Quote:
Originally Posted by robbyd63
Still. I agree with OP, it's annoying that I'm always looking at oil temp now. In every other car I've owned it's always been water temp, and since that's what I'm used to I have no indication of what oil temp is bad vs good. Would have been helpful if BMW kept the blue and red sections on the gauge so I at least knew what to look out for. On hot days my X3 has seen the oil temp go right to the middle of that gauge and idles roughly when it does.
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Just look at it in the same manner that you looked at water temp. Take out the descriptor altogether - it's your engine temperature indicator. It just so happens that oil is the better indicator. Did you really use water temperature for anything other than interpreting if the engine is "cold" or "warm" or "overheating"? Blue and red sections were always the extremes, and as mentioned already these cars are so smart they will tell you on the HMIs if there's an issue, or shut down if it's bad enough.
In my F30 with N20, and now my E90 with N55, the oil temperature doesn't vary much. In the F30 I could see the changes in temp between "eco" and "sport" but it never went past 50% of the gauge sweep. In the E90 there's no engine mode variation, it always goes to about 2 hashes shy of 50% or 235F (if I recall correctly, with 250F being 50% of the gauge sweep).
At the most basic level, I believe the reason they did this is that on a cold morning your water temp might reach operating level but your oil temp is still quite low. So it's a simple matter of that little extra delay before you are driving as if you're fully warmed up.
My X3 has the diesel engine, which is not like N20 or N55 with mode-dependent temperature variability. It warms up to 50% of the gauge sweep every time. If you're running rough at that point, you have an issue - I'd be thinking plugs, coils, vacuum leaks, etc.