[Dr.AD]

Originally Posted by heydj

Congrats on the new buy. Car is a stunner. Got it at only 14k odometer, wow. How did that happen? Previous user took a depreciation hit after only these many KM's.

Thank you heydj. As far as previous owner selling it, the reason I was told was that he also got a X5 and wants to buy (or already bought) a 5-series sedan, and this car was now not required. Whatever the reason, some people do sell their cars with such mileage. In many cases, the owner shifting abroad is a common reason. I saw three examples of BMWs with less than 10k km on the odo for sale in Bangalore during my search. So it is not very uncommon at all.

I am also looking to buy either a BMW or Audi 3 series but the thing that keeps me from it is the maintenance costs along with parts replacement etc.

Can someone please shed some light on this - if I were to get used BMW then how much additional yearly expense I am looking at.

The only safe approach is to buy a car within BSI or equivalent maintenance package for whatever car you buy. With BSI, all maintenance, including wear and tear components such as brake pads are covered (if you take the appropriate package). Without such package, the routine service costs could run anywhere from ₹50K to ₹1L per year, without counting any major parts replacement or any major issues.

The best and the safest practice is to have extended warranty (for any part replacement) and BSI (for regular service and wear and tear parts), and then you don't have to worry at all. However, this combination of extended warranty and BSI will still cost you roughly about ₹1L per year in total anyways, so net-net, be prepared to keep aside ₹1L per year as maintenance cost.

Originally Posted by vivekji05

Nice thread AD and lovely pics.

Glad to see you are enjoying your 3. Let me know if you are coming to Kerala any time.

Thank you very much. Yes, would be happy to meet you in Kerala when I come there next time.

Here's mine.

2013 BMW 320d Sportline. Black with Black interiors. Like you said, I changed the wheels to 18 inch Style 397 alloys.

Oh, you have got a beautiful car! Congratulations! Those alloys look so nice on that car. As I mentioned, those are my dream alloys for the 3-series.

How is your experience for ride quality with these alloys? Also did you face any issues for wheel bends or such with the low profile tyres? These worries are keeping me from going to 18" Style 397 alloys.

In fact, here is my wallpaper, which is my dream car in the Style 397 alloys, which is essentially the same car as yours but in red color :-)

[anandpadhye]

Congratulations! A great car!

How is the high beam performance? I find it lacking on mine! I think I have the same headlights (BMW LED, not BMW Adaptive LED). I got the car recently so no sure if there is a way to adjust the high beam but I have a feeling my GTI's high beam is more powerful!

[Dr.AD]

Originally Posted by anandpadhye

Congratulations! A great car!

How is the high beam performance? I find it lacking on mine! I think I have the same headlights (BMW LED, not BMW Adaptive LED). I got the car recently so no sure if there is a way to adjust the high beam but I have a feeling my GTI's high beam is more powerful!

Thanks you, and congratulations on your car too. 330i is an awesome car and I am sure you will have a great time with it.

Yes, our cars have the exact same headlights (BMW LED, not Adaptive).

I don't do too may night drives, but in general, had a few occasions to test the lights well. Once I was returning from Chennai to Bangalore in the night and it was raining heavily, and that was a good test of the headlights. Plus I did a couple of early morning drives recently.

I actually think the headlights are excellent. The beam leveling is automatic. You don't have to, nor can you, manually adjust it.

On both my earlier cars (Palio and SX4), I had upgraded to Phillips Rally 100/90 halogens, and they were very powerful and bright, especially on highbeams. So I am used to that bright light. But compared to that, I like the BMW lights better.

I think this could be a psychological trick that makes one feel the light is inadequate: On Indian roads, unfortunately there are no lane markings, and no reflective signs anywhere for your lights to reflect on. So your lights just throw the beam "into nowhere", and the white LED beams feel inadequate (as compared to halogen/HID beams). However, the moment there is some object in the path, it will be nicely lit. Thus, without giving you the feeling of overbearingly powerful light, it helps you see objects in your path clearly and quite far ahead. Once I got used to this, I started loving the lights.

In comparison, the SX4 high beam just looks powerful and bright, but scatters all over and does not necessarily help spot objects in dark. So now I find it hard to drive the SX4 in the night :-)

So my suggestion is that you give it some time. Do a couple of night drives, and then you will realize how good these lights are.

And it is not just us in India. I have read reviews on BMW forums in US and Europe too, where F30 LCI drivers are really happy with the BWM LED (not adaptive) lights on their cars.

[anandpadhye]

Originally Posted by Dr.AD

I actually think the headlights are excellent. The beam leveling is automatic. You don't have to, nor can you, manually adjust it.

Thanks, will keep a watch, and also do a lux measurement. There are 3 cars with full LED headlamps that I will take the readings on: 330i, GTI and vRS.

BTW, does your 320d have cornering lights? Does the appropriate fog light switch on when you turn?

[bottle]

If it helps I have a X1 with led lights and find the high beam really bad. If it's pitch dark it's ok but with oncoming traffic halogen lights seem to disperse the white light making it really hard to see. Really don't like night driving

I had a palio stile previously with super dim stock lights and I felt even that was ok

[Dr.AD]

Originally Posted by anandpadhye

Thanks, will keep a watch, and also do a lux measurement. There are 3 cars with full LED headlamps that I will take the readings on: 330i, GTI and vRS.

Oh, great! That will be an interesting experiment and I would be eager to know the results. Please keep us posted.

In general it looks liking or disliking of LED headlights is a very personal thing. I love the lights on 3-series, but it seems like you don't, and there are few others. I have a friend with the new Octavia TSi, and he loves those LED headlights and says they are absolutely the best. But then another friend with vRS says the LED headlights are inadequate.

Even on international forums, debates are on about usefulness or otherwise of LED headlamps. Seems like there is no clear answer.

BTW, does your 320d have cornering lights? Does the appropriate fog light switch on when you turn?

Very interesting question, and thanks for asking it, because I have been wondering about the same. Honest answer: I don't know. :-)

BMW has an app-based owner's manual, which is specific to your VIN number (you have to enter VIN while setting it up), and that is supposed to be the most accurate manual because it only lists the features your car has. I use this manual all the time and in general, found it to be very accurate.


Now this manual mentions cornering light with a very confusing picture:



This picture marks position 1 for cornering light, but I can't find any reference to this anywhere else, nor did I see anything like that there on inspection. Further, this picture looks like those of the pre-LCI corona rings, so it is indeed a bit confusing.

When I searched on the net, everyone says that one fog lamp comes on as cornering light. However, this happens at specific speeds only, and hence I am not able to confirm this (I will need someone to watch my car when I turn at a specific speed). I need to do that experiment yet.

However, when I drove in the night, I never felt any additional light coming on during cornering. I never felt the presence of any cornering light based on light output. So I have a strong suspicion that my car does not have this.

But the above picture from the manual says it has, and all the YouTube videos show that every F30 LCI has one fog lamp come on. Strangely, apart from the one above mention, the user manual never mentions cornering lights, and does not say the fog light comes on either.

So indeed a mystery for me :-)

[Akshay1234]

Originally Posted by Dr.AD

This picture marks position 1 for cornering light, but I can't find any reference to this anywhere else, nor did I see anything like that there on inspection. Further, this picture looks like those of the pre-LCI corona rings, so it is indeed a bit confusing.

When I searched on the net, everyone says that one fog lamp comes on as cornering light. However, this happens at specific speeds only, and hence I am not able to confirm this (I will need someone to watch my car when I turn at a specific speed). I need to do that experiment yet.

However, when I drove in the night, I never felt any additional light coming on during cornering. I never felt the presence of any cornering light based on light output. So I have a strong suspicion that my car does not have this.

The cornering lights built into the headlamp unit are only in the adaptive LEDs. And not present in the F30 lci. The picture above is of adaptive LEDs.

The fog lamps don't switch on either. That is something which can be enabled with coding, but like the VAG cars its not of much help. The cornering lights in the adaptive LEDs really do help.

[Dr.AD]

Originally Posted by Akshay1234

The cornering lights built into the headlamp unit are only in the adaptive LEDs. And not present in the F30 lci. The picture above is of adaptive LEDs.

The fog lamps don't switch on either. That is something which can be enabled with coding, but like the VAG cars its not of much help. The cornering lights in the adaptive LEDs really do help.

Thanks a lot Akshay1234 for this information. This solves my mystery. And also got a confirmation that I am missing out on one more feature. :-)

So this is indeed a wrong picture in the manual. In that app-based manual, which is customized to the specific VIN, this is the only error I have found so far. All other information is accurate based on the features my specific car has. Nevertheless, it is not great that the app/manual has this error.

Anyway, since I do not do a lot of night driving, I am not missing these cornering lights much. But would have been nice to have this feature.

[anandpadhye]

Originally Posted by Dr.AD

BMW has an app-based owner's manual, which is specific to your VIN number (you have to enter VIN while setting it up), and that is supposed to be the most accurate manual because it only lists the features your car has.

Even I read in the printed owner's handbook that the app is the best as it only describes the hardware present on your particular VIN. Very sad to see even that's got errors! Unpardonable. VW/Skoda owner manuals are very well written in comparison.

Originally Posted by Akshay1234

The cornering lights built into the headlamp unit are only in the adaptive LEDs. And not present in the F30 lci. The picture above is of adaptive LEDs.

The fog lamps don't switch on either. That is something which can be enabled with coding, but like the VAG cars its not of much help. The cornering lights in the adaptive LEDs really do help.

Ok, so another point where GTI scores over 330i - cornering fog lamps!
I do a lot of night driving and headlamp performance is very important for me.

[ais]

I drove for 4 hours at night yesterday. In my pre LCI 320d, the Xenon headlights were very good. But with this 330i LCI, even with 4 LED headlamps, on high beam, I felt there is a blind spot between 200 to 300 feet aprox. So at speeds above 90kmph, we can't really see craters or stones. At closer distances, from bumper till 100 feet or so, the illumination is excessively bright, even though the low beam moves up when high beam is turned on. At distances beyond 300 feet, reflection from reflectors of vehicles ahead, and sign boards besides and above the road are well lit. Its just at middle distance that there seems to be an issue. The height and sideways alignment is possible with nuts provided in the headlight assembly, as shown in YouTube videos. In my case, I feel just lifting the lamp units will move the low beam up enough to illuminate the right distance on the road.

I've asked the dealers Genius if the headlamp assembly can be moved up a bit. I'm also exploring other options. Let me investigate and update here.

[anandpadhye]

Originally Posted by ais

I drove for 4 hours at night yesterday. In my pre LCI 320d, the Xenon headlights were very good. But with this 330i LCI, even with 4 LED headlamps, on high beam, I felt there is a blind spot between 200 to 300 feet aprox. So at speeds above 90kmph, we can't really see craters or stones. At closer distances, from bumper till 100 feet or so, the illumination is excessively bright, even though the low beam moves up when high beam is turned on. At distances beyond 300 feet, reflection from reflectors of vehicles ahead, and sign boards besides and above the road are well lit. Its just at middle distance that there seems to be an issue. The height and sideways alignment is possible with nuts provided in the headlight assembly, as shown in YouTube videos. In my case, I feel just lifting the lamp units will move the low beam up enough to illuminate the right distance on the road.

I've asked the dealers Genius if the headlamp assembly can be moved up a bit. I'm also exploring other options. Let me investigate and update here.

Thanks. I am also in need of a solution. If you can get BMW/dealer to fix this, please share, it will be a big help.

[Dr.AD]

Last few months were very busy on work front. Therefore, I could not drive the 320d as much as I would have liked. However, I still managed to do some sporadic weekend drives. And on couple of occasions, drove the car to Chennai for business trips. Business trips to Chennai have become a lot more fun thanks to the 320d. :-)

I thought I should update this thread with a few pictures from recent drives. So here are a few photos:

Impromptu Meet at Salem: In early January, we did an impromptu meet at Salem. Bhpian Graaja drove his 3GT from Coimbatore and met us at Salem. RSUDARSANAN and I drove from Bangalore. Next morning, Crazy Driver, KarthikK and Deepfreak15 rode to Salem on their bikes and joined us for breakfast. Here are some photos from that.

A quick pit stop while on my way to Salem for this meet:



The three BMWs at Salem. Graaja's 3GT and RSUDARSANAN's 320d along with my 320d in the middle:



KarthikK on his Ninja 1000 joins the photoshoot:



The three bikes join the three cars. The bikes, from the left are Deepfreak15's KTM Duke 390, KarthikK's Ninja 1000, and Crazy Driver's Versys 650.




Overnight drive and meet at Malabar: The next drive was the overnight meet organized by RSUDARSANAN, at Malabar Ocean Front Resort and Spa. It was a nice drive with beautiful twisty roads and company of fellow bhpians! Here, a quick pit stop while on the way to the resort:



PraveenBalan's Blue Octavia TSi giving me a fast company on this lovely drive:



The two cars parked at the resort (the Blue TSi is PraveenBalan's)



At the resort, just before the departure for return journey:



The customary photo with the blue 320d of my best friend and "King of Meets" RSUDARSANAN:




A quick weekend drive to Coorg: Last weekend, I did a quick drive to Coorg and back.

A pit stop on the way to Coorg:




At the resort in Coorg



The car has been a pure joy to drive. Every moment with the car is fun, and my only regret is that I am not getting enough time to drive the car around.

And in spite of driving around spiritedly (whenever space and safety permits), the car returns very good mileage. This means a good healthy range on one fuel tank. I have been consistently getting range of about 830km (in real-world conditions!), and that means all these weekend drives are on a single tank of diesel! No need to worry about finding a clean fuel station while in unknown places!

As an example, here is a screenshot of the fuel economy I got after two hours of drive on my way to Coorg. The first one hour involved tackling the heavy Bangalore traffic - as reflected in the average speed - and in spite of that, I got 17.3 km/l:

[vb-saan]

Congratulations! That's a beautiful red number and the black interiors just elevates the charm. BMW still delivers on the 'Joy' factor; wonder what's with the Germans when it comes to Apple Car Play and Android Auto!

[ais]

Originally Posted by anandpadhye

Thanks. I am also in need of a solution. If you can get BMW/dealer to fix this, please share, it will be a big help.

I got the headlight adjusted at Krishna Motors, Chandigarh. They used their instruments (adjustable lens/reflector/light adjuster https://images.app.goo.gl/cNiBmrkEH2iABSzg7 ) to make the adjustment. However, I still felt that the high beam was low and the left beam was aimed left. After discussions with the experts at the service centre, we decided that I'll make the adjustments myself. So I procured a 6mm Allen Key. I tried adjustments by aiming the beam on a wall and marking the brightest focus points with a tape as shown in various videos on YouTube, such as this

https://youtu.be/5CcP0gJCJk0

However, I was still dissatisfied.

Finally, I drove to a road with almost no streetlights, and parked the car pointing to a 10 feet high hedged wall 150 metres away. Here is what worked best-

Stand outside the car, keeping the bonnet ajar but not open, driver door open in order to operate the headlight switch from outside without entering the car. Switch the lights off and on. The low beam will point near the car and then adjust upwards (auto levelling). In the nearest position, we get a fair idea if the beams are pointing towards the middle so as to intersect at desired distance (50 metres aprox) after auto levelling upwards). If the beams are veering off, open the bonnet fully and adjust them with the 6mm allen key. The horizontal adjustment is done by turning the while plastic allen nut closer to the front side fender . In order to see which way the beams are adjusting (which is difficult to see because the BMW LED lights are wide spread rather than focussed beams as in projector/xenon/halogen headlight beams), look at the ground/road about 2 metres ahead of the car. There is a dark unlit area just ahead of the car. Then there are clear lines from where the road illumination begins. These lines should intersect exactly in the middle and one can see if this is happening or not by standing right in front of the number plate (middle). All adjustments (horizontal or vertical) can easily be seen happening with these lines cast by the headlights. Lower the bonnet (without shutting it so you can open it for further adjustments without using the opening lever). Switch the lights off and on again, repeating the process until the low beams intersect at about 50 metres after rising for levelling. Once you've got the low beam sorted, move to vertical adjustment. Bear in mind that when we switch to high beam, the low beam remains on and moves up a bit. It is the LOW BEAM that illuminates the crucial area of the road ahead when driving at high speed (150-200 metres ahead at 90kmph+). So if we end up aiming the high beams too high, this important area of the road will not be illuminated as the low beam too will be aimed too high. The entire headlamp assembly moves with adjustments, not each of the two lamps individually in each sides headlamp (even though the low and high beams emerge from separate LED bulbs).

To adjust the high beam, observe the wall/hedge/whatever you've parked against to illuminate 150+ metres away. The white plastic nuts closer to the radiator are meant for vertical adjustment. Again, the lines demarcating the unlit area 2 metres ahead of the front bumper will come in handy to see what's going on with each turn of the allen key.

It took me about 60 minutes in completing the process, including several test drives. Eventually, the result is fantastic- the low beam is not uselessly close to the car as was originally, and the high beam illuminates signboards as far as I could see (500mts minimum). Vehicles and pedestrians were illuminated well ahead. I'll be sure about visibility of craters/potholes/stones at reasonable distances only when I drive next time on highways at night, and I still have doubts due to the nature of the beams being widespread, not focussed as explained before.

The above is probably the best method with results that help in realistic situations rather than a workshop. The adjustments still may need fine tuning the good old fashioned way- in winter fog when the chance arises. I shall wait for such a night, armed with the 6mm Allen key!

Also, I noticed that the passenger side wiper blade seemed a bit too high in its rest position. So I took the car to the workshop again and compared with 3 series cars in stock, as well as pictures of my earlier car 320d. Nobody is sure of the recommended position, and 3 series seem to have that wiper pretty high above the darkened part of the windscreen. In my opinion, it shouldn't be that high as it will be within the air flow over the bonnet. Again as per my opinion, it should be between the rain sensor panel and the edge of the darkened part of the windscreen and not visible to the driver from inside the car. This is where it was in the 320d-



I got mine adjusted to a position slightly lower than in the pic above. Any lower, and it would foul with the rubber beading of the windscreen.

[Dr.AD]

Originally Posted by anandpadhye

How is the high beam performance? I find it lacking on mine! I think I have the same headlights (BMW LED, not BMW Adaptive LED). I got the car recently so no sure if there is a way to adjust the high beam but I have a feeling my GTI's high beam is more powerful!

Originally Posted by ais

I got the headlight adjusted at Krishna Motors, Chandigarh.

Thank you to you guys for raising these issue and the solutions. I had some interesting experience with this and thought I should post it here.

As I said, to begin with, I was happy with my LED headlights. Since I bought this car pre-owned, I did not know if that headlight setting was factory setting or was adjusted by the previous owner. Whatever it was, I was happy with it.

Later, at one point, I gave my car for routine oil change, and when I got it back, I noticed that the headlights were messed up. The illuminated area was significantly lesser and narrower, and something was surely amiss. I had not asked the service center to do anything to my headlights, and they claimed they did not do anything. But I still felt there was a noticeable degradation in the headlights performance. So I asked them to re-adjust the lights anyway. Now this time when they re-adjusted the headlights on my insistence, they set the low beam too high. Now I had a good illumination about 30m ahead of the car, but the area in immediate next 10-20m was dark. The headlights were pointing weirdly up, and this was a useless setting too.

Then I complained again, and finally, they got the right setting, and the lights are as good as what I had when I bought the car. I am happy with this setting now.

So the moral of the story is that the F30 LCI LED headlights depend a lot on their alignment and focus settings for their performance. An accurate setting will give a good light, and even small inaccuracies will cause the light performance to deteriorate badly.

If any of you have issues with these headlights, then the best thing is to ask the service center to re-align them until you find the perfect settings.