Oil Service, Air Filter & Rear Brakes replaced (104699 miles)

A bit later than normal but still well in advance of the condition based servicing indicator, I carried out another oil service, replacing the oil, oil filter and micro-filters with genuine BMW parts as before. Castro Edge 0w-30 oil was used once again.

I also replaced the engine air filter as it was last replaced at 58650 miles and although it wasn't technically due until 120k miles, I saw no reason to skimp on such an inexpensive part.

As mentioned in the last post, the rear brakes were due for replacement although the condition based service computer still thought they had a couple of thousand miles to go. I decided to replace the discs as well as the pads, and also replaced the calliper springs, disc bolts and the wear sensor as recommended by BMW.

The parking brake shoes were inspected and deglazed with sandpaper as they had plenty of life left ( > 4mm of friction material ). The handbrake was adjusted manually as there is no self adjuster on this car. What a difference that made to the handbrake efficiency! 

Lastly I did a full vehicle inspection using a BMW checklist. This is mostly common sense stuff such as fluid levels and tyre pressures and equipment checks which is the sort of thing I check regularly anyway. It also involves lubricating locks and hinges and checking wipers etc. One thing I did find was a slightly low engine coolant level which I topped up with 250ml of de-ionised water as I didn't have the correct BMW coolant available. I then used the hidden dashboard menus to check coolant operating temperature which was lower than expected at around 77C. This is high enough to allow DPF regenerations to still work (>75C) but much lower than the expected 90C+. 

See my next post for what I had to do to fix this...