The "Today I did something to my car" thread

Bit of a monster post incoming!

Over the past few weeks I have done quite a bit of work on the car:

Oil Change
Full Coolant Flush
Oil Filter
Air Filter
Vanos Seals
Rocker Cover Gasket
New Battery
Engine Bay Detail
Troubleshooting airbag fault with the help of rebel.ranter
Paint Correction
Various other Detailing Jobs...
Mechanic is doing rear suspension bushes at the minute
Taxed it...
NCT next week

First job was the Vanos seals, the M54 engine has variable valve timing on the intake and exhaust cams, it uses oil pressure to push pistons against a splined shaft which advances / retards the camshaft. The pistons have rubber o rings and teflon seals, the rubber o rings break down over time and oil pressure is lost which means the pistons cant adjust the rotation of the camshaft, particularly on the intake side which has a strong spring to return the camshaft to the default position. This leads to:

A loss in high end power
Reduced low end torque (easy to stall the engine)
Reduced economy

You can get a new Vanos Unit from BMW but it will fail again after ~20k miles or so as the rubber o rings will break down. Beisan Systems do a kit with new teflon seals and more resilient viton o rings that will see the car out.

The Vanos unit is on the front of the engine and there's a fair bit of disassembly to get it out

Radiator Fan
Cabin Filter Housing
Coil Packs
Rocker Cover etc all have to come off

Cabin Filter housing removal


I'm a big BMW fan eh? eh? :pac:


Coil Packs removed


Rocker Cover Removed


Timing chain appears to be in good condition and is very tight which is good i suppose!


Vanos unit removed, You can see the chain tensioner, and the splined shafts in the intake and exhaust cams


Vanos Unit out on the bench


Exploded View of Vanos components


You need to split the old teflon seals with a sharp stanley blade or something to remove them so the vice was the handiest way to do this without losing a finger


Old seals, you can see the rubber o rings were hard and perished. The pistons literally fell out of the cylinders.


Heres an empty clean piston, Once the new seals were installed it took considerable force and much cursing to get the pistons back into the cylinders and once they were in they were rock solid, it must take huge oil pressure to move them :cool:


Re-assembly of the Vanos Unit


These f*ckers are left hand thread, they are cheap from the dealers so I got new ones as its easy break them on removal


.....

166man wrote: »

Funny number plates.... I always thought Killkenny was KK on a reg plate and not C?

RoverJames wrote: »

Dunno if the county name being there is still a fail or not
Is that one of the silly things they stopped looking at?

Have you had the car off the road for a while so?

Correct county name is a requirement, I believe some NCT centres will place stickers on for you, either way it currently has legit plates for the test



Moved to Wexford Street in Dublin back in September, Car was off the road since November as I wasnt using it I think it was parked for a full month at one stage

OSI wrote: »

Ah you got another airbag cu. Did it cost you much in the end? Much coding involved?

Collecting the car this morning and fitting it this afternoon, best case scenario is disconnect the battery and do a straight swap. After that it may or may not need to be coded. Worst case scenario it needs a software update which is a lot more complicated I'm told