Another Bearing thread

[Move Over]

Originally Posted by Doc Oc

I would not be worried about using the stock bolts at all. I wanted to use them but backed down as its hard to tell a 20 year BMW tech and VAC that I trust m3post more. Your bolts were made for the rods and I saw that you definitely torqued them right, so I'd drive with confidence!

I'm going to modify the break in a bit I think. We heat cycled the car and changed the filter but an oil change in 1500 sounds like a good idea. We are leaving to go to the mountains on 7/31. I'm going to take it easy until then but will have to stretch its legs once we get past Asheville.

I got married 6/20 up in Gatlinburg and oh, how I wish i had my M3 up there with me. I was driving around a Fiat.

Those mountain roads are just begging to be torn up. Can't wait to get the M back up there in the fall.

[Killerfish2012]

Originally Posted by Doc Oc

I don't believe that having many high mileage cars on the road is any kind of evidence against a bearing issue. Even if 10% of all m3's were affected, that'd still leave nearly 50,000 cars on the road without issue..

Doc, the forum generally accepts a failure rate of 1%. Just FYI

Originally Posted by Doc Oc

If you got a good one, more power to you, but coming here and telling people there is no problem and not to worry is a disservice. To many people like me, spending $2500 now is doable whereas a blown engine makes my car a paperweight for the next few years. If you convince people not to do that, are you going to be there for them if their engine blows?.

1. I never denied a problem. 1% of M3's bearings were improperly manufactured/installed. The rest of the failures if any can definitely be attributed to the dealership recommended 15K mile oil change intervals with molasses thick oem oil (A point which is proved by your car, which was definitely not taken care of the two previous owners).

2. as for the $2500 you just shelled out, I have a problem with that being advocated as some kind of solution when, we know that the main bearings are also affected, which people who do the rods leave out. And, the new install cannot be verified as successfully better than the oem job, until 30,000miles have gone by.

Originally Posted by Doc Oc

And I also disagree with the cosmetic appearance thing you mentioned. If your bearings have worn through the Babbitt to the copper, at some point your engine will fail. The lead is there to protect the crank if issues occur. Its not supposed to be destroyed, its like a crumple zone in a car. Just because it does its job doesn't mean there isn't a problem. Once the lead is gone there's nothing protecting your crank and sooner or later you're gonna know it. We don't need hysteria, but a healthy awareness is a good thing.

We have to agree to disagree. The same thing could be said for spark plugs that look black, or engine oil that looks black. You can't go by the appearance.

[Doc Oc]

Originally Posted by Killerfish2012

Doc, the forum generally accepts a failure rate of 1%. Just FYI



1. I never denied a problem. 1% of M3's bearings were improperly manufactured/installed. The rest of the failures if any can definitely be attributed to the dealership recommended 15K mile oil change intervals with molasses thick oem oil (A point which is proved by your car, which was definitely not taken care of the two previous owners).

2. as for the $2500 you just shelled out, I have a problem with that being advocated as some kind of solution when, we know that the main bearings are also affected, which people who do the rods leave out. And, the new install cannot be verified as successfully better than the oem job, until 30,000miles have gone by.



We have to agree to disagree. The same thing could be said for spark plugs that look black, or engine oil that looks black. You can't go by the appearance.

I was using 10% as an example, not a real number. By failure, do you mean actual engine damage or that 1% of cars have bearing issues?

Regarding appearance, a proper comparison to spark plugs would be if half of your groundstrap was gone, not just black.

[Killerfish2012]

Originally Posted by Doc Oc

Regarding appearance, a proper comparison to spark plugs would be if half of your groundstrap was gone, not just black.

Just playing devils advocate but what about water pumps that when pulled out at 140K miles from this vehicle, look like hammered feces. However, they are still functional, at the time of removal.

As for the $2500, I failed to mention point #3, which is that all replacements are just exchanging Clevite bearings which could potentially have a problem, for coated or non coated Clevite bearings which could potentially have a problem. I mean did you at least take a caliper to those bearings before they were put in? I'm guessing, NO.

[Doc Oc]

Originally Posted by Killerfish2012

Just playing devils advocate but what about water pumps that when pulled out at 140K miles from this vehicle, look like hammered feces. However, they are still functional, at the time of removal.

As for the $2500, I failed to mention point #3, which is that all replacements are just exchanging Clevite bearings which could potentially have a problem, for coated or non coated Clevite bearings which could potentially have a problem. I mean did you at least take a caliper to those bearings before they were put in? I'm guessing, NO.

Yeah, that's why I was hoping my stock bearings would come out clean. Changing them out just buys extra time but does NOT solve the problem. It still exists. Hopefully between the coating and the extra clearance it'll buy more time. Going back in 30-40k miles to do them again and see what we've got. Yes, they were measured, I asked him to compare the stocker vs VAC but it was ultimately useless as we didn't have a virgin bearing to compare with. Dumb. I should of got one. Measured vs the removed bearings, the vac were slightly thicker, but that means nothing. I wasn't too interested in his measurement vs rg's or VAC's as I doubt they'd be comparable with different equipment.

[Move Over]

I attempted to use plastigauge on mine but I didn't take the extra time. I figured since WPC are oem bearings and BMW has pretty good QC I should be alright.

[Doc Oc]

So here is a picture of the bearings laid out. Left to right 1-8. Tops only. Bottoms looked fine but had a good bit of wear around the parting lines. Another note, both of my motor mounts were shot. I had anticipated needing new ones, but was surprised that they'd both fallen apart. As shitty as it is that they only lasted 60k miles, in a weird way I was kind of happy that they were shot as that told me the car was going to feel even better once I got it back. After driving home 2 hours I noticed it was quieter and smoother. Engine doesn't seem as noisy and there are fewer vibrations coming into the cabin. Unfortunately my oil sensor is acting up. As I started home the gauge was at exactly half way, but by the time I got home it was asking for a quart. Not sure if the sensor got jostled around during the oil pan removal or what but they put 9.5 qrts in and there are no visable leaks. It dropped from half, to 1/4 to add one quart within 30 minutes then stayed at add 1 qrt the rest of the way. Not sure if I should add a little or hang tight and see what happens....

Overall I am very happy I bit the bullet and swapped out the bearings. Part of me wanted them to be spotless so I knew the car had no issues and part of me wanted them to be torn up so as to justify the $2500 expense. After all is said and done it ended up kind of in the middle with the bearings definitely showing signs of wear (and justifying the expense) but not so bad that I'm worried about eating up the new ones.

[Killerfish2012]

Originally Posted by Doc Oc

So here is a picture of the bearings laid out. Left to right 1-8. Tops only. Bottoms looked fine but had a good bit of wear around the parting lines. Another note, both of my motor mounts were shot. I had anticipated needing new ones, but was surprised that they'd both fallen apart. As shitty as it is that they only lasted 60k miles, in a weird way I was kind of happy that they were shot as that told me the car was going to feel even better once I got it back. After driving home 2 hours I noticed it was quieter and smoother. Engine doesn't seem as noisy and there are fewer vibrations coming into the cabin. Unfortunately my oil sensor is acting up. As I started home the gauge was at exactly half way, but by the time I got home it was asking for a quart. Not sure if the sensor got jostled around during the oil pan removal or what but they put 9.5 qrts in and there are no visable leaks. It dropped from half, to 1/4 to add one quart within 30 minutes then stayed at add 1 qrt the rest of the way. Not sure if I should add a little or hang tight and see what happens....

Overall I am very happy I bit the bullet and swapped out the bearings. Part of me wanted them to be spotless so I knew the car had no issues and part of me wanted them to be torn up so as to justify the $2500 expense. After all is said and done it ended up kind of in the middle with the bearings definitely showing signs of wear (and justifying the expense) but not so bad that I'm worried about eating up the new ones.

Thanks for sharing. I dear say, they don't look all that bad compared to what the bearings looked like during the supercharged Gintani tear downs. Those bearings were either failed (drew's blown motor), or pretty much making noise (the late great Paul Walker's motor). They were wafer thin, in comparison to yours. Yours look like the typical heat damage/lack of lubrication. 10W-60 must have been left in there for at least 15K or more miles by the previous owners.

As for the motor mounts, mine were shrunken, and looked like crap, but were still functional at 105K miles. Your car was definitely driven hard, and not taken care of by one of those previous owners. My M3 was a single owner vehicle with all high way miles, so I wasn't as worried. I steered clear of vehicles with multiple owners, even if it had low miles. You can check out my thread, and picture of my motor mounts at 105K miles in the maintenance section, and compare them to yours. Trust me your car was flogged.

[Killerfish2012]

Doc, I forgot to add these two things:

1. Change your trans mounts, as your new motor mounts will be putting a strain on the old trany mounts. They are cheap, and I changed my DCT trans mounts not too long ago. You will also feel a difference with shifts, as mine were shot just like the motor mounts.

2. Don't mess with the engine oil level! Once you travel a long distance it will show a shortage vs your city driving. Only add oil, if the vehicle states that you should add a quart. At that point, add exactly a quart.

[Doc Oc]

Originally Posted by Killerfish2012

Doc, I forgot to add these two things:

1. Change your trans mounts, as your new motor mounts will be putting a strain on the old trany mounts. They are cheap, and I changed my DCT trans mounts not too long ago. You will also feel a difference with shifts, as mine were shot just like the motor mounts.

2. Don't mess with the engine oil level! Once you travel a long distance it will show a shortage vs your city driving. Only add oil, if the vehicle states that you should add a quart. At that point, add exactly a quart.

I was thinking about the tranny mounts but funds and time were limited. Did you do your own or did a shop do it?

While it may have been driven hard, keep in mind mine is 4 years older than yours, assuming you have a 2012. Age is probably a big factor. The rubber was almost dry rotted. They had both come apart across the middle. Also, the last owner who put 40k on it was a woman. Not to be sexist, but there's a better than not chance that she wasn't tracking it. While I don't have any service history on it, its the cleanest seven year old car I've ever seen from the leather to the paint, rims, engine, etc. Literally perfect. I get the feeling you might be trying to write the bearing condition off as coming from a rough or abused car. Don't do that . There's no evidence one way or another.

Also, the oil pan was very clean. Tech was surprised. I'd expect some sludge using 15k oci's no?

[WhatsADSM]

Thanks for sharing! Not the best looking, but I wouldn't say it was an imminent failure or anything. Although not sure they would have made it double the milage... And yes the look of a bearing does provide information as to its condition. Copper is NOT a good sign.

[Doc Oc]

You know I keep saying there is no history on the car, but I'm basing that on carfax. It showed the three sales, the post break in service, and the service the dealer did right before I bought it. I just assumed there were no other records but I've never had the key read. Will that give me more info than Carfax? I just thought that since carfax showed those two services they'd show them all.

[Doc Oc]

Originally Posted by WhatsADSM

Thanks for sharing! Not the best looking, but I wouldn't say it was an imminent failure or anything. Although not sure they would have made it double the milage... And yes the look of a bearing does provide information as to its condition. Copper is NOT a good sign.

I'm no expert but I scraped the side of one down to better see the layers and from what I can tell the copper layer isn't much thicker than a couple sheets of tin foil. Beyond that is hard steel. Seeing 6ppm copper and 8 lead on the last Blackstone report that was done after only 1200 miles or so on the oil is what got me serious. I might catch some shit for saying this but if we could get more people on board, we might find this kind of wear on a lot of cars and perhaps we could get BMWs attention? Instead of down playing the issue I think we should try to raise awareness. I'm sending BMWNA a nice but strong letter with pictures of my bearings along with a link to the pertinent threads here. Probably a big waste of time but if enough people do the same who knows what might happen.

[Killerfish2012]

Originally Posted by Doc Oc

I was thinking about the tranny mounts but funds and time were limited. Did you do your own or did a shop do it?

My mounts were done by my local indy shop

Originally Posted by Doc Oc

While it may have been driven hard, keep in mind mine is 4 years older than yours, assuming you have a 2012. Age is probably a big factor. The rubber was almost dry rotted. They had both come apart across the middle. Also, the last owner who put 40k on it was a woman. Not to be sexist, but there's a better than not chance that she wasn't tracking it. While I don't have any service history on it, its the cleanest seven year old car I've ever seen from the leather to the paint, rims, engine, etc. Literally perfect. I get the feeling you might be trying to write the bearing condition off as coming from a rough or abused car. Don't do that . There's no evidence one way or another.

Also, the oil pan was very clean. Tech was surprised. I'd expect some sludge using 15k oci's no?

Interesting that your oil pan was clean. Mine is an '09, single owner, interstate traveller, with 95K on the clock when I bought it last May. I currently have 117K miles, and 6 full track days under my belt. Will be going for my next events in August, and September. I keep up with maintenance, and my secret to engine longevity is Motor Flushes. No plans on doing bearings till well north of 150K miles. Motor is fine. I'm not in denial about the issue, just one of those who thinks it's obviously overblown, evidenced by my car, and several others.

[Killerfish2012]

Originally Posted by Doc Oc

I'm no expert but I scraped the side of one down to better see the layers and from what I can tell the copper layer isn't much thicker than a couple sheets of tin foil. Beyond that is hard steel. Seeing 6ppm copper and 8 lead on the last Blackstone report that was done after only 1200 miles or so on the oil is what got me serious. I might catch some shit for saying this but if we could get more people on board, we might find this kind of wear on a lot of cars and perhaps we could get BMWs attention? Instead of down playing the issue I think we should try to raise awareness. I'm sending BMWNA a nice but strong letter with pictures of my bearings along with a link to the pertinent threads here. Probably a big waste of time but if enough people do the same who knows what might happen.

Worn bearings slide in and out of the rod, and make noise. Your bearings were thick! Turst me. Just check out the Gintani engine tear downs on youtube. Worn S65 bearings are damn near paper thin, and you can see them slide in and out of the rod. Yours are like 200% thicker than theirs, and the motor didn't just even fail before the tear down. WAY over blown my friend.

[Doc Oc]

Originally Posted by Killerfish2012

Worn bearings slide in and out of the rod, and make noise. Your bearings were thick! Turst me. Just check out the Gintani engine tear downs on youtube. Worn S65 bearings are damn near paper thin, and you can see them slide in and out of the rod. Yours are like 200% thicker than theirs, and the motor didn't just even fail before the tear down. WAY over blown my friend.

Sorry but worn bearings do not slide in and out of the rod and make noise. They are seated and should never move, but they can get so thin as to allow rod knock, and they can be spun around in their housing, (spun bearing) but sliding laterally in and out of the bore isn't possible unless something very bad has happened. No offense, but you seem more interested in defending BMW than protecting people here. Again this is a part that shouldn't have ANY wear in a healthy engine. Telling people not to worry, that things will be fine even with the Babbitt ground through is irresponsible and quite honestly unless you are a BMW plant I don't know what the point is? Encouraging people not to check it out seems fishy to me. If it was overblown my bearings would've been spotless. The fact that no one who has done this has found clean bearings tells me the problem is not overblown but probably more widespread than people think. If you are only looking at failures then sure, there aren't that many, but we are trying to avoid failures which means catching the issue before the crank gets damaged and rods start knocking.

[Killerfish2012]

Originally Posted by Doc Oc

Sorry but worn bearings do not slide in and out of the rod and make noise. They are seated and do not move. If the bearings are moving at all its already game over with no coming back. No offense, but you seem more interested in defending BMW than protecting people here. Again this is a part that shouldn't have ANY wear in a healthy engine. Telling people not to worry, that things will be fine even with the Babbitt ground through is irresponsible and quite honestly unless you are a BMW plant I don't know what the point is? Encouraging people not to check it out seems fishy to me. If it was overblown my bearings would've been spotless. The fact that no one who has done this has found clean bearings tells me the problem is not overblown but probably more widespread than people think. If you are only looking at failures then sure, there aren't that many, but we are trying to avoid failures here which means catching the issue before the crank gets damaged and rods start knocking.

I'm not a "BMW plant". I'm just a high mileage owner, and a guy who wants all opinions out there. The forum was dominated pretty early on by this bearing stuff. Even before I bought this car, I read it and was very afraid. I still went ahead and purchased a very high mileage car, and over time realized just how ridiculously over blown this issue is. As more and more high mileage 2nd and 3rd owners join, its no surprise that the issue will become more and more marginalized, as the more realistic failure rate of 1% is proven. It just saddens me when recently a guy bought one with 100K miles, as a second owner, then headed straight to Laguna Secca to track his car, and ran near record times for a stock car. He posted video in the track section, and one of the first responses was: "are you gonna change your bear rings?" Seriously?

It's really not fair to compare wear rates on other vehicles because of the issue of additional variables. Not all engines are high revving, and even if you compare the S65 to other high revving engines, there is this huge issue of maintenance habits. Honda, Volkswagen, Lexus, and most all other dealerships indoctrinate the owners into extreme maintenance habits. If you threaten your buyers to change the oil at the dealerships every 3-5K miles, or you'll void the warranty, those engine bearings are going to look radically different from the ones pulled out of an engine where the dealership wants the oil changed only when the oil analyzer requires it (i.e complete oil failure), which is well known to be at approximately 15K actual miles. Just think about all the additional metals floating around in that oil, scratching up already high stress components by design.

Lastly engine noise is what techs use to traditionally diagnose rod or main bearing issues. The noise is either present at start up, and goes away, or is sustained and increases with revs. At this point the motor is brought in, the technician diagnoses it, and then recommends bearing replacements. This is what is traditionally done. This approach of just yanking out the bearings on perfectly functioning engines is being promoted by companies selling you coated oem bearings. It would make some sense if they made their own bearings but to literarily just spray paint the very same suspect oem bearings and sell them for such a huge profit by drumming up fears is just plain, well.........

[Doc Oc]

I understand what you are trying to say and you seem like a nice enough guy, but a couple points:

You can't hear worn bearings until they've affected some other part of the engine. I could put a new bearing in your left hand and my worst upper in your right and you couldn't feel the difference. Your car will run fine on worn bearings until it doesn't. They listen for rod knock to find bad bearings as that's almost always the first audible warning, but by the time you hear rod knock there's a strong chance your crank is already damaged. There is no real diagnosis for worn bearings that I know of outside of a uoa. In the last two weeks I've had some very good conversations with some very good engine builders and they've all said this.

Its not like I'm saying everyone should pull their oil pans and dive in, but most of us paid $30k plus for our cars and spending $2500 to do this isn't the end of the world. Lots of guys will spend that on an exhaust.

Second point: the fact that your car and some others here are still going strong isn't evidence to anything. Like I said, even if 10% of the production run were affected, that still leaves 90% of the cars with no issue. Because you got one of the good ones doesn't mean there aren't 5000 bad ones out there. And in reality m3post represents a very small cross section of the m3 owning public. Its pretty hard to draw good conclusions from such a small sample size.

[Killerfish2012]

Originally Posted by Doc Oc

I understand what you are trying to say and you seem like a nice enough guy.

You're a cool guy yourself too, and it's very good to have informative exchanges on the forums. I just wanted to say something more about maintenance, since you've already installed coated bearings on your car. It's interesting to note what the aftermarket coating companies stated in the early pages of their thread on this issue, before they started making these coated oem bearings. After looking at several bearings from customers, Regarding maintenance, they voiced concern about the oem oil thickness, combined with the oem oil change intervals. They suggested going with thinner oils, and shortening the oil change intervals to no more than 5K miles. This began the M1 0W40 oil users base theory, and spawned several threads on engine oil weight. Since you are using their coated bearings, I'd suggest giving some thought to their maintenance suggestions.

[Doc Oc]

Originally Posted by Killerfish2012

You're a cool guy yourself too, and it's very good to have informative exchanges on the forums. I just wanted to say something more about maintenance, since you've already installed coated bearings on your car. It's interesting to note what the aftermarket coating companies stated in the early pages of their thread on this issue, before they started making these coated oem bearings. After looking at several bearings from customers, Regarding maintenance, they voiced concern about the oem oil thickness, combined with the oem oil change intervals. They suggested going with thinner oils, and shortening the oil change intervals to no more than 5K miles. This began the M1 0W40 oil users base theory, and spawned several threads on engine oil weight. Since you are using their coated bearings, I'd suggest giving some thought to their maintenance suggestions.

Up until 2 weeks ago I had no intentions to use VAC bearings. I was set on wpc and I'm still hoping I made the right choice. I changed my mind once I talked to VAC and learned that these aren't stock coated bearings but a custom bearing made thinner so as to still offer extra clearance even with the coating. RGs measurements seem to back that up but I would've liked to have gotten my own. Really regret not getting a side by side comparison. Also, I saw a thread here not too long ago where someone pulled some vacs out of a sc'd car and they were perfect after 30k miles, so that gave me some confidence. Regarding maintenance, I agree 100%. I had some really good talks with several people on here and 3 engine guys in my area. Most people here think its a clearance issue (although one of the forum sponsors i spoke with disagrees) but only one of the engine builders mentioned clearance...and I could tell by our talks he was active online. It seems outside of the online community most people view this issue as a result of the extended oci's and not clearance.

I've been running and will continue to run pu euro 5w40 until winter, when I'll switch to m1. I'll probably change it every 3500 miles. My fear is that these new bearings will make uoa's useless. Curious to see the first one. Going to change the oil in 1000 miles.

[Killerfish2012]

Originally Posted by Doc Oc

I've been running and will continue to run pu euro 5w40 until winter, when I'll switch to m1. I'll probably change it every 3500 miles. My fear is that these new bearings will make uoa's useless. Curious to see the first one. Going to change the oil in 1000 miles.

I'm no expert, but from all the Uoa's I've seen from vehicles with copper bearings, Iron levels somewhat seemed to mirror copper levels. If Iron levels were high, chances are copper levels were too. So Iron might be a good one to keep an eye on, and make sure is really low.

[swamp2]

Originally Posted by Doc Oc

And in reality m3post represents a very small cross section of the m3 owning public. Its pretty hard to draw good conclusions from such a small sample size.

One can make some pretty reasonable estimates/calculations to get around this significant limitation of the data.

The range of total failure rates I calculated prior here was between 0.1% - 0.5%. That number has since increased as total number of failures have increased. An upper limit of 1% now is probably reasonable. That calculation accounts for the number of forum members reporting to own an M3 as well as the total public production numbers of the car.