My wife & I bought a BMW 118d SE two years ago for £13k as an approved used car with 23k miles. 3-6 months in the start stop function ceased to work - I raised this and we were told to take the car on a long drive to recharge the battery. After 6-12 months the battery warning light kept flashing and eventually the service dept told us we had a faulty battery, so we paid for a replacement. Around the same time they also told us that the exhaust had rusted through and was 'literally about to fall off'. Long story short we replaced that too - again at our cost although BMW contributed to it. Total spend for battery and exhaust circa £1350.

Over the last 12 months or more we occasionally noticed a rattle usually when changing gear. Its become a little more noticeable recently although still infrequent. The BMW dealership could not find the source of this until it was MOT'd last week & they finally discovered the timing chain is showing early signs of failure.

They explained that BMW are aware of issues with a particular batch of timing chains but as the car is out of warranty (5 years old) they will contribute towards it but not cover all of the cost. The original price quoted was £2350 and I have haggled this down to £650 with both dealer and BMW contributing. I have bought several cars from this garage over the years so I've reminded them of my repeat custom. Their response has been to suggest we trade in the car to a new 1 series (which I am interested to do) but they insist we have to pay for the replacement timing chain at £650 before this could happen. I'm not happy with this and feel they should cover it in full.

My question is - At what point does their duty of care end? If BMW know about this fault aren't they liable to resolve it completely? The car has done almost 50k miles now and this rattle was noticed around 40k mark or earlier. If I'm unhappy with their response what next? Or do you think I've got a result here?