ESS VT2-650 Engine Blowout/Bearing Failure at 20k miles

[BPMSport]

Originally Posted by Longwong

Using leading fuel will not be responsible for lead in your oil if it was awhile ago. Its most likely bearing wear.

I've had engine experts tell me otherwise. Could be on either side.

[Soorena]

Originally Posted by s65e90

Of course it's a small problem that seems bigger due to this forum. First think of how many people are not in this forum and how many post that their cars are running fine. Your only looking at a small population of cars.

It's amazing how overhyped this bearing issue has become. Some act like their cars are ticking bombs and the funny thing is they are trying hard to make sense out of the whole situation like it was proven that we have bearing issue.
At first by some SC makers that blew a handful of engines it was claimed that our lubrication system is weak and our oil pump causes oil starvation. Then after hearing blown S85's which have a very different dry sump lubrication system, the oil pump theory went out of the window and bearing clearance replaced that. Who are we fooling? Ourselves? Most of the blown S65's we know are supercharged. I'm not gonna get into the cons of going FI on this engines but you can't expect raising BMEP by ~%40 won't do any harm to engine.
As for the blown NA engines do we know their background history? How they were maintained etc... All we know is they failed. For every 1 blown NA engine, there are hundreds of cars doing good. BMW produced like what 65000 S65's? How many of them has failed? How many of them are running strong?

Enjoy your cars gentlemen while you can. That's what i do. Drive this marvelous piece of engineering as hard as you can with no fear of what's gonna happen because nobody knows what's gonna happen. Even if your throw a rod in future which hopefully will never happen, you will at least have good moments with your car.

[GIdriver]

Originally Posted by regular guy

BMW uses Mahle-Clevite-77 bearings. To the best I can tell, both main and connecting rod bearings are Clevite-77 "P" series which means: "Steel backed bearings with an intermediate layer of copper-lead alloy and an electroplated lead-tin-copper overlay."

Thank you sir.

[AlteredBe4st]

Originally Posted by Soorena

It's amazing how overhyped this bearing issue has become. Some act like their cars are ticking bombs and the funny thing is they are trying hard to make sense out of the whole situation like it was proven that we have bearing issue.
At first by some SC makers that blew a handful of engines it was claimed that our lubrication system is weak and our oil pump causes oil starvation. Then after hearing blown S85's which have a very different dry sump lubrication system, the oil pump theory went out of the window and bearing clearance replaced that. Who are we fooling? Ourselves? Most of the blown S65's we know are supercharged. I'm not gonna get into the cons of going FI on this engines but you can't expect raising BMEP by ~%40 won't do any harm to engine.
As for the blown NA engines do we know their background history? How they were maintained etc... All we know is they failed. For every 1 blown NA engine, there are hundreds of cars doing good. BMW produced like what 65000 S65's? How many of them has failed? How many of them are running strong?

Enjoy your cars gentlemen while you can. That's what i do. Drive this marvelous piece of engineering as hard as you can with no fear of what's gonna happen because nobody knows what's gonna happen. Even if your throw a rod in future which hopefully will never happen, you will at least have good moments with your car.

[VCMpower]

Originally Posted by Soorena

It's amazing how overhyped this bearing issue has become. Some act like their cars are ticking bombs and the funny thing is they are trying hard to make sense out of the whole situation like it was proven that we have bearing issue.
At first by some SC makers that blew a handful of engines it was claimed that our lubrication system is weak and our oil pump causes oil starvation. Then after hearing blown S85's which have a very different dry sump lubrication system, the oil pump theory went out of the window and bearing clearance replaced that. Who are we fooling? Ourselves? Most of the blown S65's we know are supercharged. I'm not gonna get into the cons of going FI on this engines but you can't expect raising BMEP by ~%40 won't do any harm to engine.
As for the blown NA engines do we know their background history? How they were maintained etc... All we know is they failed. For every 1 blown NA engine, there are hundreds of cars doing good. BMW produced like what 65000 S65's? How many of them has failed? How many of them are running strong?

Enjoy your cars gentlemen while you can. That's what i do. Drive this marvelous piece of engineering as hard as you can with no fear of what's gonna happen because nobody knows what's gonna happen. Even if your throw a rod in future which hopefully will never happen, you will at least have good moments with your car.

Exactly! The fear delirium will continue though I feel.

[baba louey]

I'm carefree while under warranty. How I feel after it expires may be another story. Usually I try to fix it myself but that takes a lot of time.

[Longwong]

I would not say this is a case though of this board having more failures because surprisingly MANY on this board do not seem to really over-drive their car or even drive it hard. This is a case I feel for those that hammer their cars and enjoy the 8400 rpm redline, IF it is a bearing clearance issue, than the risk seems really real. Although many track their cars and don't have the issue I understand.

It has not influenced my enjoyment factor and I personally feel better having X warrarty by factory bmw to 100k and that allows me to enjoy the thing. By the time warranty is out, blowing an engine won't be a huge deal if I keep this car as a track warrior only car (not that I welcome that but not nearly as big of a deal in early ownership when engines are 25k).

So I don't worry but if you are someone who is stretching to pay your way into a used m3 without warranty and plan to drive it hard, I certainly would be wary.

[Longwong]

Mike can you elaborate? I just can't see a mechanism how use of lead several fuel cycles ago would lead to sustained lead in an oil analysis. Trace the path for lead to get into the oil from the fuel used one time and I am just curiuos how that is even plausible?

[M3PO]

Originally Posted by Longwong

Mike can you elaborate? I just can't see a mechanism how use of lead several fuel cycles ago would lead to sustained lead in an oil analysis. Trace the path for lead to get into the oil from the fuel used one time and I am just curiuos how that is even plausible?

Using leaded fuel can lead to lead in the oil for sure. But, fuel dilution of the oil is extremely minor (at least in my oil) and lead is a small component of fuel. Considering those two things, I highly doubt that a measurable amount of lead would make it into the oil after one or two tanks of leaded fuel.

My oil analyses show high lead AND copper. Maybe I made it into the intermediate layer.

[BPMSport]

Originally Posted by M3PO

Using leaded fuel can lead to lead in the oil for sure. But, fuel dilution of the oil is extremely minor (at least in my oil) and lead is a small component of fuel. Considering those two things, I highly doubt that a measurable amount of lead would make it into the oil after one or two tanks of leaded fuel.

My oil analyses show high lead AND copper. Maybe I made it into the intermediate layer.

Oh wow.. and copper?

Not good. My copper readings are perfect. I think I'm going to change my bearings to the VAC ones February of next year, or before introducing boost. Whichever comes first.

[M3PO]

Originally Posted by Mike Benvo

Oh wow.. and copper?

Not good. My copper readings are perfect. I think I'm going to change my bearings to the VAC ones February of next year, or before introducing boost. Whichever comes first.

My copper levels are about twice the average. Versus my lead levels that are about 4 times the average.

As long as you realize that you are just putting on a band-aid, I guess doing the bearings is okay. I personally don't like the idea of putting bearings into a motor still in the car, on a lift.

[kawasaki00]

Originally Posted by M3PO

My copper levels are about twice the average. Versus my lead levels that are about 4 times the average.

As long as you realize that you are just putting on a band-aid, I guess doing the bearings is okay. I personally don't like the idea of putting bearings into a motor still in the car, on a lift.

That is no good for sure. Might want to invest in a set of bearings. I would use the coated bearings and sand the back of the shell, What I plan on doing is taking the crush down to a minimum numbers and see how much clearance I can get. Should be able to get it opened up to .0015

[kawasaki00]

Originally Posted by M3PO

Using leaded fuel can lead to lead in the oil for sure. But, fuel dilution of the oil is extremely minor (at least in my oil) and lead is a small component of fuel. Considering those two things, I highly doubt that a measurable amount of lead would make it into the oil after one or two tanks of leaded fuel.

My oil analyses show high lead AND copper. Maybe I made it into the intermediate layer.

The lead is a suspended gas mixture that every time the piston fires it pushes blowby beyond the rings and down into the crankcase. The lead will build much faster than the so called fuel dilution. Remember gas evaporates, if you pour a cup of gas into the oil eventually it will all evaporate from the heat. The lead remains. Think of it when you are at the beach, you don't see salt flying around in the air but a day later it sure is all over your car right. Lead is very sticky and will coat every part of the bottom end. It can take a few oil changes to remove all traces of it. Back when we were allowed to run leaded fuel in the cup engines we would have to take the exhaust apart on the dynos about once a month because the there would actually be huge chunks of lead jiggling around in the cross over from the fuel. It looked like someone took wheel weights and melted them in the exhaust. The point is the lead can stay for a long time in the bottom end. This is also why running leaded fuel can skew the o2 readings after just one tank of fuel.

[Ezio]

Originally Posted by Brooklyn Mark

Yea I just hit 38,000 miles last night and this happen. Luckily I just ordered a new 2013 last week for euro delivery so I am not that depressed lol

I wanted to ask this early, but forgot. So whats the deal with new car ? You have a 38k mile modded M3 and ordered a new 2013 ?

just wondering

[RingMeister01]

Originally Posted by Soorena

It's amazing how overhyped this bearing issue has become. Some act like their cars are ticking bombs and the funny thing is they are trying hard to make sense out of the whole situation like it was proven that we have bearing issue.
At first by some SC makers that blew a handful of engines it was claimed that our lubrication system is weak and our oil pump causes oil starvation. Then after hearing blown S85's which have a very different dry sump lubrication system, the oil pump theory went out of the window and bearing clearance replaced that. Who are we fooling? Ourselves? Most of the blown S65's we know are supercharged. I'm not gonna get into the cons of going FI on this engines but you can't expect raising BMEP by ~%40 won't do any harm to engine.
As for the blown NA engines do we know their background history? How they were maintained etc... All we know is they failed. For every 1 blown NA engine, there are hundreds of cars doing good. BMW produced like what 65000 S65's? How many of them has failed? How many of them are running strong?

Enjoy your cars gentlemen while you can. That's what i do. Drive this marvelous piece of engineering as hard as you can with no fear of what's gonna happen because nobody knows what's gonna happen. Even if your throw a rod in future which hopefully will never happen, you will at least have good moments with your car.

Well said

[M3PO]

Originally Posted by kawasaki00

The lead is a suspended gas mixture that every time the piston fires it pushes blowby beyond the rings and down into the crankcase. The lead will build much faster than the so called fuel dilution. Remember gas evaporates, if you pour a cup of gas into the oil eventually it will all evaporate from the heat. The lead remains. Think of it when you are at the beach, you don't see salt flying around in the air but a day later it sure is all over your car right. Lead is very sticky and will coat every part of the bottom end. It can take a few oil changes to remove all traces of it. Back when we were allowed to run leaded fuel in the cup engines we would have to take the exhaust apart on the dynos about once a month because the there would actually be huge chunks of lead jiggling around in the cross over from the fuel. It looked like someone took wheel weights and melted them in the exhaust. The point is the lead can stay for a long time in the bottom end. This is also why running leaded fuel can skew the o2 readings after just one tank of fuel.

Makes sense.

So measuring fuel dilution in the oil will still give you an indication of the health of the rings right? But the fuel in the oil is fuel that has recently been deposited there.

[BPMSport]

Originally Posted by RingMeister01

Well said

I respectfully don't think it's a blown up issue. I know of a few more NA cars that had bearing failures at low mileage. This is a serious issue. The bearings that are coming out of these cars with even low mileage look terrible.

I guess it's not a surprise, look at BMW's history with rod bearing issues on M engines.

[US///M3]

Keep it simple...
http://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=682601

[VCMpower]

Originally Posted by Mike Benvo

I respectfully don't think it's a blown up issue. I know of a few more NA cars that had bearing failures at low mileage. This is a serious issue. The bearings that are coming out of these cars with even low mileage look terrible.

I guess it's not a surprise, look at BMW's history with rod bearing issues on M engines.

Do you offer a tune that opens up to 8600 rpm?

[Longwong]

I have an 8600 rpm tune but honestly the best part is simply being able to hit 8400 without slamming the fuel cutoff lol. Even when I try hti 8600, when I log it the max I hit is usually 8500 so I think the feature really does not add to wear but gives you ability to actually hit 8400 without timing it perfectly which is impossible

[VCMpower]

Good feedback.

Originally Posted by Longwong

I have an 8600 rpm tune but honestly the best part is simply being able to hit 8400 without slamming the fuel cutoff lol. Even when I try hti 8600, when I log it the max I hit is usually 8500 so I think the feature really does not add to wear but gives you ability to actually hit 8400 without timing it perfectly which is impossible

[BPMSport]

Originally Posted by VCMpower

Do you offer a tune that opens up to 8600 rpm?

I can set it to whatever you request.

My car has it set to 8,800 I believe. But I don't go up there, mainly to 8,400 usually but nice to know it's there if I need it.

What Longwong said about the fuel cutoff is pretty spot on. Instead of that pull back feeling that you get with the stock software at redline, it keeps pulling to it and then you can shift for best results