Free guide · 2005–2011 · N52B30 · 265 PS
BMW 130i E87: what to check before you buy
What this car is, and the zero questions that decide whether the one you are looking at is a good buy.
In this guide · 6 chapters
Who built it, and what they built
A naturally aspirated straight six, driving the rear wheels, in a hatchback the size of a Golf. BMW had done it before, in the 323ti and 325ti Compact, and it has not existed since the 130i.
The N52B30: 2,996 cc, six cylinders in a line, no turbocharger, 265 PS — BMW's price list from September 2009 gives 258. In the 130i from 2005 to 2011. Six-speed manual or six-speed automatic. The E81 is the three-door and the E87 is the five-door; underneath they are the same car.
What is unusual about it, specifically
Not the power. A modern four-cylinder hatchback will match it and a hot one will beat it. What no modern hatchback has is the layout: an engine that makes its power by revving rather than by boosting, sending it backwards, in a body you can park.
The N52 and the N53 — its direct-injection version, which replaced it in some European models but never in the 130i — are the last naturally aspirated straight sixes BMW built. After those two the configuration stops and everything is turbocharged. The N52 outlived the N53, so this engine is at the very end of a line that started in 1968.
One piece of genuinely good news, before the rest
There is no timing belt on this car and there is no rod-bearing interval. The N52 runs a chain, and the bottom end does not have the preventive rod-bearing story that owners of the S85 and the S65 know. For a car of this age that is a short list of scheduled work, and it is the reason this guide is shorter than the one for a V10.
How the figures in this guide work
There are no prices in here, and that is deliberate. A workshop rate differs by a factor of two or three between countries and between garages, so a figure we cannot verify for you is worse than no figure. What does not move is how much work a job is — that follows from what has to come off the car.
So every item says whether it is an hour or two, half a day, a day, two or three days, or a week or more in the workshop, and it says whether the money sits in the part or in getting to it. Ask any garage one question — what is your hourly rate? — and every item becomes your own number in your own currency.
The six questions that decide whether this car is a good buy
Ask these before you drive anywhere. Five of the six can be answered over the phone or from the advert, and the sixth you answer yourself, at the car.
1. "Has the electric water pump been replaced, and at what mileage?" This is the question. On the N52 the pump is the one item where postponement stops being a repair and becomes a head gasket.
2. "What is the build month?" On earlier engines BMW documented an occasional tick from the hydraulic valve lifters and issued a repair for it, and the build month tells you which side of the line a car is on. Ask whether the repair was done — and see question 6.
3. "Is there any oil weeping at the valve cover, and has the eccentric shaft sensor ever been done?" The sensor sits in the middle of that cover, and the two are connected in a way most adverts do not know. The buying guide explains why.
4. "Can you photograph the oil change invoices?" Not a stamped book. BMW's own bulletin on VANOS faults in these engines names the oil supply as a cause — unfiltered oil can clog the solenoids — and an invoice shows what was changed, and when.
5. "Manual or automatic — and E81 or E87?" Three doors or five, two pedals or three. Nothing to diagnose; everything to decide before you start looking.
6. And the one you do not ask: whether it ticks when cold. Ask the build month instead and then listen for yourself. If you ask, a seller who has read the same forums will tell you it does not.
What the honest answer to all six looks like
A car with a pump invoice, a folder with regular oil changes, a known build month, and — on an earlier car — a seller who can tell you whether the lifters were ever done. That last answer is the one that tells you the seller actually knows the car.
Which years, which specification
The five-door E87 arrived in 2004 and the 130i joined the range in 2005. The three-door E81 followed in 2007, alongside the facelift. The engine is an N52B30 throughout, but not quite the same one: BMW's parts catalogue lists the facelift cars as N52N, and BMW's price list from September 2009 gives the 130i as 190 kW / 258 PS rather than 265.
The one date that matters is not a model year. It is a build month rather than a registration year. On engines built before it, BMW documented an occasional tick from the hydraulic valve lifters and issued a repair for it, and improved parts came in during the run — not on a clean date. A car's registration year can sit either side of that line, so read the plate on the car and not the year in the advert. Which month it is, and what the plate has to say, is in the buying guide.
Manual or automatic. Both are six-speed. The manual is the reason most people want this car; the automatic is the reason some of them are affordable.
E81 versus E87. Three doors or five. The three-door looks better and the five-door is the one you will actually use. There is no mechanical argument either way.
What it is worth
No price list — it moves by country and by month. What this guide can give you is the method, and on this car it comes down to one component and one date.
The water pump is the valuation.
A 130i with a documented electric water pump at a known mileage has had its single largest risk retired. A 130i without one has that job pending, and the difference between doing it and being too late is the difference between a pump and a head gasket. There is no test drive that tells you which one you are looking at; there is a folder, or there is not.
Which gives you three kinds of car.
The documented one. Pump invoice, regular oil changes, ideally a valve cover gasket already done. Pay the premium — it is smaller than the job.
The tidy one without paperwork. Budget the pump, the thermostat and the valve cover gasket as work you will be doing, and take that off what you offer. On this engine those three are a known list at a known scale, which is exactly why this car is a reasonable risk and a V10 is not.
The high-mileage one with a thick folder. Frequently the best buy of the three. The N52 is not an engine that dies of mileage; it dies of neglect.
Compare entry prices, not asking prices. Entry price is what the car costs plus what it needs in the first year, and on this model that second number is unusually easy to estimate.
What it is actually like to own one
It fits in a normal parking space. Then you start it and it sounds like a BMW straight six, because it is one.
Fuel. It is a three-litre six being asked to move a small car. Driven gently it is unremarkable; driven the way it invites you to, it drinks. Nobody buys one of these to save money on fuel and this guide is not going to pretend otherwise.
The seats and the space. It is a compact hatchback with a long engine in the nose, which means the front is fine and the back is a compromise. Five doors help. The boot is a boot.
What owners actually say. Two things come up repeatedly in the forums. The first is that it feels quicker than its figures because the power arrives at the top and you have to go and get it. The second is the cold-start tick, which worries new owners — and on earlier engines, BMW issued a repair for it.
And the honest expectation. This is a twenty-year-old BMW with a three-litre engine. It is not a maintenance-free car and the parts are BMW parts. What it is, is a car whose list of scheduled work is short and known — and that is a genuinely different proposition from most of what sits alongside it.
The buying guide — €24
Everything above is what the car is. This is what you check.
Eight faults that belong to this engine, taken apart one by one, with how much work each repair is and how to tell which of them you are looking at. Eight things that are simply twenty years old, every one with how much work it is, what tells you about it at a viewing, and whether it has to be done now, within a year or two, or not at all. Where to look at the bodyshell while you are already underneath — and why the guide does not invent a rust list. Why one small leak on this engine produces a second bill that does not look like a leak. The viewing in six steps, including the two moments that come only once. The sentences you say to the seller, and how to build an offer out of what you found.
And a card you print and take with you — twenty-one lines, in the order you do them. That comes as a separate file, because nobody wants to print a whole guide to take a few pages to a car park.
This is what one of the eight looks like
1 · The electric water pump, with the thermostat
A day · parts and access; the thermostat goes with it Chapter 5.1. The only item here where being late changes what you own. It fails without much warning, so the invoice is the inspection.
Now, unless there is a dated invoice with a mileage on it.
And this is how the card reads
- 1 · The paperwork · FIRST. If this fails, stop.
- 2 · The plate · before you listen to anything
- 3 · The cold start · you only get one
- 4 · The engine bay, engine off
- 5 · The read-out · before the test drive
- 6 · The test drive
What €24 buys, put next to what it saves
An electric water pump that is left too long stops being a pump and becomes a head gasket — a day in the workshop. The eccentric shaft sensor, and what a leak at the valve cover does to it, is a day as well. Both of them are on paper before you buy, or they are not. The guide is €24. It will not stop any of that from being needed — but it does tell you which of them you are looking at before you agree a price, and that is the whole of the difference between paying for a car and paying for someone else's postponed maintenance.
Why there are no prices in it
Because a price we cannot verify is worse than no price, and because a price would be wrong for most of the people reading this anyway. Workshop rates across Europe differ widely, and so do parts prices. A quote from a specialist in one country tells you nothing in another.
What does not change is how much work a job is — that follows from what has to come off the car. So every point in the guide says whether it is an hour or two, half a day, a day, two or three days, or a week or more in the workshop, with a labour figure where a source gives one. And it says whether the money sits in the part or in getting to it, which is what lets you tell a fair quote from a bad one.
If you want a figure, ask any workshop one question — what is your hourly rate? — and every effort level in the guide becomes your own number, in your own currency. One question, and the answer is actually true for you.
How this guide was put together
Because you should know before you pay for it.
- Every fault and symptom comes from a source the guide names, the manufacturer's own documents first. The effort levels are our assessment, unless a source gives the hours.
- The guide says plainly that this is not a cheap car in fuel and never was — and that it is a cheap car in scheduled work, which is a different sentence and the one that matters over five years.
- The effort of every job is counted item by item and checked against the list before every edition.
- It says as plainly what you can leave alone as what you have to do. None of the eight age points start from leave it.
Leave your email address at the checkout and both files arrive straight away: one guide and one card, as two pdfs. No subscription, no account.
The full guide · €24
17-page guide, A4 and phone · 2-page inspection card · instant PDF · VAT included
Have every car inspected before you buy by someone who knows this engine. This is general information about the model and not advice about a specific car.