Montreal Blue 1996 BMW 328is

[Jake]

It's really not hard to remove the cams. A shop will charge you another ~$80 or so to remove and reinstall, and if you go slowly the risk of breaking them is slim. I just said BE CAREFUL in all caps to make sure you took your time and asked questions like you are doing, before removing things willy-nilly.

Maybe this will help:



You have to remove the VANOS and timing chain regardless of whether you remove the cams or someone else removes them. It's all just bolts, remember to look several times at what's not un-done yet if you get hung up (no rubber mallets! I learned the hard way) and to bag-n-tag everything for later.

Not sure what you mean by "timing cover" - I think you have your terminology wrong there. The timing cover/timing case is the piece that runs down the front of the engine block, and you don't have to remove that unless you're an idiot like I am and fuck up your timing chain guides. Re: that VANOS cover thing... there are bolts there that hold it on, I can't remember which but it will come off. You gotta pull that before you pull the secondary timing chain (the smaller one).

When you get that VANOS removed, you can remove the 4x bolts on each sprocket for the secondary timing chain. It really is as easy as it looks. Undo the bolts and the sprocket will pop off from the cam with the chain attached. That's normal. There are some "spring" tension plates that you can't see yet. They will also come off. Keep everything in the right order of "layers" (you'll see what I mean when you pull it) and just zip-tie it all together so you don't lose anything or let the chain move on the sprocket teeth.

With the cams, just loosen each cam in a star pattern. Do a couple turns on the first cam cap bolt (the caps are the things labeled E1, E2, etc that hold each cam in place) and then go to the opposite side at the rear of the head. Come back up front and do another one. You can definitely do this. Once you get all of the bolts loosened past a certain point, you'll feel the cam pop up a little bit (this is normal, you just relieved tension) and you can typically loosen the cam cap bolts by hand from there.

I unbolted the VANOS solenoid because it takes like 30 seconds.

To alleviate concern about pistons and valves making contact (which is legit, I read that Pelican article too) - put the motor at TDC (top dead center) before you pull the cams. Grab a socket and breaker bar (I think it's a 24mm?) and rotate the crankshaft pulley clockwise. There is a notch/line on the timing cover and on the crank pulley. Line those up and you are golden.