Official S65 Bearing Specification/Clearance Wiki

[L4ces]

Originally Posted by jcolley

I'd say if anything, he's probably frustrated with all the "can't see the forest for the trees" around here. I find it baffling so many people refuse to acknowledge what has been shown here. No, there is not 100% evidence for clearance and starvation being the cause, but the amount of experience, work, and effort that's been put into this is frankly, damned amazing.

There are however an incredible number of data points shown and if you start connecting the dots, there's a pretty clear line. Enough that I pulled mine and well...looks like these guys and this thread did me a favor.

Attachment 936827

If any of the skeptics were to refute the theory and present alternate explanations or mitigating actions, then it would really be even more useful. But to sit back and say "prove it" over and over is like listening to a car load of kids on a long trip.

When a bunch of enthusiasts with specialized knowledge come forward and put this kind of effort into documenting a potential design/operation issue, it benefits the community. I have no plans of getting rid of this car...ever. The more information I can get on potential issues and dealing with them early, the longer I can enjoy the car with less frustration.

If you can't do this type of work, it can be expensive, but weighing the longevity of the engine versus a set of nice wheels or exhaust...to me, that's a no brainer.

Thanks for the efforts guys, keep it coming.

Your mileage please.

[DLSJ5]

Originally Posted by jcolley

I'd say if anything, he's probably frustrated with all the "can't see the forest for the trees" around here. I find it baffling so many people refuse to acknowledge what has been shown here. No, there is not 100% evidence for clearance and starvation being the cause, but the amount of experience, work, and effort that's been put into this is frankly, damned amazing.

There are however an incredible number of data points shown and if you start connecting the dots, there's a pretty clear line. Enough that I pulled mine and well...looks like these guys and this thread did me a favor.

Attachment 936827

If any of the skeptics were to refute the theory and present alternate explanations or mitigating actions, then it would really be even more useful. But to sit back and say "prove it" over and over is like listening to a car load of kids on a long trip.

When a bunch of enthusiasts with specialized knowledge come forward and put this kind of effort into documenting a potential design/operation issue, it benefits the community. I have no plans of getting rid of this car...ever. The more information I can get on potential issues and dealing with them early, the longer I can enjoy the car with less frustration.

If you can't do this type of work, it can be expensive, but weighing the longevity of the engine versus a set of nice wheels or exhaust...to me, that's a no brainer.

Thanks for the efforts guys, keep it coming.

Agreed, extremely well said, as are all of your posts in this thread. Regular guy has done all of us a great service with all of his hard work in the search for answers on this potential issue, more so than anyone in the community, THANK YOU - RG.

[DLSJ5]

Originally Posted by GIdriver

Dominating performance indeed!

[jcolley]

Originally Posted by L4ces

Your mileage please.

72K, third owner. The engine has never seen anything other than TWS until now. It will likely never see it again given how little opportunity I find to track it.

[jcolley]

Originally Posted by e92zero

+1000 with everything you just said. What's your course of action after this and did you pull the bearings yourself? Any plan of DIY when you put the (new) bearings back in? Thanks.

Keeping in mind it's an M5, I have written up everything so far on M5Board as referenced a few pages ago, but will collect everything when it's done and put something together. I'm sure it's not that different on the E9x, but can't speak from experience.

The problem is, I have such a hard time blocking off time to work on the car (joys of a 200 year old house) that once it comes apart I want to go after all sort things I find. Scope creep is killing me as now I'm into replacing the VANOS high pressure pump, front and rear main seals, the clutch and slave cylinder, VANOS solenoids, and VANOS high pressure lines. Yet all of that is costing me in parts less than I would pay to have bearing done at an indy.

This level of engine work is completely foreign to me. I installed the ESS VT1 kit on my E46 M3 and swapped diffs and coils, but this is new to me. Going by the info I've found on the boards from guys who have done it before and following along with TIS, it's really not that hard. Yes, it can in fact be done on jackstands with a transmission jack to help out.

Notice on the cylinder 8 picture, there's a small circle on the upper shell and a square imprint on the lower. These I suspect are from the one attempt I made to start the engine after the injector failed open and it turned over twice before hydro-locking. There is a nice hole on the rod journal that (oil passage) that fits that circle perfectly. The square? No clue...

However, I don't for one second believe that the hydro-lock had anything to do with the wear on the other bearings. It's perfectly consistent with every other S85 bearing set we've seen.

[aus]

I'd like to know if anyone has opened up an S85 or S65 with more than 30,000 miles and had CLEAN bearings?? I think there was one very low mileage car that had some scuffs on the bearings, but that's the only one I can remember seeing. I just remember a TON of vids on YouTube of people with M3's asking if this engine noise is "normal."

Have any of the venders found a clean engine?
.

[regular guy]

Originally Posted by Yellow Snow

I'm not 'Demanding' anything as you put it. I'm just asking questions. Don't take it so personally.

It's not personal, but yes you have been demanding. When you ask multiple times for the same set of data such as slip gauge measurements and eccentricity measurements, then it's hard to call it anything but demanding.

In your original build thread (Which I enjoyed reading btw) you wrote:

I hope you took the research to the next level to realize the data isn't being generated by a bunch of internet engine builders who should go back to our day jobs. I hope you discovered the very serious and lengthy pedigree of my engine builder and very similar lengthy pedigree of Kawasaki's organization.

Then In this thread on page 1 you edited to add the slightly dubious and scary size of 'two hairs'. The words Shocked, disbelief and a few other over dramatic terms were added for good measure. Dare I ask why?.

Sorry if I take out my BS detector again. I searched for "Shocked" and didn't find it anywhere except where you typed it. I also didn't locate these few other "over dramatic terms" that you say were added for good measure. I'll be happy to answer your question, but first the BS must stop and you must show me what you're talking about.

[regular guy]

Originally Posted by Yellow Snow

I've got no interest whatsoever in what clearance a Nascar runs. It's irrelevant.

And no, I don't have exact figures for S54 failures.

You asked me to explain the S54 failures before and after the oil specification change. You clearly meant it as a challenge. But in order to succeed, you must have the answer yourself -- namely the data itself. But you don't have the data and never did. So it's hard for me to see this challenge as anything noble or well intended.

Apologies if my comments upset anyone, but you've got to ask questions to garner the facts. That's what forums are for.

None of your questions were ever personal or insulting. You never got personal or hurled insults. So no offense was taken. I hope we can put this to rest now.

[regular guy]

Originally Posted by SenorFunkyPants

What would be the best outcome for you?
1. That you are right, BMW have screwed up and we are all f***ed.
2. That you are wrong and 99.5% of our M3 engines are going to be just fine.

From over here, with the way you aggressively confront any counter argument or scrutiny, it looks like 1.
You are so hung up on being right that you seem to be losing any perspective.

I never thought about it until you asked. But now that you posted your built-in assumption, if I were to deny it and say #2, you crafted a ready-made response to say it really is #1 as proof by my answer. So instead, I'll answer this way.

I have no skin in this game either way. I don't own a business or make money in the auto industry. As far as I'm concerned, data is data.

[regular guy]

Originally Posted by aus

I'd like to know if anyone has opened up an S85 or S65 with more than 30,000 miles and had CLEAN bearings?? I think there was one very low mileage car that had some scuffs on the bearings, but that's the only one I can remember seeing. I just remember a TON of vids on YouTube of people with M3's asking if this engine noise is "normal."

Have any of the venders found a clean engine?
.

Not a single one that I know of. Tomorrow I should have a new set of photos on a ~31000 S65 bearing replacement. I'm trying to confirm the mileage before posting.

[swamp2]

Originally Posted by jcolley

There are however an incredible number of data points shown and if you start connecting the dots, there's a pretty clear line. Enough that I pulled mine and well...looks like these guys and this thread did me a favor.

What was your mileage?

How much longer would these bearings have lasted either to completely worn but still serviceable or perhaps to catastrophic failure?

I realize the latter are tough to impossible to answer. I guess my point is how do we really know that visible wear means the engine is heading rapidly toward imminent and catastrophic failure.

[swamp2]

Originally Posted by speedaddictM3

What's the mileage on our car? Why don't you impress us and prove us all wrong? Go pull the bearings out of your car and come and post pics showing us how fantastic a shape they are in.

Originally Posted by cposk

His car is probably part of the .5%. Just like everyone that has pulled their bearings so far.

I'm at about 65k. As I mentioned previously and even repeatedly. I believe there is enough empirical evidence here to justify a change to a different weight oil. I also believe that some oil analysis makes sense as well. I am doing both myself.

[swamp2]

Originally Posted by regular guy

... the deeper they keep digging a hole for themselves with these fake claims, failure to read the background materials, and collegiate white papers about hypothetical engines with hypothetical combustion forces that don't seem to change with RPM increases.

Don't worry more coming on this.

Yes it is an ancillary issue. However, it comes back to the bias in your made up specs like clearance ratios combined with redline. Experts aren't infallible and our experts here can't place themselves or have others place them up on a pedestal where every thing they say can go without question.

The statements here from both BMRLVR AND kawasaki00 about how rod forces vary exponentially with rpm or the other odd "growth pattern" kawasaki00 mentioned are completely incorrect.

In short the rough/approximate answer is that many inertial loads in rotating machinery have a scaling with ω^2 where ω is the SI units angular velocity (simply related to the rpm by a constant). So doubling an rpm will quadruple many inertial terms.

Yes, sure the "collegiate" paper I mentioned probably had an error in assumption about the variation of combustion chamber pressure vs. rpm. However, its 100% valid points were/are the following:

1. Rod loads depends on both combustion pressure and on inertial effects and at different rpm and overall engine load these are likely to be dominated by one effect or the other.
2. Rod loads are vectors (have direction not just magnitude) and vary in a complex way across the entire angular revolution through 720 degrees of crank rotation (in a four-stroke engine).
3. kawasaki00 clearly does not understand some basic engineering concepts such as stress vs. load (spatially varying vs. a simple vector quantity) and how these are affected by #1 and #2 above.

No further comments about how ALL BMW engines (mains and rods) violate the "Clevite rules" except the S85/S65?

[whats77inaname]

Originally Posted by swamp2

What was your mileage?

....

Originally Posted by jcolley

72K, third owner. The engine has never seen anything other than TWS until now. It will likely never see it again given how little opportunity I find to track it.

[chris719]

From reading at the Bob Is the Oil Guy forums, I'm not sure how much stock I would put in used oil analysis to tell you if anything is going on.

The BMW 10W-60 recommendation has always been a little strange for a street car. I'd be curious to see what a street driven S65 running 0w-20 would look like after 50k.

[kawasaki00]

Originally Posted by swamp2

Don't worry more coming on this.

Yes it is an ancillary issue. However, it comes back to the bias in your made up specs like clearance ratios combined with redline. Experts aren't infallible and our experts here can't place themselves or have others place them up on a pedestal where every thing they say can go without question.

The statements here from both BMRLVR AND kawasaki00 about how rod forces vary exponentially with rpm or the other odd "growth pattern" kawasaki00 mentioned are completely incorrect.

In short the rough/approximate answer is that many inertial loads in rotating machinery have a scaling with ω^2 where ω is the SI units angular velocity (simply related to the rpm by a constant). So doubling an rpm will quadruple many inertial terms.

Yes, sure the "collegiate" paper I mentioned probably had an error in assumption about the variation of combustion chamber pressure vs. rpm. However, its 100% valid points were/are the following:

1. Rod loads depends on both combustion pressure and on inertial effects and at different rpm and overall engine load these are likely to be dominated by one effect or the other.
2. Rod loads are vectors (have direction not just magnitude) and vary in a complex way across the entire angular revolution through 720 degrees of crank rotation (in a four-stroke engine).
3. kawasaki00 clearly does not understand some basic engineering concepts such as stress vs. load (spatially varying vs. a simple vector quantity) and how these are affected by #1 and #2 above.

No further comments about how ALL BMW engines (mains and rods) violate the "Clevite rules" except the S85/S65?

Yet I build winning race engines for a living and you dont. Goes back to that ol' statement you made about people and there dead end jobs posting on the internet or however you worded it.
We will just disagree on a few things.

[W///]

Originally Posted by jcolley

Keeping in mind it's an M5, I have written up everything so far on M5Board as referenced a few pages ago, but will collect everything when it's done and put something together. I'm sure it's not that different on the E9x, but can't speak from experience.

The problem is, I have such a hard time blocking off time to work on the car (joys of a 200 year old house) that once it comes apart I want to go after all sort things I find. Scope creep is killing me as now I'm into replacing the VANOS high pressure pump, front and rear main seals, the clutch and slave cylinder, VANOS solenoids, and VANOS high pressure lines. Yet all of that is costing me in parts less than I would pay to have bearing done at an indy.

This level of engine work is completely foreign to me. I installed the ESS VT1 kit on my E46 M3 and swapped diffs and coils, but this is new to me. Going by the info I've found on the boards from guys who have done it before and following along with TIS, it's really not that hard. Yes, it can in fact be done on jackstands with a transmission jack to help out.

Notice on the cylinder 8 picture, there's a small circle on the upper shell and a square imprint on the lower. These I suspect are from the one attempt I made to start the engine after the injector failed open and it turned over twice before hydro-locking. There is a nice hole on the rod journal that (oil passage) that fits that circle perfectly. The square? No clue...

However, I don't for one second believe that the hydro-lock had anything to do with the wear on the other bearings. It's perfectly consistent with every other S85 bearing set we've seen.

Maybe I missed it earlier, but what's the plan going forward for your S85? Lighter oil and just keep changing rod bearings?

[IMG]

Originally Posted by kawasaki00

Yet I build winning race engines for a living and you dont. Goes back to that ol' statement you made about people and there dead end jobs posting on the internet or however you worded it.
We will just disagree on a few things.

B O S S !

[SenorFunkyPants]

Originally Posted by BMRLVR

You really are grasping now aren't you?!

I am quite sure the reason why not as many issues are cropping up i the UK is because there are way fewer M3's on the road than the US!

What could possibly be different in the UK to change this issue? Be honest when you answer!

Better quality fuel?

[regular guy]

Originally Posted by SenorFunkyPants

Better quality fuel?

Please explain your theory for fuel quality affecting bearing clearance and oil starvation.

[Billj747]

Here are some interesting numbers side by side. First off, all of the motors below (E9X M3/E60 M5, E46 M3, E39 M5, NSX, S2000, GT3) ALL have tighter minimum clearances for both Main & Rod than the Clevite recommended 0.001"/1" journal diameter (except the GT3 example).

The E39 M5 has a long stroke and a bad rod ratio (Rod length/stroke) while the E46 M3 revs much higher and has an even longer stroke and worse rod ratio! I would interpret this as the E46 M3 being the hardest on the rods of the below engines. Combined with the heavy oil, I would imagine is a bad combination for rod bearing life.

The NSX and S2000's Rod MAX clearances do fall within the "Ideal" min-max clearances (Clevite's recommendation of 0.00075 x Journal size + 0.0005), and they both have a factory fill of a much thinner 10W30 oil. These motors commonly last well over 100,000 miles (many are fine over 150,000) despite their 8,200-9,000rpm rev limits.

The E39 M5's Rod and Main, and the E46 M3's Rod MAX clearances also falls within the "Ideal" min-max clearances, but while the Max falls in the "Ideal" range, the nominal clearances don't fit in this range.

I wonder if NSXs & S2000s would see similar bearing issues if they ran TWS. For the below information, the oil weight is the main difference between these proven-reliable cars with the S65 & S85 motors. The E46's longer stroke and poor rod ratio is not comparable and should be much harder on the bearings. Same with the E39 M5 but it does not rev as high.

E9X M3 / E60 M5

Bore x Stroke: 92 x 75.2mm
Rod Length: 140.72mm
Rod Ratio: 1.87
Redline: 8,250rpm
Factory Fill: TWS 10W60 (140cSt 40*C, 22.6cst 100*C)

Main Journal: 2.35142"
Main min-max: 0.00115-0.00180
Main Nominal: 0.00144
Main Minimum clearance/In: 0.00049
"Ideal: Min-max (per clevite #s): 0.00226-0.00285

Rod Journal: 2.04655"
Rod min-max: 0.00115-0.00185
Rod Nominal: 0.00125
Rod Minimum clearance/In: 0.00056
"Ideal: Min-max (per clevite #s): 0.00203-0.00255

E46 M3

Bore x Stroke: 87 x 91mm
Rod Length: 139mm
Rod Ratio: 1.53
Redline: 8,250rpm
Factory Fill: TWS 10W60 (140cSt 40*C, 22.6cst 100*C)

Main Journal: 2.36100"
Main min-max: 0.00075-0.00205
Main Nominal: 0.00140
Main Minimum clearance/In: 0.00032
"Ideal: Min-max (per clevite #s): 0.00227-0.00286

Rod Journal: 1.92900"
Rod min-max: 0.00118-0.00276
Rod Nominal: 0.00197
Rod Minimum clearance/In: 0.00061
"Ideal: Min-max (per clevite #s): 0.00195-0.00243

E39 M5

Bore x Stroke: 94 x 89mm
Rod Length: 141.5mm
Rod Ratio: 1.59
Redline: 7,000rpm
Factory Fill: TWS 10W60 (140cSt 40*C, 22.6cst 100*C)

Main Journal: 2.36100"
Main min-max: 0.00118-0.00276
Main Nominal: 0.00197
Main Minimum clearance/In: 0.00043
"Ideal: Min-max (per clevite #s): 0.00257-0.00325

Rod Journal: 1.92900"
Rod min-max: 0.00114-0.00246
Rod Nominal: 0.00189
Rod Minimum clearance/In: 0.00059
"Ideal: Min-max (per clevite #s): 0.00195-0.00243

NSX (3.2L C32B)

Bore x Stroke: 93 x 78mm
Rod Length: 152mm
Rod Ratio: 1.95
Redline: 8,200rpm
Factory Fill: 10W30 (78.1cSt 40*C, 12.0cst 100*C)

Main Journal: 2.51900"
Main min-max: 0.00090-0.00190
Main Nominal: 0.00140
Main Minimum clearance/In: 0.00036
"Ideal: Min-max (per clevite #s): 0.00239-0.00302

Rod Journal: 2.00830"
Rod min-max: 0.00160-0.00240
Rod Nominal: 0.00200
Rod Minimum clearance/In: 0.00080
"Ideal: Min-max (per clevite #s): 0.00201-0.00251

S2000 (2.0L F20C)

Bore x Stroke: 87 x 84mm
Rod Length: 153mm
Rod Ratio: 1.82
Redline: 9,000rpm
Factory Fill: 10W30 (78.1cSt 40*C, 12.0cst 100*C)

Main Journal: 2.16440"
Main min-max: 0.00070-0.00160
Main Nominal: 0.00115
Main Minimum clearance/In: 0.00032
"Ideal: Min-max (per clevite #s): 0.00212-0.00266

Rod Journal: 1.88880"
Rod min-max: 0.00118-0.00213
Rod Nominal: 0.00165
Rod Minimum clearance/In: 0.00087
"Ideal: Min-max (per clevite #s): 0.00192-0.00239

GT3 (3.6L 996 Cup car) - not sure if these are factory #s or just this team's #s

Bore x Stroke: 100 x 76.4mm
Rod Length: 138mm
Rod Ratio: 1.81
Redline: 8,400rpm
Factory Fill: 0W40 (75.0cSt 40*C, 13.5cst 100*C)

Main Journal: 2.36120"
Main min-max:
Main Nominal:
Main Minimum clearance/In:
"Ideal: Min-max (per clevite #s):

Rod Journal: 2.08560"
Rod min-max:
Rod Nominal: 0.00230
Rod Minimum clearance/In: 0.00110
"Ideal: Min-max (per clevite #s): 0.00206-0.00259

[e92zero]

So the S65/S85 are the only engines where the max is outside the Clevite's recommendation and with thick oil? Does compression ratio matter to the force exerted on the rod bearings?