. Glad they were able to repair, but that whole time you were out a car.

Originally Posted by 25 V8 IS

Reminds of when I crashed my 2004 Mustang Cobra. When the repair shop fixed it, they added a different coolant than the one already in it.

Well, that coolant mixed, turned into sludge, and melted down my V8. Repair shop was then out to the tune of $18K for a new crate engine.

[25 V8 IS]

Originally Posted by jonnyjet

Yikes, this always makes me so cautious about mixing. Glad they were able to repair, but that whole time you were out a car.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I was out of my car for over 60 days if I recall correctly.

[RockCrusher]

I can't say that what you did is wrong or not.

I have been fortunate that I have only two times had to add fluid to the cooling system. Both times I used distilled water.

Using distilled water of course reduced the freeze protection of the coolant but where I lived this was not a concern. Also since I suspected there was a cooling system leak when I had the car in for this I'd have the cooling system drained and refilled with fresh coolant.

As it turned out I fixed the leak myself by identifying the coolant tank cap was leaking vapor when the system was shut off hot. A new cap was the fix. And because the bad cap was leaking water vapor adding the distilled water had brought the coolant back up to close to the 50/50 ratio of anti-freeze and water.