[Vinay3832]

Congratulation d3mon! Lovely write up and the icing on the cake are the beautiful pictures- thanks for sharing you whole experience to the community!
My family used to own a f10 530d LCI and we loved the ride quality from the adaptive dampers- perfect for our Bangalore roads and also perfect for those wavy stretches at expansion joints on the highway- the car felt so well planted.
One slight niggle (read nit picking) was that at speeds above 120, the steering felt quite disconnected/artificial. Hope this has been sorted out in the G30?

Again, one of the best cars you could spend your money on and now the only real problem down the line I would assume would be for you to find a suitable upgrade when the time comes! Hope you enjoy your ownership to the fullest and keep this thread alive with your experiences!

[d3mon]

Originally Posted by Vinay3832

Congratulation d3mon! Lovely write up and the icing on the cake are the beautiful pictures- thanks for sharing you whole experience to the community!
My family used to own a f10 530d LCI and we loved the ride quality from the adaptive dampers- perfect for our Bangalore roads and also perfect for those wavy stretches at expansion joints on the highway- the car felt so well planted.
One slight niggle (read nit picking) was that at speeds above 120, the steering felt quite disconnected/artificial. Hope this has been sorted out in the G30?

Thanks Vinay. AFAIK, F10 530d LCI never came with adaptive dampers. It was only the early pre-LCI 530ds that got them.

The steering feel is quite sorted at speed due to the excellent on-center feel. It does feel connected at all times. F-chassis cars were BMW's first attempt at making EPS work, and they were heavily criticized for the loss in feel and feedback vs the hydraulic predecessors. Since then, they've made major improvements for the G-chassis cars in the steering feel department.

[diwakarmuthu]

Many congratulations d3mon. That is a beautiful beast, especially the G30 series. Wish you many more miles of happy motoring.

Since you have been a BMW user for some time, what would be the average maintenance cost for these cars and does your car have the extended warranty provided by BMW?

[d3mon]

Originally Posted by diwakarmuthu

Many congratulations d3mon. That is a beautiful beast, especially the G30 series. Wish you many more miles of happy motoring.

Since you have been a BMW user for some time, what would be the average maintenance cost for these cars and does your car have the extended warranty provided by BMW?

No, I did not get extended warranty.

The average service costs are fairly reasonable (After you get all the unnecessary add-ons like some useless OBD scan, car wash, balancing & alignment etc removed). An engine oil service every year with filters should cost no more than 20-25K.

Regular wear and tear items are extra - mainly tyres around 15-20K each, Brake pads around 15K each axle etc.

[mkc15]

Congratulations d3mon, your car looks fantastic and pristine. Happy long ownership.

[mobike008]

Originally Posted by d3mon

I checked out your X3's alloys and they seem to be bright silver in color vs a slightly darker, almost metallic grey shade on mine.

I hope it's not just a difference in lighting, but the darker shade does make them look a lot better. Maybe this is something you can explore for your car?

Here you go- A side-by-side comparison of our car's alloys.



They are identical.

I reckon the rims looks bright or dark at times due to lighting as well as the brake dust that accumulates making the rims look dirty. (brake dust is notorious on most BMW's).

[CEF_Beasts]

Originally Posted by d3mon

Having said that, I actually love the 662M alloys! I checked out your X3's alloys and they seem to be bright silver in color vs a slightly darker, almost metallic grey shade on mine. I hope it's not just a difference in lighting, but the darker shade does make them look a lot better.

Originally Posted by mobike008

Attachment 2414431

They are identical.

They look pretty identical but they aren’t

@mobike008 Your X3 M40i has 698M Alloys



Meanwhile @d3mon’s 530d has 662M Alloys

[d3mon]

Originally Posted by CEF_Beasts

They look pretty identical but they aren’t

Originally Posted by mobike008

They are identical.

Wow, @CEF_Beasts: Do you have an eye for detail or what?
I had stared at @mobike008's comparison pic for a few minutes before reading your comment and was convinced that they were indeed identical
I wonder why BMW makes 2 alloys that are so closely matched to each other.

Originally Posted by d3mon

I expect the display key to sit unused in a drawer for most of my ownership.

I finally found a legitimate use case for the display key. I decided to give Trie a wash myself today. 5-10 years ago, when I had the Swift/Aspire, I used to wash and wax them by myself quite frequently. As time went by, I started to rely more and more on the car wash centers due to my laziness.

Anyway, as I had to reverse Trie a little to make space for me to wash her properly, I used the Display key to do it.

Engine started up, Steering straightened up, parking brake released & Reverse engaged . All this without anybody sitting in the driver's seat. Trie's pretty smart, isn't she?

After I was done, I used it again to move her forward as well. All this without getting a single drop of water/dirt on the interiors. Trie knows how far she is from any obstacles around her and got as close to the wall in front as I'd have if I were parking her myself. After getting this close, the remote doesn't let you move her any further and instead shows the wall as a big red obstacle marker on the display.

Trie looking dapper (as much as she can in a dark basement parking) after the wash:

[CEF_Beasts]

Originally Posted by d3mon

Wow, @CEF_Beasts: Do you have an eye for detail or what?
I had stared at @mobike008's comparison pic for a few minutes before reading your comment and was convinced that they were indeed identical

Haha, I wish I had this kind of an eye for detail IRL . Being a true-blue car enthusiast such things naturally catch my attention, I wonder how!

And, Massive congratulations to you on getting the 530d, wishing you lakhs of happy kilometres with the legendary straight-6 B57, my favourite 6 cylinder diesel.

With BMW India stopping production of the 530d and 630d, people wanting one do not have many options left! And as you already mentioned, these cars are in a lot of demand in the used car market. Had checked for used G30 530ds’ in Mumbai and the result was <5 cars. And the new LCI 5s misses out on quite a few features that your car has, due to reasons best known to BMW India and the price has skyrocketed!

[d3mon]

Jotting down a few more observations after spending some more time with Trie.

There is an insane amount of sound deadening all around the car. Case in point - the door seals
Most cars have 1 or 2 layers of rubber strips in order to insulate the cabin from the noises from outside. Trie has 4 separate layers, and 2 of them are felt lined to avoid the squeaking that is a common complaint on many such rubber strips rubbing against each other!

3 layers on the door, with 2 outer ones being felt lined.


Yes, there's rubber behind the felt lining.


The 4th rubber layer on the door jam



Found one missing feature in my car - The 2017 brochure said that these cars should have a cooled glovebox, but there's no such thing in Trie's glovebox.


Passenger airbag off switch - hidden on the left of the dashboard. Accessible only with the passenger door open, and operated with the mechanical key.


This area is a little busy in design, but I absolutely love the metal strip on the door that turns into a large triangular shape. It feels absolutely solid and cold to the touch, just like the door handle next to it.


-Rear seat AC.

There's a good amount of airflow available to both rear passengers. The airflow can be directed to just your upper body (via the center & the B-pillar vent) or your legs (via the underseat vent), or to both.
Unlike the front cockpit, the two passengers share a common blower speed setting, but the temperature can be adjusted independently.

Rear AC controls. Rear climate can only be switched on/off from the front, but the temperature / blower settings can't be changed. There is an option to set the rear climate to default settings (22C) every time the car starts up though.


B-Pillar vent


Underseat vent


The middle seat headrest can be flipped back to aid in visibility. It's interesting that even in the flipped position, it actually provides decent support for your head. Having said that, the middle seat is not a very comfortable place to be, because of the scooped out bucket seat design for the outer 2 rear seats.

You can also see the button which allows you to flip open up the middle seat to access the boot.

Flipped position


Normal position


The cupholders are overengineered as well. They can rest in 3 different positions depending on the size of your drink.

Large


Small


Every single control on the car is backlit, and the rear seat entertainment remote is no exception.


Android screen mirroring at work, mirroring my camera viewfinder.


Like almost everything in the car, even the fuel filler lid is damped and opens smoothly on its own! Also, BMW has fixed the 'bug' in the F-series cars that if you tried opening the fuel filler lid with the car locked, while it'd not open up, it would get partially unlocked and pop open by itself the next time you unlocked the car.


No fake exhausts here - even this diesel gets fully functioning dual exhausts!


And finally, few samples of the different leathers on offer from BMW, taken from the web. Dakota & Vernasca have a high grain finish, while Nappa & Merino leathers are completely matte, with no grain visible. The difference in quality is clearly visible as you climb up from Dakota -> Vernasca -> Nappa. While Nappa & Merino look quite similar (at least in these photos), I'm sure Merino would be even softer in person.

[megazoid]

Loved seeing your car in flesh on today's drive and also enjoyed seeing it glide over varied terrain with ease. Great choice!

[d3mon]

Trie's day out

Last Sunday, Trie got an invitation to stretch her legs on a drive with some fellow BHPians & enthusiasts. It was a fantastic outing with all sorts of roads ranging from open 6 lane highways, winding 2 lane highways, ghat sections, single lane roads and some sections with no-roads too

Trie was in her element through all these roads, from the open highways to the winding ghat sections. During this drive, I could really appreciate how much better the steering feels vs the F30, and how much more planted she is over undulating highways with dampers in Sport mode. In comfort mode, there is a little bit of long wave body motion over these undulations, but Sport mode for the dampers is stiff enough to keep the car flat at all times.

As Dr. AD has already covered the drive and all the cars in detail in the post below, I'll restrict myself to sharing photos mostly of Trie.

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/long-...ml#post5494859

Ready to go at 6:30 AM.


Megazoid's 330i leading the convoy. Looks smashing with the lowered ride height (Bilstein B12) along with the tasty 18" Sparcos.


With Robi's mighty M340i. G20's sharp curves make the G30 look a little bulky in comparison. It's interesting that BMW's Hofmeister kink is more pronounced on the G30 than the G20.











Final trip stats. Got a pretty remarkable FE given the driving conditions. 2 other F30 320Ds reported almost exactly the same mileage, which confirms my earlier assumption that the highway mileage is pretty much the same between the F30 320D & the G30 530D.

Originally Posted by megazoid

Loved seeing your car in flesh on today's drive and also enjoyed seeing it glide over varied terrain with ease. Great choice!

Thank you for organizing this drive! The GMaps-beating road database in your head was instrumental in taking us through the said varied terrains where we were able to enjoy our ultimate driving machines to the fullest

[d3mon]

Last weekend, we went to Hampi for a quick 3-day break. As we stayed in the same accommodation as KarthikK did and roamed about in similar places, I'm linking his travelogue here, as I can never match his fantastic photos/description of Hampi.

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/super...ml#post5501854

The ~750KM trip (including local running around) gave me a great chance to explore Trie's dynamics and especially the adaptive suspension in great detail.

On arrow straight highways with the dampers in Sport mode, it's astonishing how flat, composed and glued to the road she is at high speeds. Imperfections do filter in quite a bit, but the car feels super sporty and never bobs, or exhibits any kind of wave like behavior. Any kind of undulation / road irregularity is dismissed immediately within 0.25 seconds and the car doesn't take any time to settle back, because it never loses its composure at all. I'd wager that the car is about as stiff or maybe even slightly stiffer in Sport mode at high speeds than the M340i, which I've experienced only as a passenger. So it's fair to say that almost nobody will wish for a stiffer suspension at speed than the 530d already provides in sport mode.

On the same kind of roads, if you switch the dampers to comfort, the car takes on an entirely different personality. The sharp edges are mostly filtered out, but the cost is that you do get a long wave kind of motion, which takes anywhere from 0.5-1.5 seconds to settle down after a road undulation. Like the motion which Volvo buses with air suspension make, but obviously far, far more controlled and lower amplitude. The wave like vertical motion in Comfort mode means that the Sport mode actually feels more comfortable for longer distances on good pavement at higher speeds. But on broken / not-so-good road surfaces where the road imperfections filter in quite a bit in Sport mode, Comfort mode is a godsend. I was able to fly over cracked/imperfect 2-lane concrete roads around Hampi at 80+ with ease in Comfort mode, where the Sport mode got quite uncomfortable. The differences are immediately apparent, and one time when I left the car in Sport on such roads, I immediately got asked by my spouse if I had forgotten to switch the car to Adaptive / Comfort mode

At lower speeds, as the dampers slacken off regardless of the modes, both comfort and sport modes remain quite comfortable, with a lower difference felt between the 2 modes.

The onward journey was fairly relaxed which resulted in some incredible fuel efficiency numbers. This data is door-to-door for the entire trip, with all sorts of roads from 1/2/4/6 lane highways. I mean, I better check if I have been given a rebadged 4-cylinder 520d instead of a 530d!



The secret to the efficiency is the drag coefficient of just 0.24, and the tall gearing. 100KMPH comes up at just tickover in 8th gear. The 8th gear is about 85KMPH/1000 RPM, which means theoretically you can do 170KMPH @ 2000 RPM!


My preferred modes were:
Engine: Sport plus
Dampers: Sport
Steering: Sport
Transmission: Comfort

Keeping the transmission in Comfort allows for relaxed cruising, with instant power available at the tap of your right foot. The ZF8 gives you a quick downshift that instantly puts you back in the torque band and you just take off.
All my previous cars have been remapped, but this is the first car that I think has "sufficient" power in stock form. And I used to be someone who said that you can never have enough power
Of course, I may just end up eating my words later on and get a remap, but for now I'm very happy with the stock tune.

This is from driving sedately between 100-120KMPH for a few KMs before I got bored.


An interesting milestone of 12345KMs passed on the way.


Trie insisted on taking many pictures of herself at the hotel entrance.






Trie getting up close and personal with a Tree in the background.


The return journey was tackled even more quickly - about 20mins faster. Both the onward and return journeys were done in absolute comfort and there wasn't a shred of tiredness after the journeys. This is exactly the kind of Grand Touring that Trie was built for and I hope we'll be able to go on much longer journeys that don't look like child's play like this one was.


Now for some geeky stuff. The DPF regen hadn't come on for 700+KM (!) so I thought I'll trigger it myself, even though there was no need for it. This long interval was due to the highway driving, which keeps regenerating the DPF passively due to the naturally high temperatures during quick bursts of acceleration.
You can see the high temps of 623C at the DPF inlet which leads to the soot captured in the DPF being burned off.


The turbocharger spins up at a top speed of 185,000 RPM! Trie is the first car that I've encountered that has a turbo speed sensor built in, which means that BMW can extract the max boost from the turbo without any possibility of turbo overspeed, regardless of ambient conditions.

[mojo]

Great post and wonderful pictures. A double delight for me as I am a proud and extremely lucky owner of the same vehicle (down to the same colour!). I don't take pics of my own car so ogling at your pics is like admiring my own car. Thank you very much!
p.s. How do you reveal the geeky stuff on the screen?

[d3mon]

Originally Posted by mojo

Great post and wonderful pictures. A double delight for me as I am a proud and extremely lucky owner of the same vehicle (down to the same colour!). I don't take pics of my own car so ogling at your pics is like admiring my own car. Thank you very much!
p.s. How do you reveal the geeky stuff on the screen?

Thanks mojo. I'm sorry but you can't just enjoy the pics here without adding your own too

For monitoring these stats, I'm using the Bimmerlink app with an ENET cable, connected to a USB C to ethernet adaptor to my phone. It's possible to use Bluetooth or WiFi obd dongles too but the refresh rate will be slower. The enet cable provides lightening fast updates at around 15 times per second. The phone is mirrored to the car infotainment display.