E30 318i [M40]: Massive air leak SOLVED - lower inlet-manifold gasket

I had checked and re-checked the idle control valve [ICV], the air-flow meter [AFM], ignition system, tested for the fuel pressure, performed tests on the DME [ECU] to make sure that was working and even laboriously tested the wiring loom for continuity, but still the engine idles terribly when cold. It ticks over lumpy, shakes the engine side to side and cuts out at will, even when power is applied. 

I checked the timing and all was good, under the rocker-cover showed no defective valves and the cam-shaft doesn't look all that worn. I guess the only thing left to check is the injectors... right?? Now hold on a minute I hear the E30 and M40 engine gurus cry, the symptoms you've described point towards an obvious massive air leak in the induction system! 

This is true and is also the very first thing I looked for and tested. Initially I performed the 'spray' test using a can of brake-cleaner (though 'Easy-start', carb-cleaner or electrical-cleaner work too, anything with alcohol content). This involves running the engine and spraying brake-cleaner around the intake-manifold, ICV, vacuum hoses, throttle-body etc. If unwanted air is being sucked in, say through a split hose, the brake-cleaner will be sucked in and combusted by the engine causing it to rev higher. If you are spraying in one particular place and the engine revs increase accordingly then you have found your air-leak. Thing is, I did this test over and over again and it showed nothing. 

I’ve heard that air can be sucked in past the injector bodies when the rubber sealing rings have degraded over time and that the lower intake-manifold is also a main culprit, but spraying round this area made no difference to the engine revs or affected the poor idle. I did a compression test and the readings were a bit low, but not enough to cause any issues.

At this point I decided it to bite the bullet and begin stripping things down. The removal of the lower intake-manifold is quite complicated because it involves removing the fuel-lines from the rail, which is why I put it off, but clearly if you want to fix something then you need to get your hands dirty so off came the fuel lines and away came the lower manifold to reveal.... well, as you can see from the photo, a virtually non existent gasket. Sigh. 

Cylinder 1 has a massive gap where the gasket is no longer there, so whenever there is a vacuum in the plenum it’s just filling up with fresh air even with the throttle-body shut and this explains why the ICV appears to be doing nothing and leads people to look there first. Whoever was refitting the manifold was obviously in a rush because the broken gasket has folded over on itself, causing the air gap to be even bigger. I guess they just tightened it hoping to make a seal, but alas no. Cylinder 2 is not much better with a noticeable gap and the rest of the gasket squashed flat. Cylinders 3 and 4 are better, but still paper thin. It looks like this may be the original gasket and the past 35 years have not been kind to it (or to me for that matter).

So... looks like I have found the culprit of the rough idle. Finally! New gasket is ordered, a snip at £6.88! Amazing how such a simple thing can cause such a severe problem and goes to show how sensitive these ‘analog’ ‘80s cars are to air metering issues!

E46 Clubsport: Loss of coolant... split radiator!

The Clubsport is starting to become a bit 'whatever next' lately. Amidst the other post new year jobs I forgot to mention the coolant expansion-tank that sits next to the radiator had swelled and split down one side, so a new one was duly fitted.

Last week the sudden loss of coolant returned, with the puddle in the same place under the radiator, but no visible sign of a leak. Nath assumed it to be the radiator-cap, so we pressure tested it in work and it's fine. Then we pressurised the rest of the cooling system and this is what we found - the radiator has burst along the top. A new radiator is going straight in, but the fact remains that something is still pressurising the cooling system and needs to get sorted.

E46 Clubsport: Nathan's split rubber + other issues.

More big spending as the Clubsport gets back on the road with a new MOT, starting with 4 new Maxxis tyres for the refurbed split-rims. It's been running a bit rough, but as he started it for the first time in a month it ran a bit worse and began producing a lot of white / blue smoke from the exhaust. Fearing the head-gasket he started dismantling and found it was just one of the profile-gaskets in the rocker-cover [16 in the bottom diagram] was split and hadn't seated in the head properly the last time it was replaced and was allowing oil to spill down into the chamber and was causing the smoke. This, he assures us, is a common problem in 6-cylinder BMW petrols and had nothing to do with any 'engine-weld' products he may have also added. Never the less, with a new rubber-gasket the smoke has ceased. During the job he found the rubber intake hose was also split in two places, clearly contributing to the lack of smooth acceleration suffered since he got it, so he treated the 330 to a new one of these as well.

The MOT threw up borderline high emissions, which was waved, and both front lower ball-joints were knackered. These are usually replaced as a whole control-arm, so that's what was done and finally the Clubsport is back on the road, looking and sounding as it should with better pull and a really raspy vanos exhaust note. Next up comes replacing the lower bumper splitter sorely missing from the front end.

E46 Clubsport: New split-rims!

Oh yes... it's time the 330CS had some money lavished on it and what better way to start than new wheels. They are the same set of Italian-made Cromodora 18x8 and 18x8.5 2-piece split-rims that come with the car. He still has the old ones, but after 2 failed attempts to refurbish them he's been keeping an eye out for a replacement set, which aren't common. Finally some have shown up and been quickly snaffled for £ delivered. They've been sandblasted back to bare metal, then lacquered and the colour / finish is very nice indeed. Awesome.

Also, a rubber rocker-cover gasket to signify the start of the engine tweaks. Lots more to come...

E60: Replacing the Rear Trailing-arm / Bushes

REMOVAL:

1. Jack car, remove wheel.
2. Remove anti-roll bar link [14] by undoing both the upper and lower nut. Upper nut is 16mm and you need to hold the threaded-bolt by inserting a T30-Torx socket down the end of bolt itself. Lower nut is 18mm and the bolt-end is held by a T40-Torx. Use an open-ended spanner or place a ring-spanner over the Torx-socket before inserting it.
3. Loosen the eccentric-bolt [11] that aligns the rear suspension, making a note of its position. This is the bolt connecting the trailing-arm to the subframe lowest to the rear of the car. The bolt-head is 18mm and the nut, to the rear, is 21mm.
4. Loosen off the front bolt [9] connecting the trailing-arm to the subframe using an 18mm socket and spanner. You do not need to remove the hard plastic cover next to it, there is just enough room to hold the obscured bolt with a spanner.
5. Loosen off the long bolt [5] connecting the trailing-arm to the wheel-hub. The bolt-head is 18mm again and the nut, to the front, is 24mm.
6. Fully remove the 3 bolts and wiggle the trailing arm out, usually from the subframe end first. The bolts may need helping out with a drift and hammer.

REPLACING BUSHES:

Replacing the rubber-bushes and refitting your existing trailing-arm is the cheapest option. The bushes are really tight in the arm and the old ones can be removed by any means necessary - cutting, burning, whatever gets them out. The new bushes however, are nigh on impossible to fit and will likely need shoving in with a hydraulic-press. Your local garage or mechanic mate will do this for buttons. If your on your own at home, as I was, then replacing the whole arm with bushes already in will save a lot of hassle.

REFITTING:

1. Offer the trailing-arm up, wheel-hub first, and reinsert the long bolt [5] through the hub, loosely screwing the nut [6] on a few turns.
2. Manoeuvre the arm up to slide the foremost bush back into the subframe mount and reinsert the bolt [9], screwing the nut [10] on a few turns. The arm may need a bit of twisting and jimmying to get in due to the geometry of the raised suspension.
3. Manoeuvre the trailing-arm up to fit the rearmost bush back into the subframe mount. This will be difficult and you will likely need a second car-jack and a fair bit of working to get it in so the eccentric-bolt will slide through. Reinsert the eccentric-bolt [11] and tighten it up so it is reasonably tight.
4. Tighten up the other two bolts s they are reasonably tight.
5. Replace the wheel and lower the car off the jack to rest the weight back on the axles and reset the suspension geometry.
6. Fully tighten all the bolts while the car is not raised off the wheels. The correct torques are [5] - 240Nm, [9] - 100Nm, [11] - 165Nm.  [BMW recommend tightening the bolts while the car is under 'normal load'. This involved placing 50kg weights on each of the seats. ** on ** used multiple bags of cement to properly set his, but if you consider this going too far then just tighten them with the car sat on its wheels as I did. You will need to back the car onto ramps to get access to the bolts without removing the wheel, so if you absolutely can't do that then just tighten them as much as possible with the car raised.]

E60 530d MOT Fail - Brakes, Trailing Arm

After the horror of the swirl-flap failure and engine swap, the E60 went off the road again at the start of December after an annoying MOT fail on imbalanced brakes, likely discs and pads, and split trailing arm bushes on the N/S. The tester also failed it on a bend in the rim of the N/S/R alloy wheel, which is reasonably bad, but enough to be an MOT fail I am not too sure.

This is the bush on the offending arm with the most play, but I still can't see a major split as I have with other bushes.

Closer inspection reveals what could be a split on the right side of the pic, but it's still not a shut case. Maybe the rubber has separated from the metal outer and is moving around?

Ok, so it's no small dent. The inner rim is bent, where the tyre sits, but I've had similar sized ones before that have been no problem. 

Is it repairable? Perhaps, but I have no spare wheel to use and a replacement is £200. Maybe the MOT tester was having a bad day?

E60: Split Vac-line, some boost, weird noises.

The turbo whine and lack of boost has persisted, so I took off the inlet-manifold again to check the vacuum-lines and found one has snapped off. Luckily, there was plenty of hose left to cut it down and push it back onto the T-piece. I re-checked every line twice against the diagrams on RealOEM.com and refitted the manifold, making sure the seals were super flush. Now when I fired up the turbo started making a ridiculous whoosh and dump-valve style hiss, as in the vid below. Some boost had returned too, though not as much as there should be and certainly nothing like the turbo sounded. Still, the vac-line repair did get a result, so it looks there could be life in the turbo yet.

There was nothing else I could do other than pore over the vac-line configuration, so I made this quick one-piece diagram to show the route of the four coming off the servo-pipe to save switching between several diagrams on RealOEM. I then started pulling vac-lines off in order to find the faulty area and, amazingly, managed to get rid of the whoosh/hiss and still have some boost. The turbo is still whistling though and there is not enough pull as you get over 2k rpm, so something is still amiss.

• Split vac-line to swirl-flaps - Low boost, quiet turbo-whistle higher up.
• Repaired vac-line - Some boost low down, cuts out higher up. Loud whoosh and hiss noise, turbo-whistle constantly.
• Vac-hose removed from wastegate - Low boost, quiet turbo-whistle higher up.
• Swirl-flaps and engine-mount vac-lines switched round - Some boost, no whoosh/hiss, constant turbo whistle, less engine vibration.

The diagrams do not make clear the route of the red/black striped hose on the right of mine. This turned out to be the N/S engine-mount and another scan of RealOEM.com revealed how they work in the pic below. I had wondered about a problem with the engine-mounts anyway, as there seems to be a lot more engine vibration than before, especially on tickover, so my next job will be to find the pipes that link the mounts together and check their condition. They all run through the subframe next to the steering-rack. M57N is a complicated vacuum arrangement.

E60: Cracked lower timing-case - engine finished.

Yeah well that's torn it. Literally, torn it open. After all that effing about with the sump removal, finding the right piston and drilling off those snapped head bolts, I find a whopping great crack in the lower timing-case!

I wonder what caused this? Vibration from the swirl-flap doing its dance? High crankcase pressure from the dodgy piston? Who knows, but we can safely say that's where the oil leak was coming from!

It's a big enough job as it is to replace that single damaged piston, but to swap the lower timing-case as well involves stripping the entire front of the car, getting all the pulleys off and fully removing the crankshaft. Hmm, a lot of work and a lot more cost, this definitely calls for a replacement engine... Watch this space!!

E21 316: Slight arch foul!

As you can see, the arch was sat on the tyre something awful with the 9" wide wheels at the back and the 225/45/16 rubber on...

A bit more arch persuasion...

Credit card clearance!

Or is it? The arch is still sitting on the tyre a little. The car just about rolls, but there's nowhere for the tyre to go either on a bump or with the weight of the driver...

It looks very flush and tidy, but something drastic will have to be done.

E21 316: Fatter Wheels - 16x8/9J staggered BBS RS Split-Rim Reps!

I love the old Melbers, but couldn't resist buying some bigger, wider rims to fill out my arch clearance. I've ended up with 16x8 for the front, which should be ok with 20mm spacers, and 16x9 for the back. They say it can't be done without cutting the arches. Well, I'm going to have to find a way, because I need that 3.5" lip and I ain't cutting. 

9s stick out a bit even with just 20mm spacers...

The 8s below are for the front, but fit the rear with a bit more clearance than the 9s...

...but lets face it, they're not deep enough!

Fat rims.

With a bit of negative camber the rim is not far from the arch-lip and I think a stretched tyre will go under, but a bit more rolling will be necessary...

Roller skate style!

9s may need a little more spacing on the back to get off the strut and trailing arm...

And no, you may have guessed, they're not real split-rims, they're one-piece replicas and cost less than £400 delivered from royal_wax on eBay. A genuine set of BBS splitties has been floating around on there too, yours for £1600 without tyres, so I think I'll suffer with the replicas for now. The finish is a bit cheap and tacky, but hey, I'll be painting them up in Panama Beige anyway and I wouldn't be doing that to real ones. Even so it's been anther expensive week and I've got to find some rubber this week... I'm thinking 205_40_16 front, maybe Falken, and 225_40_16 rear Toyo T1-R, so let's hope I can get another cheap deal through work and that should save me a few hundred quid! I wish someone would hurry up and buy my Melbers - surely with the Toyo T4s stretched on they're worth £300 - come one people!