Richard Hammond's known for many things. His vast car knowledge, his driving ability, and, well, he is constantly crashing vehicles. When the DRIVETRIBE YouTube channel put up their latest video titled "Richard Hammond broke our V10 BMW M5", we automatically went, "again?".
Fortunately, Richard is quite safe, but Mike does have some issues with the BMW and he blames Mr. Hammond entirely.
The List Of Problems
In a previous episode, Richard tested the newly manual transmission swapped E61 BMW M5 Touring around the track. After Richard had his way with the M5, Mike gets into the BMW and starts to tell us the list of fault codes.
He tells us that the first is a tire puncture code followed by a restraint systems failure. He says he's not concerned with these codes. The tire puncture code comes from putting "beefier" tires on the car and the computer does not like the pressure that they're set at. The restraint system is where it begins to all fall onto poor Richard.
Mike tells us that since Richard is so little, he thinks that when Richard moved the seat "All the way forward" he just nicked a wire or shorted something. The real issue is a check engine light which Mike says on a V10 BMW engine, could literally mean the end of the car. He assumes the car "got a little bit hot" and threw out a code.
Off To The Mechanic To Fix The Issues
Mike takes the M5 to a specialty garage called Everything M3 in Banbury, UK. Darragh, the owner, tells Mike that on a 2007 M5, the likely cause for the restraint system code is a seat belt tensioner.
They would have to order this part from Germany and the tire puncture code will just need a system reset. As for the cooling system, he tells Mike that the car is getting on in age and may be time to do a full replacement of the cooling parts which includes, the water pump, thermostat, and radiator.
He tells Mike that these parts can "gunk" up over time and the coolant has a much narrower passage and therefore cools less. It's at this point that Mike fesses up that it was a 91.4°F (33°C) day and they were driving the car quite hard around the track.
It's Not Richard's Fault
It turns out that Mike was a little bit premature when blaming Richard for the broken BMW. Although Richard's track time certainly didn't help, the BMW needed some long overdue replacements on several key parts. Mike does end up replacing everything and the BMW is back in top condition.