Rod Bearings Done

[Rob_M3]

I've been wanting to get my rod bearings swapped out since getting my M3 a little over 11 months ago. Ended up getting the parts for this job just a bit after I got the car. Huge thanks to my brother (who also owns an M3 and had his bearings changed last year), my cousin who is a tech at Audi, a friend who is a tech at Honda and my brother in law for all their help and taking the time to do this on Good Friday.

We made it a fun day out of it with lots of joking and chatting while working at the same time. We also changed out the fluids in the rear diff and transmission and changed out the air filter. All in all including two breaks and all the joking around that we did, it took us about 6 hours as this was my cousins second time doing this job and got some help this time.

My car is a 2008 6MT with 77,000 kms (about 48k miles) with dealer OCI's from the previous owner. I went with BE bearings with ARP bolts.

[SYT_Shadow]

Great to see you changed them! They did not look too hot, that's for sure!

Cheers

[pbonsalb]

6 hours is very good time! More wear than there should be at 48k miles. I can't tell whether the 4th one in from the left in the upper row is showing copper or has an oil stain.

[Rob_M3]

Originally Posted by pbonsalb

6 hours is very good time! More wear than there should be at 48k miles. I can't tell whether the 4th one in from the left in the upper row is showing copper or has an oil stain.

That 4th one on the top was the only one showing copper from what we saw.

[twinpuller]

We learned a lot from the last time and from reading other people's diy's. We left the airbox and fan in and just worked underneath removing everything attached to the subframe.

[r0cketm0nkey]

What convinced you to use BE bearings instead of WPC treated bearings?

[Doc Oc]

BE is a better bearing plain and simple. The wpc bearing is a micro shot-peened version of an OEM 702 bearing. It does nothing to address clearance and is also difficult to monitor via uoa since there is no lead. Also, the wpc bearing has a much harder face, so if something were to happen that caused crank on bearing contact, the wpc bearing is going to score the crank much quicker than the coated lead bearing which has two layers of protection (the coating and the lead babbitt) to get through before crank scoring occurs.

[twinpuller]

Originally Posted by r0cketm0nkey

What convinced you to use BE bearings instead of WPC treated bearings?

I chose BE because of the customer service and increased clearance. Based on the info that I gathered, I believe the extra clearance would be more helpful than the others.

[Rob_M3]

Originally Posted by r0cketm0nkey

What convinced you to use BE bearings instead of WPC treated bearings?

I chose BE bearings because of the reviews I've read on this forum and cause twinpuller went with them and had no issues. Luckily BE bearings were available at the time when I wanted to purchase bearings. I would've gone another route if they didn't have stock.

[Scrippy]

Hell yeah! It's great that more folks are DIY'ing this job. Takes the spooky out of all the hoopla. I paid to have mine done at 25,000 miles. I'd love to do this myself. What is the torque method?......(blank)lbs plus (blank) degrees? Final torque after a plasti gauge or gap test.

[wahwill]

Has anyone swapped their bearings with WPC treated or BE and had them fail later on?

Or are they pretty much good for the life of the car after swapped?

[SYT_Shadow]

Originally Posted by Scrippy

Hell yeah! It's great that more folks are DIY'ing this job. Takes the spooky out of all the hoopla. I paid to have mine done at 25,000 miles. I'd love to do this myself. What is the torque method?......(blank)lbs plus (blank) degrees? Final torque after a plasti gauge or gap test.

If you use BE-ARP bolts, you simply torque them to 50ftlb

If you use oem you have to follow the procedure for them

[SYT_Shadow]

Originally Posted by wahwill

Has anyone swapped their bearings with WPC treated or BE and had them fail later on?

Or are they pretty much good for the life of the car after swapped?

They have not, however, WPC is not the same thing as BE. WPC is a tiny bit more clearance than stock. BE takes it to the industry standard clearance.

[pbonsalb]

Originally Posted by wahwill

Has anyone swapped their bearings with WPC treated or BE and had them fail later on?

Or are they pretty much good for the life of the car after swapped?

No one knows yet. I'd change again at a mileage interval based on how the originals looked at replacement mileage. The gauge a 3rd change if any based on how the 2nd set looked.

[Doc Oc]

Originally Posted by pbonsalb

No one knows yet. I'd change again at a mileage interval based on how the originals looked at replacement mileage. The gauge a 3rd change if any based on how the 2nd set looked.

Do you see any reason to actually change the bearings a second time vs just inspecting them? Personally I'd probably go in and pull a couple caps off (or all of them, what the heck, with ARP hardware you can reuse the bolts right?) and if there was no wear just button it back up. If careful you should be able to inspect without unseating any of the bearings.

[pbonsalb]

Often some are worse than others. I'd want to inspect all. If all were good I would be fine leaving them but I tend to doubt they will be. And if I needed new bearings I would want them on hand. So I am planning on changing them. It's too much work to go in to look and not be ready to change.

[Doc Oc]

Then the question becomes, if they need changing, do you go with the same brand you're pulling out, or try a different one? I couldn't imagine putting the same bearings in that just came out if they didn't hold up the first time around. Might be best to see how they did before purchasing the replacements?

Personally as time goes by I think we will start to see that the coated aftermarket extra clearance solutions will indeed be a lifetime fix.

[pbonsalb]

I don't know. I may buy BE and ARP next time and run 10W60. I have WPC stock and stock bolts now and run 0W40. Hopefully we will learn more over the next few years before I go back in.

[SaNGRia]

Congratulations. You are done the best thing to your car. #cheers