Official S65 Rod Bearing Condition Example Thread

[M3SQRD]

Originally Posted by RomanK

Guys, were there any cases when the enigne is blowned with BE bearings installed?

I’m aware of one engine that had BE bearings that failed but the failure was due to main bearing failure. The first RB, which was next to the main that failed, was scuffed up a little but did not spin. All of the others looked brand new. This was on a motor pretty much used primary on track.

[PiZauL]

Just put in BE bearings as preventative maintenance at 124,800 miles on my 2011 e90 M3. Looks like I didn’t need to but glad it’s done.

[M3SQRD]

Originally Posted by PiZauL

Just put in BE bearings as preventative maintenance at 124,800 miles on my 2011 e90 M3. Looks like I didn’t need to but glad it’s done.

Yes, they look pretty good for the mileage. However, by swapping to RBs with increased clearance, it minimizes the probability of an engine failure due to a RB(s). I know I feel more comfortable taking my two e92 M3s to 8600 rpm (stage two tunes with raised redline). I changed to BE RBs with BE/ARP 2000 rod bolts at 20k miles and 25k miles. For the mileage, some of my bearings (can’t find pics ��) looked worse than yours. Engines were always properly warmed up with < 3000 rpm and waited an additional 10 min after full redline is available to ensure engine, DCT and diff are at their appropriate operating temperatures. Anyway, congrats on your RB replacement.

[PiZauL]

Originally Posted by M3SQRD

Yes, they look pretty good for the mileage. However, by swapping to RBs with increased clearance, it minimizes the probability of an engine failure due to a RB(s). I know I feel more comfortable taking my two e92 M3s to 8600 rpm (stage two tunes with raised redline). I changed to BE RBs with BE/ARP 2000 rod bolts at 20k miles and 25k miles. For the mileage, some of my bearings (can’t find pics ��) looked worse than yours. Engines were always properly warmed up with < 3000 rpm and waited an additional 10 min after full redline is available to ensure engine, DCT and diff are at their appropriate operating temperatures. Anyway, congrats on your RB replacement.

Oh I definitely feel more at ease now that I know they’re done! Engine mounts were in rough shape so glad those are swapped too. Hoping to get many many reliable miles on this thing

[januza]

Guess I kinda needed it

[Assimilator1]

Originally Posted by januza

Guess I kinda needed it

Hard to see with oil on the bearings and being partially shaded (and only 1 pair there), that said, we can see the middle bearing has gone through some layers of lead. So yea, probably did need them.
Can you take a photo with all the bearings and without oil on them?

Also, what year is your car and how many miles/kms has it done?

[januza]

Originally Posted by Assimilator1

Hard to see with oil on the bearings and being partially shaded (and only 1 pair there), that said, we can see the middle bearing has gone through some layers of lead. So yea, probably did need them.
Can you take a photo with all the bearings and without oil on them?

Also, what year is your car and how many miles/kms has it done?

I don’t have more photos. My mechanic told me condition wasn’t great but not bad. I decided to just change as I just bought the car and wanted to just feel safe about the engine. It’s done around 53K KM

[Assimilator1]

Originally Posted by januza

I don’t have more photos. My mechanic told me condition wasn’t great but not bad. I decided to just change as I just bought the car and wanted to just feel safe about the engine. It’s done around 53K KM

That's a pity, nevermind, I can see that they are the earlier lead/copper type, and so almost always need changing.

What year is your car? (I assume from 2007-2010).

[januza]

Originally Posted by Assimilator1

That's a pity, nevermind, I can see that they are the earlier lead/copper type, and so almost always need changing.

What year is your car? (I assume from 2007-2010).

Late 2009. First registered in Sept 2010.
Two owners. First owner an old lady for 13 years. Then second owner for 6 months. Sold the car to get a Porsche. Just got the car back today actually. It sounds amazing.

[Assimilator1]

Very nice

**************************************************

On a separate note, for some years I've been keeping it in the back of mind to try to find some photos or videos of high mileage rod bearings (from any car engine) that are in good condition (like they should be), last week whilst researching what's involved in changing the timing chain on my 2010 330d (N57 engine, chain's noisy ), I came across the following video.

It features a BMW N57 3 ltr turbo diesel engine, he was stripping it down to replace the main and rod bearings simply because the car had done 265k kms (~165k miles).
As you can see in the video the rod bearings look almost brand new, whilst the mains show some light wear+discolouration, as seen in the thumbnail (very similar to how the tin/alu/copper bearings look in later S65s), he claims he can see copper on one of the mains, but in the video their isn't even a hint of copper showing! (and I can't say I agree with his claim that the mains are worn out either!).
But anyway, that demonstrates that rod bearings can (and should) last far beyond 100k miles.

Yes this engine only revs to ~5000 RPM (I think max is actually 5400, but power dies off 4500-5000 RPM), but in terms of combustion pressure pushing on the conrod it will be far higher than the S65. With the 4ltr S65s developing 295 lbft of torque, that's ~36.9 lbft for each cylinder, whilst the N57 in that car (he doesn't say what model, but does say it's a single turbo engine) produces 413 lbft, which is 68.8 lbft for each cylinder, much higher combustion forces!
Also the N57 is a long stroke motor with a bore x stroke of 84 mm × 90 mm, vs 92mm x 75mm for the S65, so piston speed will be higher at same RPM for the N57. At 5k RPM the N57's average piston speed is 15 m/s, for the S65 it's 12.5 m/s @ 5K RPM, and @8k RPM it's 20 m/s, so yea the S65s average piston speed is higher at the upper end of the rev range, but perhaps not as much as you might think. So still a useful comparison I think.

[RugbyBro]

18.8k miles - replaced by Malek@MRF

[Dopen93]

Car was about having 60K miles and bearings where replaced at some point with VAC Clevite bearings.
** Not sure when exactly it was replaced my guess is around 40K miles

Here is a picture of bearing number 8

Bottom
https://files.fm/u/9s2dkbbxwq


Top
https://files.fm/u/m8ygpngu9q

[Assimilator1]

Originally Posted by Dopen93

Car was about having 60K miles and bearings where replaced at some point with VAC Clevite bearings.
** Not sure when exactly it was replaced my guess is around 40K miles

Here is a picture of bearing number 8

Bottom
https://files.fm/u/9s2dkbbxwq


Top
https://files.fm/u/m8ygpngu9q

Are those pics of the original bearings at (the guessed) 40k miles? (sorry, you're English is a little confusing ).

[Dopen93]

Originally Posted by Assimilator1

Are those pics of the original bearings at (the guessed) 40k miles? (sorry, you're English is a little confusing ).

Pics of the aftermarket bearings. was planning to do bearings replacement found out it was already replaced some time before

[Assimilator1]

Originally Posted by Dopen93

Pics of the aftermarket bearings. was planning to do bearings replacement found out it was already replaced some time before

Ah ok, thanks.
Look a bit scored, how did the others look?
(Btw, your photo site says they'll be deleted on July 17th, would be useful if they could stay there indefinitely).

[Glacial Pace]

Oct 2010 built E90 with 281,000km. Original bearings not looking great, but not horrendous either. The crank felt perfectly smooth.
I just finished fitting Mahle bearings with oe bolts myself. Now I need to go put the rest of the car back together.

Number 4 was the worst.

[Helmsman]

Originally Posted by Glacial Pace

Oct 2010 built E90 with 281,000km. Original bearings not looking great, but not horrendous either. The crank felt perfectly smooth.
I just finished fitting Mahle bearings with oe bolts myself. Now I need to go put the rest of the car back together.

Number 4 was the worst.

Yeah looks good for 280k km. Are OEM bolts recommended by Mahle here or just to keep cost in place?

[Glacial Pace]

Originally Posted by Helmsman

Yeah looks good for 280k km. Are OEM bolts recommended by Mahle here or just to keep cost in place?

Yeah, condition was surprisingly good for the km I think. Still glad to have that #4 bearing out, and I did find some unwanted material in the oil pickups, so good to get that out.

No specific recommendation on bolts as far as I know, just to keep costs in check. Not that I want to be cheap with refreshing this car, but $300 saved here means $300 that can be spent in other locations, and the stock bolts seem to be more than strong enough, it's just the torquing sequence that's a pain the the ass, and it really is. But if you work methodically then it's not hard and you are essentially paying yourself $150 an hour for torquing bolts.
The choice of bearings was dictated by BE being out of stock.

If #4 looked like the others then I would have been almost disappointed to have done the job.

[Assimilator1]

Originally Posted by Glacial Pace

Yeah, condition was surprisingly good for the km I think. Still glad to have that #4 bearing out, and I did find some unwanted material in the oil pickups, so good to get that out.

No specific recommendation on bolts as far as I know, just to keep costs in check. Not that I want to be cheap with refreshing this car, but $300 saved here means $300 that can be spent in other locations, and the stock bolts seem to be more than strong enough, it's just the torquing sequence that's a pain the the ass, and it really is. But if you work methodically then it's not hard and you are essentially paying yourself $150 an hour for torquing bolts.
The choice of bearings was dictated by BE being out of stock.

If #4 looked like the others then I would have been almost disappointed to have done the job.

Yea no4 looks unusually rough for the tin/alu bearings, looks like some sort of contamination?
The others look ok for the mileage!

[M3SQRD]

Originally Posted by Assimilator1

Yea no4 looks unusually rough for the tin/alu bearings, looks like some sort of contamination?
The others look ok for the mileage!

Yeah, it looks odd with only the middle 50% of the RB seeing wear vs. the outer 25% on both sides showing little to no wear. As you stated, it does look like there was contamination and/or debris on this RB.

[Glacial Pace]

I would agree yes, something got in there.

I did find some very small things in the oil pickups, and I have a theory about it.

According to one of the invoices that came with the car the oil pan had a striped thread that was helicoiled. I assumed that the oil pan had been removed for this, but maybe not and some of the debris was still in there.