With 2014 being officially known in the automotive world as the "year of the recalls," it is no wonder that certain carmakers are trying and steer away from being put in the same boat as those offering cars with Takata airbags. BMW is one of those brands, with the Bavarian automaker currently trying to pass a voluntary recall as a much fancier "customer care package." The recall involves just about every BMW with the N63 engine ever built, although probably not all cars will need to have the same amount of work done to them.

For those unfamiliar with BMW engine terminology, the N63 powerplant is the twin-turbocharged, 4.4-liter V-8 with 402 horsepower that saw use in every 5 Series, 6 Series, 7 Series, X5, and X6 model that have names ending with "50i" and were manufactured between 2008 and 2013. Having the service bulletin number B001314, the recall may take several days for each vehicle involved and could include replacement of the fuel injectors, mass airflow sensors, battery, crankcase vent lines, fuel pressure sensor, the engine’s vacuum pump and last, but certainly not least, replacement of the timing chain.

If all that didn’t sound like enough, all cars using this exact variant of the N63 engine will no longer be a part of the BMW long-life service intervals, instead requiring a service check every 12 months or 10,000 driven miles. Everything is not as grim as it sounds though, since it seems that affected BMW owners will receive a replacement car for the time that their vehicles are in the shop. Plus, the carmaker will also offer to buy-back the affected vehicle and offer a new one at a discounted price.

2. Turbo Troubles In turbocharged engines, dirty injectors can have a dangerous leaning effect that may lead to engine-damaging detonation. When the engine is under boost and at a higher rpm, it needs all the fuel the injectors can deliver. If the injectors are dirty and can’t keep up with the engine’s demands, the fuel mixture will lean out, causing detonation to occur. The leaning out may cause higher than normal exhaust temperatures and turbo failure.

10. Lack of Maintenance If an owner has neglected maintenance services like oil changes and filter replacements, chances are the fuel injectors will suffer. For port fuel applications, not changing the oil can result in blowby and a compromised PCV system, which builds up contaminates on the tip of the injector. Not changing the oil in an engine with direct fuel injection can result in a worn fuel pump camshaft lobe.

Enginerdy: Why BMW's N63 twin-turbo V8 eats batteries
When cars get complicated, weird things happen. In the search for fuel economy and prodigious output, BMW's N63 twin-turbo V8 happens to chew through batteries.

Originally published in the June 2015 issue of Road & Track.

I have lots of friends who work on cars for a living. You could call them mechanics, but I think of them as supersleuths. I could write a book about some of the mysteries they've solved, like whacked-out windshield wipers caused by faulty fuel pumps or stability control that refuses to work because of dirty engine oil. Today's cars are so electronically interconnected that problems manifest themselves with the most bizarre symptoms. Here's one for you: BMW turbochargers are killing batteries in search of fuel savings.

BMW is no stranger to strange problems. The company has an admirable track record of introducing new technologies. Unfortunately, the new tech tends to be unreliable at first. The latest example giving BMW's warranty department gas is the N63 twin-turbocharged V8, introduced in 2008.

BMW of North America has recognized a number of N63 components with high failure rates, including timing chains that stretch and snap, leaking crankcase ventilation and fuel lines, and malfunctioning fuel injectors, mass airflow sensors, and vacuum pumps. Rather than waiting for them to break, BMW NA is proactively replacing the parts with improved components through its shrewdly named Customer Care Package, or CCP. This is not a recall, because recalls address vehicle safety. Instead, BMW says, the CCP represents its "commitment to the long-term reliability of our most technologically advanced products." It is undeniably a good customer service move.

BMW is also quietly dropping the V8's oil-service interval from 15,000 to 10,000 miles*. Not because of oil-life concerns, but to smokescreen the N63's appetite for motor oil. By shortening the time between oil changes (and sneaking an additional quart into the sump), there's less chance customers will get a low-oil-level warning. Insiders at BMW in Germany say the oil consumption happens to customers who don't ever flog their powerful, turbocharged V8s hard enough to fully break them in. Ironic.

Finally, the CCP offers a way to cover up the N63's habit of chewing through batteries: It contains a technical service bulletin to replace them at every oil change. This is where things get confusing. Why not just fix the underlying electrical problem? As it turns out, BMW can't.

As part of its EfficientDynamics push, BMW's cars are loaded with expensive systems to save fuel wherever possible. One of them, the smart-charging system, operates on the premise that you can increase fuel economy slightly by charging the battery only when coasting. Unfortunately, American drivers aren't coasters, we're cruisers, so the system was murdering batteries. BMW's solution was to throw money at the problem, replacing the batteries with Absorbent Glass Mat (AGM) units that can cope with deeper and more frequent discharge cycles.

UNFORTUNATELY, THE NEW TECH TENDS TO BE UNRELIABLE AT FIRST.

That worked until the V8 gained turbos. With two very hot turbochargers in the very hot valley of its vee, the N63's cooling system must continue to run long after the engine's been turned off. The system's draw is more than the batteries can deal with, so BMW is now swapping out the old 90-Ah AGMs for 105-Ah units—and hoping they'll survive for at least 10,000 miles.

The simple solution would be to reprogram the engine computers to keep the battery's state of charge at a higher level. But in modern cars, everything affects something else, often in the most unlikely of ways. Charging the battery more often would affect fuel economy, which would require BMW to recertify the cars with the EPA. The revised mpg numbers would inevitably be lower than the ones advertised. Hello, class-action lawsuit.

So BMW can't actually fix the battery problem, it can only mask it. While it may be counterintuitive that turbocharging resulted in engines so understressed that they never break in, it's understandable. But who'd have thought adding turbos in search of better fuel economy would accidentally increase battery consumption? I feel for the guy who had to figure that one out.

Jason Cammisa is a senior editor at R&T. Sometimes, when he sneezes, the office lights turn off.