Engine radiator VALEO or OEM BMW

The stock piece lasts well over a decade in my experience. That's more than enough for me for a part that fits and functions perfectly.

My NA 1.4 OE failed (long time ago) because of aluminium tubing corrosion (brine). So replacement Valeo got paint treatment . So far 100k km without problems.

OEM radiator. Replaced radiator on visit 5 (today). Bmw closed loop network is what eventually led to the radiator being checked as they’ve seen aftermarket radiators actually cool the cars too much, therefore sending the tstat fault in cold weather (this issue occurred first last winter for me, then again 5 times this winter.. all same fault code). Confidence that this is the root cause fix seems to be high so fingers crossed I won’t be updating this in a few days.

I have a 2008 e90 335xi FBO with 197k miles and I am still on my original BMW radiator. If the stock original BMW stamped one works well... why experiment?

I replaced my radiator several times, always due to corrosion at the bottom edge where brine accumulates. Last time I replaced it for Valeo and for sure it had same design as your "new", which is a stamped aluminium sheets stuck on cylindrical piping. So far so good.

Worked well on my Valeo radiator, let it soak 10 min and a lot of very brown water came out. No leaks, cools better.

my valeo radiator didn't come with anything.. im just hoping it doesn't leak from that zone.

bmw makes a sad excuse of a cooling system with brittle plastic, sad plastic joins and a pathetic plastic and metal radiator, like that's gonna last

During Covid a lot of brand new genuine BMW parts had some issues so I had to change my radiator twice, was covered by BMW dealer after loads of back and forth. (There’s two part numbers for B48 engine main radiators and the dealer said the part number used was not meant for the car but the other radiator clearly wouldn’t fit)

I've replaced a radiator on a BMW 2018 3 Series with as little as 22k miles. This particular vehicle was leaking from the side tank of the rad, where the plastic is crimped to the aluminum. Nothing abnormal could be seen, just the crimp failed.