2006 BMW M3

[ScottyB]

This is why I sell mine as soon as the warranties run out. :lol:

the funny thing is, you own probably the most finicky, expensive-to-repair, sought after, and rare German car of us all...don't go trying to sound sensible on us.

[Jake]

not everyone's made to own an old example of these kinds of cars and you're doing great so far, so enjoy it. i wish i would have realized that with my audi...i spent too much time never driving it hard because i thought i'd break it.

Thanks! I'm going for the opposite of your Audi experience... today I snuck in a 0-to-whatever pull to the tippy top of 2nd gear when getting through Crystal City. Even had enough space to get into 3rd and keep going a bit more Once the oil warms up, she gets driven. At least as much as traffic allows.

[.RJ]

Audi experience

Thats a good phrase for it.

Oh look, the leaking vacuum pump replacement I ordered just arrived....

[Apoc]

This is why I sell mine as soon as the warranties run out. :lol:

the funny thing is, you own probably the most finicky, expensive-to-repair, sought after, and rare German car of us all...don't go trying to sound sensible on us.

doesn't matter if it's broke if you never drive it!

[ScottyB]

....touche.

*tips monacle respectfully*

[Jake]

Mileage: 135,550

Got the Blackstone oil analysis in my email this evening and ran it by Deren for a second opinion. Blackstone is not concerned - the magic "freak out about your bearings" equation is when you have high wear of iron, copper and lead all together. Deren asked what kind of oil I used (LiquiMoly) and looked up what particular additives they use, as some brands will add more of this or that for various benefits.

He thinks LiquiMoly may be using a bit more lead additive than "industry average" to help cushion the bearings under high stress, and said to worry if chromium, copper, tin, silicon, or nickel readings started coming back high.

I will still follow up with another analysis, as the aftermarket warranty covers rod bearing failure, and expires at 145k miles. If I need to have this thing worked on, I want to get as much covered by Route 66 as I can!

[Senor_Taylor]

So... Just run it low on oil at 144k? Bam, new rod bearings.

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[ScottyB]

very cool - i would agree that if an experienced enthusiast isn't concerned about the lead then neither would i, although for any other kind of car that amount of lead would be an invitation to the viking funeral for the engine. i've seen high (5-10ppm) lead in some other performance engines that use Redline oils IIRC due to lead actually being an additive, so that's not unheard of. its a unique engine that uses a pretty unique grade of oil, so i'm not surprised it wants to show some different readings but 15ppm is high by most measures.

low chrome shows great cylinder wear (that's your cylinder liner/rings) and low silicon is an air filter doing its job. i would have expected more Moly though, that is an anti-friction agent and most oils will show 50-100ppm even after a lengthy change (as you can see by the universal averages). potassium can indicate coolant, your readings are low enough to not care. sodium is typically an anti-foaming agent, but can also indicate coolant...no worries there.

viscosity looks "OK" for a ~5k mile change...it sheared down hard but its not completely out of grade. good flashpoint though so you're cooking any fuel dilution out of the oil with nice long run times.

it may be worth trying a different 10/60 brand to see if your lead tracks down...no way to know if you can't establish at least a 2 or 3 analysis trend.

[D_Eclipse9916]

So... Just run it low on oil at 144k? Bam, new rod bearings.

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And everything else...

At 144k you need bearings 100%. Will it toast the whole motor yet? No, but excess metal in oil is not good.


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[Senor_Taylor]

So... Just run it low on oil at 144k? Bam, new rod bearings.

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And everything else...

At 144k you need bearings 100%. Will it toast the whole motor yet? No, but excess metal in oil is not good.


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Nope, you're wrong. Run it empty on oil, trust me.

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[Jake]

My hope is that if the 3k follow-up report shows wear, my mechanic can go to bat with Route 66 and get them to cover the job. And if he can't, I'll start calling around to see who can do the work in exchange for some cash money.

[Jake]

Well, I called Route 66 and got some clarity. They will only cover the bearings if they have actually failed and the engine is knocking. I'm sure I could make it knock by just driving the shit out of it every morning on cold oil for the next 7k miles, but I'm not willing to be "that guy" and ruin my car. The other problem is that the coverage requires documented oil changes every 3 months or 3k miles. I asked the adjuster how that works when BMW and the car's oil life monitor both recommend 7-10k, and even "conservative" changes on these cars is every 5k. He wasn't sure how to answer that.

I'm not willing to 1) get the poor S54 to the point of knocking, 2) dick around with Route 66 and their diagnostic/inspection process, 3) pay the labor of having the oil pan dropped and bearings removed just for diagnostic purposes because they won't pay that part, and 4) maybe have them deny the whole thing because in no world will you find an S54 that had regular oil changes every 3,000 miles.

So the plan now is to do the 3k Blackstone re-analysis and plan to DIY or use a shop for bearing replacement soon regardless. I've used this warranty for several claims and it's saved me money, so I can't be all "fuck Route 66!" but engine internals are a tricky subject with any warranty, I think. My mechanic has a 3.0i Z4 sitting outside his shop that is gathering dust while he fights with the warranty company. It dropped a valve or something, and even though he has diagnosed the problem, they want to see the spaghetti-shaped valve before authorizing anything, and the labor required to extract said valve is most of the way to the customer just paying to toss another engine in the car.

[*insertusernamehere*]

Whattaconundrum

[Jake]

Mileage: 135,925

I was driving home on Wednesday evening and out of the blue, earned two new warning lights on the dash. Amber DSC and Brake lights, but no ABS light.



Google reveals the lights can come on for anything from low brake fluid to a total failure of the DSC module. Nice. Thankfully my friend Kyle lives near my office and has INPA software that can read every module on the car. I need to get the software and cable set up personally, too.

We looked at the DSC/ABS module (this car being a 2006 has the later Teves Mk60 setup, versus earlier Bosch). and it had a few errors. I don't quite know how to read the INPA readouts but am trying to research as I have time.

The brake booster has two different "pressure sensors" that I suppose do exactly what the name says, for the sake of the traction control or who knows what. Anyway, INPA reported errors for both sensors, although if I am reading these screens correctly, Sensor #1 last reported an error at 113,779 miles which is before I bought the car:



Sensor #2, however, appears to have reported an error at 135,881 miles, which sounds roughly when the lights came on (I've since driven the car the rest of the way home, into/out of DC once, and to work yesterday before taking that cluster photo):



The sensors are about $150 each, but apparently I can buy a full brake booster setup that includes them both for about $100 on eBay. So, probably going to do that and try just replacing #2 at first.

[Senor_Taylor]

So buy booster, replace one sensor, then sell the other sensor and make a profit?

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[Jake]

I'll keep the other sensor for when #1 dies. Some quick Googling revealed these sensors were designed with an approximate 10 year service life. Guess they were pretty spot on.

[Jake]

I'll keep the other sensor for when #1 dies. Some quick Googling revealed these sensors were designed with an approximate 10 year service life. Guess they were pretty spot on.

[*insertusernamehere*]

I'll keep the other sensor for when #1 dies. Some quick Googling revealed these sensors were designed with an approximate 10 year service life. Guess they were pretty spot on.

I actually find it really impressive how they engineer parts to last a specific amount of time. Sometimes way too specific, like, 1 month after the warranty expires and boom.

[Jake]

Taylor and Erik came over yesterday after work and we knocked out a lot of my list. I was tired of having this giant mental checklist that hadn't been gone through, and weather wasn't too bad, so at 7 PM we got to it.

• Passenger HID bulb
  
• Serpentine belt
  
• AC belt (eesh, this one was badly cracked)
  
• Tie rods
  
• Rear trailing arm bushings

We didn't touch the rear lower control arms as it was already super late and due to many years in Ohio, the bolts back there are not entirely all bolt-shaped. I have some CRC "Freeze-Off" that I may try to get the crud off. I would like to replace the arms for the sake of only doing one alignment. Hmm.

Thanks for the help guys!

[Beej]

Well those aren't particularly sexy projects but I'm sure it's nice to have them out of the way!

I've gotta find someone with INPA or whatever, or maybe have BMW scan it when I do my driver's airbag. My DSC/yellow brake light has been coming and going. Is the sensor you refer to part #34521164458? I hadn't heard of those before.