Used to be on a poster in my dorm: 2005 M3

[JPolen01]

3-4 weeks is not that bad. If they were months out I could see people having an issue with it.

[Beej]

SES light popped on - P0128, which is probably the thermostat being stuck open. The car has a "hidden menu" where you can monitor the engine temp and sure enough, it stays around 74 when moving with an 80 degree thermostat.

The kicker? I had just started suspecting the M5 of the same issue - needle stays around the 11:00 position instead of being straight up. I'll take that on a road trip tomorrow and if it also stays low in the hidden menu (so far it seems to be the same), it's double thermostat time.

Now to sort out whether to just do the thermostat, or let while-you're-in-there lead to replacing the whole cooling system on a perfectly running 106k mile car.

[RawrImAMonster]

May as well at least replace the water pump while you have it out, they are prone to bearing failure. The other stuff can be replaced as needed really.

[SlimKlim]

Fun fact: Sometime in 2009/2010 I was driving home from the shop and the car never got up to temperature, gauge would barely come out of the cold. I called my boss and asked him if it was ok to keep driving (I knew a bit less then) and he told me what it was.

I got home, whacked the thermostat housing with a rubber mallet, took it back out for a drive and it warmed up to temperature. I ran that same thermostat until this past march when I did the headgasket. :lol:


So based off of personal experience I would suggest whacking it with a hammer and ignoring it. :dunno:

[Beej]

So based off of personal experience I would suggest whacking it with a hammer and ignoring it. :dunno:

Well maybe you can fix an S52 with a hammer, but it doesn't seem to work on an S54. :dunno:

So it took one measly hour to get here:


Didn't even get to drink much beer before hitting my target for the night.

I'm doing the thermostat, water pump, hoses, a/c belt (main one was already replaced along with idler pulley), the two coolant sensors (if I can get to that one under the intake manifold) and a full coolant flush. It's really tempting to while-you're-in-there the radiator, but since it still works fine, doesn't have a history of grenading, and only takes an hour to access...probably gonna pass. Also gonna do the VANOS o-ring plate thing that I bought years ago but never put on - looks like there's a very slow leak there.

Am I missing anything?

[D_Eclipse9916]

Am I missing anything?

Gutting it and caging it?

[*insertusernamehere*]

I mean while you're in there you may as well pick up a turbo kit. This only took you an hour!

[Beej]

Gutting it and caging it?

I go through the circular logic of "no track time until more safety equipment" and "not gonna be able to get out to the track enough to justify safety equipment" on a weekly basis. :?

I mean while you're in there you may as well pick up a turbo kit. This only took you an hour!

Not a bad idea, but I decided to take that time to fish out a coolant sensor I dropped under under the intake manifold instead. Hours.

So, good news and bad news. I caved and decided to do the radiator too:


Also did the two coolant sensors and hoses. Cooling system seems solid now. Comes up to temp and stays there, no leaks, huzzah.

The bad news is that on the shakedown run, the SES light popped on. Car felt normal and I didn't notice anything as I got home. I turned it back on and the idle was rough. Checked the codes with a generic OBD2 thing and I'm getting P0014 over-advanced exhaust cam timing and P0492 - secondary air injection, which I don't care as much about at this point.

I knew while I was doing it that I probably should do one repair at a time, but I went ahead and changed the VANOS sealing plate anyway. You can see some oil residue on the first shot, then nice and clean on the second.



A quick Googling shows potential for cam sensor (I did replace the o-ring on it recently, but it still feels like it's mounted solidly), VANOS solenoid, exhaust cam gear tabs...and other potentially un-fun stuff. So that's fucking discouraging.

I guess the first thing I'll do is pull the VANOS sealing plate and check that it looks good and everything is still clean, then yank the valve cover and check the exhaust cam gear.

Also, I really have no excuse to not have my own BMW specific code reader at this point.

[Beej]

P0014 over-advanced exhaust cam timing and P0492 - secondary air injection

I'm not trying to jinx it but I just flogged the car and I think I'm in the clear. Just came back from a hard 10 minute drive with a CEL that stayed off...I think I just fixed that junk for free.

I'm gonna start a religion in the name of this guy;
[youtube]sHDoIgZeCdY[/youtube]

Little brake cleaner and some magnets from Northern Tool, and it was purring like a kitten as soon as I turned the key. Now to decide whether to chance it on my trip to Arlington for training tomorrow morning...

[RawrImAMonster]

That secondary air injection code can show up if the hose from the egr pump is cracked or not quite connected right. I had that right after my header install for a while.

[Beej]

Looks like it's been awhile - no news being good news.

The DSC, amber "Brake", and tire warning lights popped on about a week ago, and since they've gone off every couple days and then back on again. Apparently it's either a wheel speed sensor (which can be cleaned) or DSC computer/actuator thingie. Since it was not consistently on, I figured it might make more sense that it's just a dirty sensor. Popped each wheel off last night and cleaned each one - they weren't that nasty, but fingers crossed, I guess. :dunno:



I forgot to do burnouts and donuts to figure out exactly which systems are disabled when that happens though, dammit.

[Beej]

Car's been good.  DSC warning light hasn't been on in awhile, so I figured I should post about that and jinx it.

The steering wheel leather was never really in good condition - worn to the point where the "skin" was gone and a damp hand would wear physical pieces off. Finally decided to do something about that a couple months ago, and it's a much nicer thing to hold now.



I've got a couple other really small boring things that I'll post about once I get around to putting them on the car.

I've been thinking more and more about getting something else, and if I sold a car, it'd probably be this one.  I'd love to just add to the fleet but I don't really have the parking space and maintaining 3 cars is enough to think about.  But all it takes is a good drive or the sun hitting it just right to realize that, for my desires/purposes, it doesn't get much better than this thing.  So I dunno.  It'll probably be around awhile; I just noticed myself thinking about getting rid of it more these days.  That and I must be getting old because the stiff suspension actually pisses me off sometimes.

[Senor_Taylor]

BJ, need you to hold onto this for a few more decades until I can afford to own it. Thanks.

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

[davej]

Trade you for a 2002

[ScottyB]

get it back out on track or do a circuitcross. that might reignite the passion for it a bit and help you remember some performance perspective to bring some value back to the stuff that's irritating on a daily basis.

that's how it got with my subaru...started getting annoying to drive and doing some competitive stuff helped me realize how much fun it was again.

[Beej]

Hot damn it's been a year and a half.

I think it got struck by lightning or something at the last karting event because nav stopped working (can't read disc) and the key fob stopped working the same day.  I also noticed the display has a small area of dead pixels but that can kinda easily be mistaken for a finger mark, so I dunno how long it's actually been there.

The key fob was an easy fix - just re-sync with the car.  Apparently the nav drive in the trunk needs to be rebuilt or replaced, but I've somehow managed to live without a 15+ year old navigation system.  As for the pixels, meh.

Probably 8 years or so ago, I had the windshield replaced by a local mom and pop (in Norfolk), figuring I'd get better service.  Nah.  After recently noticing a tiny spot of rust on one A-pillar, I reached out to the local auto glass place that advertises themselves as doing things correctly and preventing/fixing this type of thing.  The lead tech spent like 30 min explaining how it would be fixed and so I left it with them to get new OE glass.  After the repair they said that there was some rust underneath but not much and I definitely won't have to worry about it from here on out.  They were nice enough to toss in the A-pillar interior trims pieces and windshield cowl that I left in the passenger seat, too.

Other than that, I replaced the worn ZHP knob with the illuminated/nappa leather version from the F10 M5.  It's nice that a few decades after illuminating their shift knobs, BMW finally figured out how to do it evenly.  It also sorta bugged me that all the leather in the car is nappa and the old shift boot was whatever regular full grain stuff is called.  Between the knob, steering wheel, and no-longer-saggy A-pillar fabric, and spic-n-span glass, it's a nicer place to be.

Holla.

[Senor_Taylor]

So glad you're taking care of this car for me.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk

[Beej]

So glad you're taking care of this car for me.

I didn't drive an F80 today because I'm planning on having this thing for a few more decades.

Oh yeah and I finally did a valve adjustment - only needed to replace 4 shims this time as opposed to 10 of them 7 years/40k miles ago.  It made no difference whatsoever.

[Beej]

Sold. Thanks for the great 9 years little guy.

It's a replacement for a neighbor buddy's (actually he was at the last NASA VIR thing too) unreliable e90 335, so it won't be far.

[rherold9]

F to pay respects