How good is the online fiche?

[Honolulu]

I look at the realoem.com fiche occasionally, to compare ebay part numbers with a good source. Often I find that an ebay P/N is not supported at realoem.

It could be that the seller is mis-reading, or mis-stating the applicability of a part (it is after all ebay), or that realoem is out of date (possible), or something else (what?).

Whal light can anyone shed light on these discrepancies?

 

[Malc]

Honolulu
In addituion to realoem I also use W&N online catalogue to check "flea bay" parts as well, especially if it's something I need. Realoem could be out of date as I suspect it is based on one particular "snapshot" of the fiches. However I have no way to prove that.

I suspect for smaller items and consumables such as brake pads, points, distributor parts etc etc that BMW did change the numbers as the same parts ended up being used on other models in production, the 2002 and the E3 spring to mind. Also newer models used the same parts - E21, E28 - Thus the confusion.

With no disrespect intended I think some "flea bayers" don't really know what they are selling or properly research the item concerned.
A definite case of caveat emptor.

Malc (who has a hard time spelling in english let alone latin )

 

[Tierfreund]

There is an alternative to realoem.com that uses the newer visual style that your dealer will be using for navigation. Also, the parts search and cross referencing seems better to me. It mght be more up to date (not sure, but parts availability records have so far allways been spot on for me). Prices are in Euros though. The urls is:

http://bmwfans.info

P.S. firefox tells me the website is hosted in russia

:shock:

How times are a changing....

 

[cpeavey]

When I am in doubt, I go right to the source at BMW. Do they still give out accounts to the WebETK? I got mine several years ago, before RealOEM, and although it's a little clunky it has more features and it has to be the most up-to-date reference.

Charlie