Three months ago, the BMW announced a voluntary collection campaign of 324,000 vehicles with diesel engines in Europe (a total of 480 thousand worldwide), due to a risk of fire arising from a defect detected in the exhaust gas recirculation module (EGR).
According to BMW, the problem lies specifically in the possibility of small leaks of the EGR refrigerant, which tends to accumulate in the EGR module. The risk of fire comes from the combination of the refrigerant with carbon and oil sediments, which become combustible and can ignite when exposed to the high temperatures of the exhaust gases.
In rare cases it can lead to the inlet pipe melting, and in more extreme cases it can even lead to a fire in the vehicle. A phenomenon that could be the main cause for the more than 30 BMW fires observed in South Korea this year alone, where this problem was originally detected.
After a more detailed investigation of other engines with similar technical solutions and which were not included in the original recall campaign, BMW decided, despite there being no significant risks for its customers, to minimize those same risks by extending the recall campaign, now covering 1.6 million vehicles globally , produced between August 2010 and August 2017.
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The affected models
At the moment it is not yet possible to have an updated list of affected models, so remember those that were announced three months ago.
The models are the BMW 3 Series, 4 Series, 5 Series, 6 Series, 7 Series, X3, X4, X5 and X6 equipped with the four-cylinder diesel engine, produced between April 2015 and September 2016; and the six-cylinder Diesel engine, produced between July 2012 and June 2015.