This Florida man got a cheap BMW i8 and then feared the supercar’s engine was about to blow up because a faulty part was the culprit.
After being sent off for repairs, the car came back suspiciously warm, 260°F to be exact, and the car had changed hands and shops many times during its storied past.
Not only was the overheating distressing enough that he feared that the engine was about to blow up, but it also came with some worrying other issues and noises.
During a lot of troubleshooting, it became clear that one tiny part was at fault, and it was causing every single recurring system failure.
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He feared a faulty part was about to blow up the cheap BMW i8
When you take a chance on a suspiciously low-cost supercar, like this cheap BMW i8, it’s always a bit hit-and-miss whether it’s going to have some truly scary faults.
Unfortunately, this man’s cheap BMW i8 very much fell in the ‘miss’ category when it pretty immediately started overheating to a degree so alarming that he feared it was about to blow up.
Despite the dashboard showing no coolant temperature gauge, diagnostics revealed it to be around 260°F, which was extremely worrying.
He did all the traditional checks, and there was no gasket head failure, plus the chemical block test he did came back as inconclusive, showing no bubbles or color changes, which was even more head-scratching.
The secrets inside the supercar’s engine
The car also had a loose $500 carbon fiber splash shield that was causing some scary noises as well as aftermarket clamps on the coolant lines.
This suggests that its previous owners and shops had known about the heating problem and tampered with it.
An error code on the car pointed to a faulty thermostat, so he decided it was time to remove and try and get a look at the thermostat to see what was wrong.
Using a different BMW i8 thermostat, he decided to test it in boiling water, and it didn’t work properly, suggesting that this is a regular faulty part for lots of these types of supercar, not just this cheap BMW i8.
He located the thermostat and removed it, finding it broken into multiple pieces with the plastic blocking the car’s coolant flow, thereby finding the cause of the alarming overheating.
Without the thermostat, the flow started to work, and monitoring showed that temperatures had stabilized and most of the problems were gone, showing how one tiny faulty part holds a lot of power in a supercar’s engine.
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