BMW Nikasil

Fishtits

one question:

When was Nickasil ended, how do you check when buying? to avoid?

Voodoomelon

Not sure how you check to be honest, but they stopped using it in late 1998 (October im 99% sure).

Best way to be 100% sure is to get a June 1999 build date or later.

daveharnett

Fishtits wrote: »

one question:

When was Nickasil ended, how do you check when buying? to avoid?

In the case of the 5, the easiest way to avoid is to aim for the m52TU engine (the one with dual vanos - two cylinders at the front of the cams rather than one). the nikasil lining was discontinued a few months before the engine got dual vanos (early99 afaik).

sogood

In the case of a 7, it wasnt used on the straight sixes, 735, this is the M30 block. It was used on the V 8's which to the best of my knowledge was a 728 and a 730. Could stand corrected, but this is late 80's and early 90's. Any cars from that era that suffered with the problem were generally sorted by BMW, no quibble, even after warranty had expired, just as a pr exercise and to keep a lid on it as much as possible. What are you thinking of buying?

Mr Benevolent

Apparently the quickest test is to park the car, leaving the engine running and open both front doors fully. If the car rocks from side to side at idle in this configuration it's got the Nikasil problem.

Matt Simis

Confab wrote: »

Apparently the quickest test is to park the car, leaving the engine running and open both front doors fully. If the car rocks from side to side at idle in this configuration it's got the Nikasil problem.

Weird, never heard that and would probably generate a lot of false positives. Any car with soft and worn engine mounts (ie all cars with highish mileage) would rock from side to side in that test, as would a car with a misfile, vacuum leak, flakey fuel injector etc.

To OP:
Not all Nikasil blocks will have a problem, generally it was accepted the issue appeared in cars that were not driven aggressively and/or on subpar fuel. If it has 80k plus miles on it by now, its unlikely to be an issue.
On the 8 series (and others using the M60 engine), nearly all the 4.4L V8s (M62) were Alusil and the 4.0 were Nikasil (M60 engine), with a few exceptions.

See a list of Nikasil engines here, of which most arent BMWs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikasil

Seweryn

Fishtits wrote: »

one question:
When was Nickasil ended, how do you check when buying? to avoid?

Why to avoid Nikasil? It is fine technology and the cylinder liners are very durable and better for heat transmission.
If you buy an Irish car used in Ireland you do not need to worry about it. The Nikasil engines may only give trouble if the car was using highly sulphurised petrol, which reacts with Nikasil. This kind of product was only "available" in US and A and in some part of UK (Northern England). So unless you are looking at imported car, you should be fine.
I used to drive a 1997 E39 523iA and it was running super fine with no problems at all.

Mr Benevolent

Weird, never heard that and would probably generate a lot of false positives. Any car with soft and worn engine mounts (ie all cars with highish mileage) would rock from side to side in that test, as would a car with a misfile, vacuum leak, flakey fuel injector etc

To be fair, most of the problems you've listed can be expensive to fix as well I take your point though, it's probably not foolproof.

rebel.ranter

March 1998 was the last build date for the 6 cylinder engines with potential for Nikasil issues.
As was mentioned Nikasil does not necessarily equal problems. I have one for 9 years with no issues yet.

unkel

rebel.ranter wrote: »

March 1998 was the last build date for the 6 cylinder engines with potential for Nikasil issues.
As was mentioned Nikasil does not necessarily equal problems. I have one for 9 years with no issues yet.

+1

And for the V8 it is only the M60 engine which went into every x30i and x40i between '93 and '96. I had an originally Irish 530i V8 with the M60 nikasil engine and it never developed the problem. As said, none do develop the problem unless regularly filled with dirty (high sulphur) petrol.

Voodoomelon

sogood wrote: »

In the case of a 7, it wasnt used on the straight sixes, 735, this is the M30 block. It was used on the V 8's which to the best of my knowledge was a 728 and a 730. Could stand corrected, but this is late 80's and early 90's. Any cars from that era that suffered with the problem were generally sorted by BMW, no quibble, even after warranty had expired, just as a pr exercise and to keep a lid on it as much as possible. What are you thinking of buying?

Incorrect. It was used in the straight sixes and was quite a prolific with them particularly. 728i and 730d were both straight sixes, 735i, 740i were V8s and 750i was a V12 which was unaffected.

unkel

The 735 E38 is M62 only so it was never affected. It replaced the 730 M60 which was affected. The 740 E38 was 4.0l M60 (affected) and 4.4l M62 (not affected)

I know about the V8s but I'll leave the straight six to the experts

joeperry

T'was after 03/98 that they changed to the alusil blocks,Sep '98 oftens gets mentioned but this is when the straight 6s changed to the double vanos engine.

sogood

Voodoomelon wrote: »

Incorrect. It was used in the straight sixes and was quite a prolific with them particularly. 728i and 730d were both straight sixes, 735i, 740i were V8s and 750i was a V12 which was unaffected.

As I said, I could stand corrected, but as mentioned also, I was referring to the 1990 E32 735i with the M30 block which is a straight six and didnt have the nikasil engine. There are just an infinite number of variations that it's hard to know whats what sometimes.

Seth Brundle

See http://www.bavarian-board.co.uk/nikasil.htm also