What happens to a BMW when a 10$ part fails.

[thedguy]

Here's what happened:
Timing chain tensioner started to fail before we picked up the car.
Never knowing what the motor sounded like properly, and not knowing about the tensioners failure around 100k miles it was never taken care of...
Until 140k miles when it was finally fixed after someone told us it sounded like it was broke. At 145k miles we came around a corner, and the sound of no oil/metal-on-metal contact, within half a second my bro had the engine off.
What happened is the timing chain was slowly destroyed, along with all the timing gear. All the bits of the chain fell into the oil pan, though never came out during any of the oil changes strangly enough.
The pump sucked up these pieces of chain into the pickup, clogging it atleast a little (we noticed a lifter tick and we feel this may have been it). Oil pump eventually forced the bits of chain thru the pick-up protective screen (which is suprisingly strong.
The oil pump housing/timing case cracked and seperated in a few spots, the oil pump itself broke into 6 pieces, the ring on the pump slit into 2. As can be seen, loads and loads of scoring.

Oh and the entire timing system, chain, guides, gears, are all useless.

What the front of the timing case should look like:


What my bro's looks like. Notice the crack, about 3-4inches long where the pump is! And notice the lower chain guide, the plastic is completely gone from the mounting post. There is a crack on the other side of the housing as well.


Hole in the screen.


look on the right you can see the missing piece of housing, fell out once we pulled the casing off the block.


The other cracks in the casing


I think this is a bit self explanitory.


Just to show the damage along with the BMW logo. Also this aluminum part faces the block. The pump is in between it and the block. Personally I hate the design. Why couldn't the casing be cast into the block, and a pump on the other wide, would have been MUCH easier to service, and wouldn't require replacing a $300 aluminum casing.


Close up:


The car is a 1991 BMW 318is, with the Cast Iron block/Aluminum head M42 DOHC 1.8 litre engine. While pulling this thing apart, nearly every bolt on it that hadn't been touched since new, were barely considered tight (just enought that you couldn't get them loose by hand).

If we were to purchase all the parts new to fix this would be well over $500 for the absolute minimum parts. I hate to see what labor is.

If this is the Poor mans M3 fuck the real one.

This is why I defend American cars like I do,
Dustin

PS. Had this been a chevy, this whole thing would have been a lot less damage, and the car could have been up and running in less than 45 minutes. For under $100.

[geoff_a_pult]

I doubt there is any car out there that can survive a broken timing chain being sucked through the oil system and be fixed for under $100, what with all you described being damaged. Some engines will actually destroy themselves if you run them with a broken timing chain or belt.

Also, didn't your mechanic recommend a tensioner replacement at 100k? I know mine did.

P.S.- I wouldn't worry about the bolts being fairly loose. The only ones that need to be cranked absolutely tight are those holding the cylinder heads and valve train in place, along with the intake and exhauset headers. The rest really are only a problem if they are loose enough to back themselves out.

[jetsetter]

You could buy a Chevy 350 for $500.

[thedguy]

My bro is his own mechanic, and my dad was a Mechanic for 35 years.

And beyond that, the tech that we ran into at a BMW meet which told us about the problem, said it's not on the books when it's suppost to be changed, it's not suppost to fail, but most aggree that round 100k it should be changed.

The timing chain itself was still in tact, many of the rollers had broke though. Any decent car made in the past 15 years should have protection sucking up 3/16" pieces of metal.

[Vette Boss]

Originally Posted by jetsetter

You could buy a Chevy 350 for $500.

And fit it in a BMW 318is? Technically, I suppose it'll fit, but it's much too heavy for a small car like his.

[thedguy]

Originally Posted by Vette Boss

And fit it in a BMW 318is? Technically, I suppose it'll fit, but it's much too heavy for a small car like his.

This is why we considered a Buick Grand National V6

Once this thing is up and running, it's getting sold. And I could do without another BMW in my house ever again.

[geoff_a_pult]

Originally Posted by thedguy

Any decent car made in the past 15 years should have protection sucking up 3/16" pieces of metal.

Well there's your problem.. the '91 BMW was probably made in 90 and sold in the end of the year as a 91, making it... 16 years old!
(sorry for that joke, but I just can't resist)

Still.. that is one nice thing about having just converted to fairly modern cars. If they break, I will know that it is probably not just mechanical and that I have absolutely no chance of fixing it if I try, so I can just take it to someone else. Sure it'll expensive, but at least it will save all the stess I go through trying to do something I know I should be able to do (like fix the rough idle on the 1800).

[jayhawk]

Dumb design yes, but thats the comprimise of the gerotor type oil pump. It saves space but lacks simplicity.

Could have been worse, eh?

[thedguy]

Originally Posted by jayhawk

Dumb design yes, but thats the comprimise of the gerotor type oil pump. It saves space but lacks simplicity.

Could have been worse, eh?

In the wise words of Wayne Cambell " I guess."

[patrick10]

the timing chain guides on a s14 ka24de have a problem with coming loose and having an annoying rattle. when my buddy was pulling his head to build his motor, he found that his guide was completely broken off and just resting on the top of the gers.... he was a lucky sob

[Salar]

I'm looking into a 318i. 2 door. late 80's.

[thedguy]

Originally Posted by Salar

I'm looking into a 318i. 2 door. late 80's.

89+ had this motor. Make sure you get a stick, auto's are dogs.

www.m42club.com. Great source of info on this motor and the cars they came in. Normal BMW forums suck for info about the m42 powered cars.

If you can find one go for the IS, they are a couple hundred pounds lighter.

If you want some more info PM me or catch me on aim, or just browse and ask on the forum I linked.

They are great cars if you don't get one that was taken care. Unfortunately my bro's was bought from someone who thought German Engineering ment "treat it like an 80's toyota pickup."

[Salar]

Originally Posted by thedguy

89+ had this motor. Make sure you get a stick, auto's are dogs.

www.m42club.com. Great source of info on this motor and the cars they came in. Normal BMW forums suck for info about the m42 powered cars.

If you can find one go for the IS, they are a couple hundred pounds lighter.

If you want some more info PM me or catch me on aim, or just browse and ask on the forum I linked.

They are great cars if you don't get one that was taken care. Unfortunately my bro's was bought from someone who thought German Engineering ment "treat it like an 80's toyota pickup."

That's awesome. thanks for info man.

I'll probably PM you later. and yeah, I am DEFINATELY looking for a 5spd.

[un-dee]

So what you are saying your 15 year old BMW 318 broke because it was not serviced properly? Big deal...

Really, most engines destroy themselves completely when the timing belt goes (thats what i ike about BMW, they aren't using one), so I would call that only minor damage.

[thedguy]

Originally Posted by Un-Dee

So what you are saying your 15 year old BMW 318 broke because it was not serviced properly? Big deal...

Really, most engines destroy themselves completely when the timing belt goes (thats what i ike about BMW, they aren't using one), so I would call that only minor damage.

Actually I've talked to 2 people have just barely been saved even when they took their cars to dealers regularly because of this info.

The Timing tensioner, is not a standard maintenance part, and the motor makes noise anyway, so many mechanic's never notice when it goes bad. This is the resulting damage if it goes too long.
BTW the timing chain was a result of a part failure, and the timing chain was still function, just missing rollers from the links, and damaging the timing gear. If we just swaped the oil pump it would still run, but timing would be off (honestly it's been off for quite a while from what we can tell). And to add to this, many of these parts were redesigned for the later model motors, but never retrofitted to the original M42 engines.

But yes if service is neglected, or just the problem goes undiagnosed this will happen.

My Nissan if the belt breaks will only need to be replaced and re-timed which is even older than the BMW, and was the bottom of the range Nissan.

And at this point, I'll take a belt over a chain, as long as it's a non-interferance engine design. Chain's are stronger, but when they fail, they destroy things. I'd hate to see the damage on an Aluminum block BMW in the even the chain broke.

[youngwarrior]

lol you couldnt tell if the engine was running ok or not.

It seems like the mechanics that service european cars in america are incompetent, as we have way more audi's bmw's etc in europe yet half the reliability issues.

[thedguy]

Originally Posted by youngwarrior

lol you couldnt tell if the engine was running ok or not.

It seems like the mechanics that service european cars in america are incompetent, as we have way more audi's bmw's etc in europe yet half the reliability issues.

The mechanics here are pretty shitty especially at dealerships, only specialty shops, or people I know personally touch my car, or anyone I know. My bro does his own mechanical work. Unfortunately the right info about these engines was not available until recently.

Obviously you've never worked on a car in your life. The car was running GREAT, right upto the 6500rpm fuel cut that we nailed in 1st gear just before the 2nd gear turn we were in when this all happened. Plus we had fixed the tensioner at 140k miles, so the motor was sounding great at when it blew at 143k miles, what we didn't know was the damage had already been done.

The only thing that tells you this is a problem is the chain will rattle. Well guess what, we talked to people about it, and they say these engines rattle a bit anyway. And we have one of 2 BMW 318's in this entire state, so we had no idea what a good m42 sounded like. I've heard Chevy's and Dodge's that had sounded a lot worse and ran fine for another 50k miles, even longer with a toyota's and honda's.

The Damaged pump screne that should have protected the pump




The bits that did the damage.


edit: If BMW would have admitted to the design problem of these tensioners, and recommend in the maintenance schedule to change them, all this damage could have been avoided. Instead they quietly redesigned the parts in later engines, and ignored the problem.

[youngwarrior]

ok fair enough, older beemers are rare in the US and your right the most work ive never done on a car is change a headgasket and some spark plugs.

[thedguy]

Here's the funny thing about all this. I'd gladly recommend these cars to anyone, especially with this motor. Now that my bro and I have helped (a lot) in finding a large amount of the problem points of this motor, they can be prevented.

geoff_a_pult: About your comment on bolts being loose...
Many are finding the bolts holding the oil pickup falling out. Same goes for many on the oil pan itself. In fact I met someone from the m42club that was having an engine built not far from here. As he was driving down here (he lives in Manhatten, i'm in ST. louis), 2 bolts backed out at the front of the pan, and a gasket failed, and he lossed all oil pressure somewhere in pennsylvania.

Also my dad has busted a timing chain once on one of his Chevy's (ages ago), and the only damage done was the chain left a couple of marks on the timing cover along with the actual chain breaking, the biggest issue was retiming the motor since the marks are kidna hard to see with the radiator in the way.

On a side note, These motors when tuned up with a nice set of cams, stroker crank/over bore (to 2.152 litre's), ported head, and a rather interesting tweak to the intake manifold makes for lots of fun in a 2540lb car.

[Z Draci]

The fact is that you ran the car with a broken part (even though you were unaware of it). And now you're complaining how it caused damage to the engine! Do you automatically equate a car with an engine that can withstand a lack of maintanence to being a great car?

Owner's negligence in the US is probably the main reason why BMW offers full scheduled maintanence for FREE now. The reason why German cars have high performance is that their cars are engineered with far less slack and margin for error. It's not like your barnyard engineered American cars that'll run with no oil for thousands of miles. BMW's are precision engineered machines that need more care and maintanence.