Any engine experts that can help re some technical questions on an bmw s85 motor?

Craze,
I had a similar situation when a friend was showing his engine builder his drain plug. It had a fragment on it and the builder was stumped. I happen to be visiting and asked him if he ran a hub. He said yes. I told him it was part of his timing gear tooth and he should pull it apart and replace the timing set and put a harmonic balancer on it. The builder had a brief discussion about not needing one. I explained the evidence for my suggestion was held in his hand. They changed it and avoided a catastrophic failure.
As a back ground, I had several years of race engine building in a small two man shop. We had a client with a stock based small block chevy come in and explain that he has figured out how to make his engine accelerate harder off the corners. (Sorry, but I started as a roundy round kinda guy.) He said if you cut the big ring off the outside of the thing on the crank that you bolt the pulley on, it hauls off the corner. My boss explained to him that he should bring his engine in and let us repair the damage now before it came apart. He declined saying he was performing regular maintenance and was on top of it. It exploded the next Saturday when it snapped a timing chain. Killed two pistons and rods and trashed his cylinder head.
Harmonics can kill things quickly.
Just another old man telling stories of days gone by. Hope you enjoyed it. I am going for more coffee.

Glad to know you are on the right track to sort out your engine. Happy motoring.

 

I appreciate your story and time taken to help me

I am well aware of harmonics,
I fly very high end remote control helicopters/planes etc and have been involved in some rc turbine stuff as well
Ive learnt an awful lot over the years from my other hobby
Also working in high speed robotics for some time
As i have “some idea” on how things work, it does scare me that so many car places really dont know what they are doing, they bolt things together not knowing much

My concern is, does it seem if only issue when cold is it an oil pump issue or blocked gallery?

This block is a bedplate design and has a special henkel branded sealant and hardener injected
Pulling a block apart is a pain in the butt apparently

This particular design of pump from the technical manuals says it doesnt go above 5 bar and is variable pressure

Hopefully have an answer tomorrow from the shop

Also would be curious if running for 650km has possibly damaged anything with this issue??

As i dont want me car back, to only have it blow again
Im sure they wouldn’t want to see me again

And the question remains, did this oil issue, wreck my rod bearings on first rebuild?

Hopefully some more clarity over the next few days

 

Craze,
It is clear that you have a grasp on this. I will say I have learned years ago that "People don't know when they don't know." That makes a lot of people do things they think they know. But they just don't know. I am not super smart, or highly educated, but I have a natural gift of understanding mechanical things and usually can tell when I just don't know. Then research teaches me. I am really enjoying following this thread and will be very interested to learn what you find out next.
I have my popcorn ready.

 

I feel the same, i cant always explain why but i guess its intuition??

I am thankful i worked in manufacturing
It opened my eyes to many things that can go wrong
We always when having issues would investigate until it was found

I guess thats why i struggle to tolerate when people work in an industry and dont have any regard to find the answer.
Not knowing is fine
But not troubleshooting systematically is very silly, and changing things randomly not based on anything credible particularly when basics havent been followed

Thanks again

Ill be sure to update

 

Problem solved!!!!!!

See pics below, apparently when it was all taken apart, they pulled apart oil pump to check no debris and good condition, they installed the slide valve backwards, somehow that makes massive pressure almost 400psi spikes only when cold and revving.

See below

thank you all
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Good to know. Thank you for sharing and challenging our minds.

 

I picked up my car today

Unfortunately a lot of small things not put back right
I drove it 11 hrs home

And the engine or accessory makes a whirriing noise at 2-4k and louder at 6k, im hoping it is water pump or ps pump and not something in engine like oil or vanos pump

It will goto bmw for diagnosis this week

What a money pit this is

$2 per km plus fuel this car has cost me lol

Ive done around 40k on it since owning

 

That's crazy about the slide valve stuff.

As far as the new noises.. do these people test drive the cars after they put them back together or ?

You must really love this particular BMW

Ray

 

Well i cant really sell it as is unfortunately

Ill make it right then it will go

Car has 3 noisy pulleys and 1 alternator
Both only done 10-15k genuine bmw
Pretty terrible stuff

 

There are certain car brands I refuse to own, simply because their engineering makes no sense whatsoever... and BMW is one of them.

Get a Toyota or a Lexus my friend. Life is too short to deal with the kind of stuff you are dealing with over there.

Ray

 

Probably the car sits for longer periods of time. Have been a BMW tech for 12 years and seen this stuff happen with cars that are not being used alot + materials theese days are just not what they used to be.

@RayJohns it's not the brand, its the engine. S85 is one of the most complex machines put together and when maintained poorly or being worked on by the people that havent seen them alot it can cause issues. A Toyota or a Lexus will never give you the proper goose bumps that an S85 gives you when you rev it to almost 9krpm

But yeah, comes with a hefty price tag.

We have a practice in Europe of preventative maintainance for theese engines for some of the issues on theese cars and they run just fine. But yeah, its a costly engine to own. But the soouuund... The F1 sound is just amazing.

I also own an E39 M5 which is a far superior vehicle (in my opinion) to the S85 with an engine that is not problematic (if you maintain it right) and i have done 342.000km with it. First lower end. Despite the age, my car pulls to 300km/h without any issues. But, the sound is another world compared to the S85 (depends on the taste of course).

P.S The E60 is one of the series neither i want to own. It was a revolution in technology, but costly to maintain in the long run. But this car has put together a road for todays cars coming from BMW. The F10/F90 M5's are just monsters to drive around with the twin turbo V8's. If you can survive the weight

The new series turbo engines from BMW (S55, ..) are just monsters. I have seen alot of them passing even 300.000km without any serious issues.

 

It's always the engine sound that gets people - me included

Thanks for the info on the BMW motors. I'll check YouTube and see if I can find some videos, etc.

Ray

 

The BMW E39 M5 you mentioned seems to be positively regarded there on YouTube all right.

My ex-girlfriend's father had a BMW M5 (E28), so I'm somewhat traumatized by the whole M5 idea.

If someone twisted my arm and said you must to own a BMW, the only one that comes to mind would be maybe an older 1970's era BWM 3.0 CSi. I'm not a BMW guy, so I don't know much about them (outside of their looks and that most cars from the 1970's are nicely produced in general). I feel like there is also some possibility of running sidedraft carbs here (on the 3.0 motor) maybe haha.

Ray

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Ive heard good things about the e39


In regards to the s85 engine it is a fantastic motor and the car itself is remarkable in its feats at the time
Even has higher top speed possible than a huracan and a brand new m5 i believe

Ive ordered 3 idlers, new alternator, misc plastic pieces and bolts/trim clips etc and radiator fan shroud that cost lost
So hoping in 2 weeks this resolves it all

Once its all done and im confident im not sure what to do with it
Might send the wheels off to refinish and respray front end for freshen up

Ill be sure to update the thread

 

@RayJohns the E39 M5 is one of the best sedans ever made. It really is. Its a daily useable car with far less issues then the E60. I have mine sitting on B16 Billsteins with an additional oil cooler and some other mods. I also track my car sometimes and drive her daily (not so much anymore, i have a diesel now for a daily since gas prices in €urope went ballistic the last few years) but yeah one of the best investments i made. I bought this thing (i wanted it since i was a younger version of myself) for app 7k$ and right now the value is sitting around 20-25k$ for a nice one, mint ones going for twice that value.

The M3 is a bit small for me (kind of a big dude with 195cm) so the 5 series is wonderful in that regard. You should definetly try one.

The engine puts out 500Nm of torque (369lb-ft @3900rpm) but the torque curve is amazing since you can use the low end torque for daily driving.

Imagine an American made V8 torque figures combined in a German car with performance and chassis ability to make a fast corner )

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Look at the tq/hp curve over for E60 M5/E39 M5.

So for me as a daily usable road car the E39 definetly wins by far. The E60 is kind of laggish and slugy in the down low rpm area but a complete monster at 4krpm+. Its an F1 car when you hit the limiter.

I guess it all depends what you want from a car. The E60 M5 is definetly not an “economic decision or a rational one” in that sense. You get an F1 car that sings to you when you hit the limiter with an amazing features (for its time) and on the other side its one of the most complex machines built, with alot of issues that come with time.

Its also an absolute gas-guzzler when you want it to move, but it moves like a supercar i had a track session in RedBull Ring (F1 Austria) where i had emptied the whole tank on an E60 M5 in 18 laps (aproximately 80km) and sounds amazing. The E39 is more of a muscle car sound that moves through the whole rev area but there is no cherry on top that the E60 has when it moves past 4k. It actually feels a bit boring when you get close to the limiter (but the exhaust headers get rid of that because the factory ones are restrictive)

So yeah, can understand both sides of the story. For me to own a second ///M car it would definetly be an E92 M3. Its a proper track tool with all the pros of an E60 M5 (the S65 engine in it is actually a copy/paste V10 S85 but missing 2 cylinders )

@craze we actually rebuild alternators in Europe, my suggestion is keep your spare one and have it rebuilt so you have a spare one with no larger expense regarding the plastic parts they deterior with age so its a must to have them changed. Ive done numerous rod bearing jobs on the E60/E92/E39 ///M cars and they all suffer from this.

Cant say about the top speed, never tried it in an E60. Drove my E39 300kmh+ and a 599 aproximately 335km/h and never tried it again…

 

Well we took car to bmw as it has mechanical gear noises from engine above 6k rpm

We found alternator and idler pulleys and warer pump noisy so replaced them

Ive spent $35k au
Its been 3 yrs and still dont have a proper engine

New one from bmw fitted is around $65k aud

This absolutely sucks i dont know what to do

 

It is easy to be defeated but you may also be close to resolving the issues as well.

The mechanical gear noises is a bit generic, was the BMW tech able to give some insight? It could be an assembly issue or something simple maybe a partial tear down and reassembly to ensure that nothing stupid has been done or …. A gear noise could have a simple cause especially if it hasn’t been catastrophic yet. Good luck!

 

It is either oil pump or vanos pump

My suspicion is the vanos gear and crank gear that drive it is different as there was 2 revisions

Only choice is remove the sump and start checking

Otherwise it can be the oil pump
They are the only 2 gear driven pieces that have adjustment

 

That sucks man. Sorry to hear you are still going through all this.

Do the people building your motor actually know anything about this specific BMW motor? Seems like they are fumbling around in the dark over there.

Ray

 

Some closure to this thread

Engine would make mechanical whining noise at high rpm
Ticking also from sump which didnt sound bad

Lots of arguing back and forth to insurer as to who pays to remove sump

Well turns out the idiots set no backlash on vanos pump and crank gear and it damaged the gears and cracked my new pump bearing race
Lucky it didnt end in catastrophic failure

Lots more arguing, and finally got settlement and repaired engine at bmw

We didnt want to take any chances so we:

Scope all bores
Pulled off 2 rod bearing caps
Replace oil filter housing and custom lines they welded back to oem
Replace vanos and oil pump to genuine bmw and timing chain guides
Vanos filter
Lots of other one time bits

Got the car back and its running like a charm

Its been almost 3 yrs of hell with this car and incompetent engine builder

 

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