Sunnyvale Auto Repair

Last week we had a customer with a 2011 BMW X5 come in with an overheating problem. Since the 2011 BMW 530i does not come with a temperature gauge it can be very disconcerting when the instrument display is telling you your car is overheating. The customer stated that he saw the warning and also heard the engine auxiliary fan roaring at full speed.  Now when the customer told me this I already had a good idea of what may have happened.    BMWs with N54 or N55 motors (between 2008 and 2014) come equipped with a electric water water pump. The electric water pumps were installed to make the engine more efficient in terms of power, fuel consumption and emissions. It does this by letting the computer control the flow of coolant rather then the engine itself. By removing the old mechanical water pump there is less load on the engine. The old mechanical style water pump could rob as much as 3 to 5 horse power from the engine.     The first thing we did was to ... read more

It is the end of December and as we are winding down 2017 I’m doing my best to manage the shop, my family and my life.  I have been thinking about all of the complex problems that we had to solve this year and was trying to pick one to talk about.  In the last month I encountered one of the most difficult BMW problems I have ever seen, but to tell you the truth I do not have the energy to explain it this year, so I’ll have to save that for next year!  I then thought about writing a puff piece on winter driving, yet I have written similar articles and did not feel like doing it again for now.  Then, as I sat contemplating what I was going to write about,  a long time customer walked through the door and asked me if I could take a look at his clutch pedal.  A week earlier the customer had brought in his 1990 Nissan pickup because the clutch pedal was going all the way to the floor and would not come up.  We checked to see if there was a lea ... read more

Lately I have been writing articles on things that I have never seen before in my 28 years of working on cars and this article will be no exception. About a month ago we had a relatively new customer tow in his 2008 Subaru Forester XT 2.5 Turbo.   The customer stated that he was driving and the car shut off.  We asked the customer what he felt and he stated that the car had a slight hesitation and then just lost power.  After we pushed the car into the shop we started to check all the basics (fuel and spark). The ignition system had spark but the fuel system had no pressure. We then sprayed a small amount of starting fluid into the intake and the engine ran. We then checked power and ground to the fuel pump. The fuel pump had power and ground. I called the customer and explained to him we had to replace the fuel pump and fuel filter.  The reason we always replace the fuel filter with the pump is that if there was a restriction in the fuel filter or dirt in the fue ... read more

There are certain common trends that we all can see or predict in everything we do.  The interesting thing about automotive repair is that there are so many moving parts and because of that we can’t always assume these common trends or problems always manifest themselves in the same way. We had a 2002 Subaru Forester L with 103027 miles come in with a Check engine light.  After pulling the codes we saw a P0130 bank one oxygen sensor incorrect information and a P0171 system too lean. When I took a step back and look at those two codes I could say the the bank 1 oxygen sensor (P0130) might be going lean and is causing the lean code (P0171).  Yet I have been doing this for way to long and realize we have to look at the data first.  When a code is set it is accompanied by Freeze Frame Data. This Freeze Frame Data will tell the technician the environment conditions of the code. For example; speed (MPH), temperature, revolutions per minute (RPM), position of the t ... read more