[doccyber]

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/bmw-myster...opstories.html

This is the first time I see this. Does anyone have any idea why this happens? Fake news?

[RoundelM3]

Never heard of this happening in 16 years of owning BMWs, and have never heard of BMW issuing "recalls" due to fire-related problems. Nothing just "suddenly bursts into flames"...and certainly not from a manufacturing defect. I suspect poor maintenance after the free factory maintenance expires. Fire requires fuel, air, and heat, so unless there was a fuel leak over a catalytic converter or a frayed battery cable, what else would cause this?

[3rdcoast228i]

Less than 50 reports out of 5 million on the road

Not defending BWM for what could turn out to be a serious safty issue but...

The models and years are all over the place, this type of thing normaly only follows 1 or 2 models in a specific model generation.

How many of those had aftermarket electrical devices installed? How many installed the wrong style battery?

[USA-RET]

http://jalopnik.com/abc-news-big-inv...a-b-1795121798

BMW's make up 2% of the cars on the road. There are 174000 car fires each year. If you apply the 2% percentage to the total fires equally across all brands, 3400 BMW's should burst into flame each year. Instead less than 50 over a 5 year period.

Brian Ross Track record is less than stellar. Must be a slow news day or he's upset because one cut him off driving to work that day.

http://www.politico.com/story/2012/0...d-again-078793

[mayday813]

I've had some experience from a claims standpoint with BMW over the years and BMW has not always been forthcoming with respect to vehicle fires. A number of years ago they had an issue with windshield washer heaters.

[crabu2]

Originally Posted by USA-RET

http://jalopnik.com/abc-news-big-inv...a-b-1795121798

BMW's make up 2% of the cars on the road. There are 174000 car fires each year. If you apply the 2% percentage to the total fires equally across all brands, 3400 BMW's should burst into flame each year. Instead less than 50 over a 5 year period.

Brian Ross Track record is less than stellar. Must be a slow news day or he's upset because one cut him off driving to work that day.

http://www.politico.com/story/2012/0...d-again-078793

How does BMW's fire ratio compare to other manufacturers? 50 cars might be on the high side .. or low, I don't know, compared to the industry average.

Things like car fires, 1 is too many.

[bimmerfile]

Originally Posted by doccyber

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/bmw-myster...opstories.html

This is the first time I see this. Does anyone have any idea why this happens? Fake news?

Yah, Fake News. Surprised it wasn't first reported on CNN.

The U.S. National Fire Protection Association reports that there are an average of 287,000 vehicle fires per year (2003 - 2007) (see url below) .
No reason to believe that it is much different since then.
Over 70% of those fires are as a result of mechanical or electrical failures or malfunctions.
So if 50 of them were BMWs, then big f**king whoop-dee-doo.
Maybe the FBI can check if there is a Russian connection.

http://www.nfpa.org/news-and-researc...s-and-patterns

[vh2720]

What makes these fires more disturbing is that they happen spontaneously when the car is parked and turned off sometimes for hours. When that happens in an attached garage that can obviously have horrible consequences. This one in Gloucester, MA involved what looks to me like a 2 series: http://jgpr.net/2017/02/03/glouceste...carousel-18939.

[Luftwaffe1O1]

I was reading this earlier today. BMW said most of those examples were either improper maintenance or unsanctioned modifications.

Even still, 40 or 50 vehicle fires ranging 5 years and 1-15year old models. Statistically this is a non story.

edit: And just to add my own personal experience, I had an e30 that had 350k miles, an e36 M3 that I wrecked when it had 72k miles, my z3 has 202,000 miles, and my 235 is at 31k miles now. This really is just terrible terrible journalism.

[doccyber]

My conclusion: Fake News :

[RoundelM3]

Remember when Ford SUVs were bursting into flames in people's garages? THAT was an example of poor design and even worse manufacturing. You have to wonder if some of those BMW fires were intentionally set!

[crabu2]

The only other brand I remember catching on fire when it wasn't running was Ford, and I don't think there were even 40 or 50 fires before they had a recall. Ford figured out pretty quick that it had to do with either the master cylinder or brake sensor.. can't remember, but because the system was charged when the vehicle was off, and some how a short would happen, lighting the brake fluid on fire.

1 car catching on fire is too many... BMW needs to figure this out quick and figure out how to resolve it to calm everyones minds.

[Deutsche-Broke]

*clickbait*

Success! $$$

[USA-RET]

http://blog.caranddriver.com/where-t...re-than-smoke/

The most most logical a spot on "backfire" IMO.

The problem that ABC has is called the Lamp Post fallacy. They had some anecdotal reports of fires in parked BMW vehicles so they went looking for more and that is what they found. What they should have done was looked for reports of fires in all makes of parked vehicles and see what they found.

Somehow reporters learn to think about things wrong. They learn to think on how to make a good story rather than how to accurately report the story. This is the most basic bias of all news.

They should have also realized that this number of car fires was statistically insignificant and could have easily resulted from random chance.

Other things which should have been obvious with critical thinking is that if it was an electrical problem and that if it wasn't random events, the failure was probably in a component made by a component manufacturer (e.g. Bosch) and not by BMW so the same problem would probably be occurring in other German, and related, brands.


Last few paragraphs (below) are worth reading

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/a...nything-there/

Granted, I don't want to be driving around in a time-bomb, but some of this crazy "dot connecting" is like linking brushing your teeth to tooth decay.

[Maynard]

Not really something wrong with BMW, or specific to them, but it is a good reminder about a potential safety issue. I have often toyed w/ the idea of putting a sprinkler system in the garage (and basement), and just learned that our local building codes may be upgraded to require that in some cases. All this has me a bit more motivated. Granted that these are rare, but it points out that fires can happen, and if they do, only a sprinkler is going to help. My first step is going to be a remote smoke detector that rings inside.

[omera60]

A 2 Coupe can be seen at 2.37, should we be worried?

[bimmerfile]

Originally Posted by omera60

A 2 Coupe can be seen at 2.37, should we be worried?

Yah, we should be worried that a few of the 287,000 vehicle fires each year are BMWs.

[airansun]

Low likelihood but catastrophic potential. It does make me question (a little) parking my new car inside my house's garage. Who'd want to wake up in the middle of the night to discover you had to run for your life because your fancy German car decided to self-combust?

This could be nothing or the start of a larger pattern. Sorry it sounds like BMW doesn't care to acknowledge the possibility publicly.

From the Pinto to airbags and tires, one thing we can be sure of: until their noses are rubbed in it, most corporations want to pretend their product defects don't exist.

[XutvJet]

This thread reminds me that I need to get a couple of smoke detectors for the garage.

In the older cars, I bet the fires were a combination of rodent nests and frayed wiring.

In the later model cars, perhaps a small fuel leak from the high pressure direct injection fuel rail sitting in very close proximity of the ignition coils and/or frayed wires carrying a decent current. Thinking out loud here, a little fuel vapor contained under the engine heat shield plus extreme underhood heat and multiple ignition sources and stuff that likes to burn hot (i.e. wiring jackets, gasoline), and you could have a nice fire. The valve cover gaskets and oil coolers also like to leak and that too can put oil and flammable residues in close proximity of wires and the like.

The fuel pumps in the later model cycle routinely, even when the car is "off". BMW found out this was a great way to solve the HPFP issues.

It's shocking to me how many wires are exposed under the hood of my M235. All my Japanese cars had the wiring jackets wrapped tight with electrical tape or plastic jackets up to the connector. Not the case in my M235. Remove the engine cover and almost all the wiring is fully exposed. I suppose it makes troubleshooting a bit easier, but it looks risky to me.

Here's a pic of an N54 motor and the non-wrapped ignition wires and grounds, the coil packs, the injector rails, and a leaking valve cover all within the same area.

[Kolyan2k]

^ maybe one smoke detector to mount inside the car

PS. You usually install heat detector in garage, not smoke

[Luftwaffe1O1]

This has to be some of the worst journalism out there. This is really a symptom of how bad our media has gotten. Not to say all, there are still some decent ones out there, but the problem is, we treat our news based on ratings, and the 24 hour news networks have to fight for those, as a result we see a problem where they over sensationalize crap, and try to be vague and drag things on, when there really is no reason to do it.

As someone mentioned above, they did very little to no actual investigation, or rather, they investigated the wrong thing.

I remember a while back when I was in school, when we went over the whole correlation does not equal causation. I really think a lot of modern day journalists really REALLY need to brush up on that.

I mean imagine, if someone fed them a story that ice cream consumption is increasing drownings. or incidents requiring rescue. I bet you they could then go and find plenty of people that had ice cream and either drowned, or needed rescuing.

The way that article should have really been investigated was finding out further causation, what the vehicle maintenance was performed, where and how. If there were any modifications done to these vehicles etc. How it compared to other brands. Furthermore, if there was a link with modifications and improper maintenance, it would have been a good time to tell people to get educated on the vehicle needs etc.

Instead they ran a fluff story, that was grasping at straws so badly. And the more interesting thing, while finding the statistics on how many vehicle fires occur in the US every year is relatively easy, it can be segmented by several different topics, it is not easy to come by vehicle fire statistics based on manufacturer. I am sure its out there, but its not that easy to find.

The only times you should really be worried is if there was an improper repair, or modifications which are not installed properly, or not of a high quality. This can be especially true when it comes to the electrical system.

[USA-RET]

^

Absolutely correct.

I'd wager this same "so-called" journalist could find a similarly small number of cars from other manufacturers catching fire if he checked back over a 5 year period.

43 fires and 4.9 million BMW's on the road, over a 5 year period (approx 8 per year). Cars ranging in age from 1-15 years old w/ accumulated mileages of over 232,000 and multiple generations of vehicles.

The most important takeaway from this ABC News report are that these specific fires are likely freak events that do not have anything in common except from the badge on the trunk,