Adafruit: From Ultimate Driving Machine to Ultimate Rent-Seeking Machine: The BMW Logo Screw Patent.
If you haven’t already heard, BMW’s R&D teams have been busy “innovating.” Unfortunately, they aren’t focusing on the things that actually matter—like stellar engine performance or the legendary driving dynamics that gearheads love. Instead, the C-suite execs decided that the best use of their engineering budget was to design a proprietary security screw specifically intended to prevent BMW drivers from fixing their own cars.
VW made these funky triangle topped bolt on TDi injection pumps ( or maybe it was Bosch who cares). My buddy who’s a mechanic said “don’t mess with those ,you need special sockets”.
I took 12pt sockets and used a dremmel to grind out every other two points in the socket and had my own set to mess with the bolts they didn’t want me messing with.