:help Please help, i know it's a little long...
A couple days ago I did a hard launch at a stop light and soon after I started hearing loud noises from the rear of the car. The car also didn't seem to be performing correctly.

I had the car towed to the dealer and they tell me that the "pin holding the pinion gear is broken, this supposedly means the gears aren't meshing correctly." They also said that the entire differential has to be replaced.

The worst part is that is would cost $2997!!!!

Please tell me if this sounds at all accurate to you. Does this type of thing happen to these cars? If so can't the diff be rebuilt. Basically are they being honest with me, and does the price seem reasonable?

Thanks,
Sam

Ouch - we just had a diff put in our 540i/6 since that seal failed..

It should be no more than four or five hours labor, and the diff should not be more than 1500 - call Dinan and see if they have any M3 diff's on sale, they did for the 5 at the time...

Good luck.

Wildly expensive. The diff shouldn't have broken in the first place. But since it did, you should be able to turn up a used diff (similar to the one you had) for about $6-800 and pay someone about $100 to bolt it up. $2900 would buy a new custom World Challenge diff from us and you would still have plenty of change left over!

i once broke the front mounting bolt... that caused the diff to bang around inside the carrier. i'm assuming that this isn't the case for you, especially since the dealer has actually looked at the car.

agree with the others -- shouldn't be quite so expensive. the work is straightforward and an expensive rebuilt unit still wouldn't be over $2k.

Find a used one, save yourself the screwing around. The dealer told me that they wanted almost $900 to replace my upper control arms. I saved myself $650 doing it myself.

Look around before you shell out that kind of money. You can probably find a twisted up M3 that you can swipe the pumpkin out of and not even have to open it up.

thank goodness that you posted this story.
the $tealer catches some naive ones.
sometimes one has to hire a tow and get a 2nd opinion after calling around.
once, i had a mazda and the aircon light and cold air failed. the $tealer said the system malfunctioned and that i needed an ecu to allow system to work. dispite my incredulity expressed, they were so sure.
a dealer discovered a broken shrader valve in aircon charge system and lost coolant-cost, 50cent valve and recharge. go figure.
multiple estimates/opinions are useful and cheap when in doubt.

I found a 60k miles 3.23 M3 LS diff for my '96 328is for $450 shipped. The swap took two hours on jack stands.


Ed