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      11-05-2016, 09:05 PM   #1
Candide13
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Remove intake plenum for dummies

I had to replace the secondary air suction hose & air flow sensor on my car, which failed for the second time, causing a P2430/2432 OBD error and hence a check engine light... The hose itself is a simple (if fiddly) replace, but you need to take the intake plenum off to do it, which is a bit of an undertaking on our cars.

I am not a big DIY-er, for example, changing brake pads is more less the extent of what I do, but after reading up on the job on this forum and elsewhere I thought this is an ok thing to attempt. For DIY-dummies like myself the main concern is to break something by ignorance or to lose something in the engine bay by clumsiness. Here are a few bits I learnt for this task. Maybe there are helpful.

Air box cover. There are eight T25 screws in the neatly fitting air box cover that remain in the cover, which is very helpful. After loosening them you can unscrew a bit further until there is light resistance, which indicates the screw is now fixed in the cover. This makes it a lot easier to reassemble the cover. Also, at the lower bottom there is rubber connector in which the air box snout fits, which is ok to remove but a bit harder to put back in. This is because there is a small plastic guide rail that the cover has to reach and that takes a lot of pushing on creaky plastic pieces. I found it easier to remove two horizontal screws left and right of the hood closing mechanism, which allowed taking off the plastic piece the small rubber connector attaches to. Takes only a minute and after that the rubber piece is free to move; no pushing, no creaking. After that the air box itself come out easily after removing the two screws on the right.

Different instructions differ by how much stuff to remove or loosen in order to get the intake free. I went with the minimal approach as indicated by the workshop manual. Just detach one electric connector and three hoses and loosen the 8 clips at the throttle bodies. The electric connection at the intake has a visible wire, which when pushed inwards releases the connection; easy. The hoses are quick connectors, i.e. they require pushing inwards on the plastic ring at two points and then pull away. Remember, they are called “quick connectors”, not “quick disconnectors”.

For the eight hose clips I bought a special hand tool with a 6mm head and flexible screwdriver-like shape. Cost about $10, make is Schwaben. I did this because I did not want to risk losing any extension pieces when working in the small space under the intake, especially as the rear clips are essentially blind. This was a good purchase. By the way, my hose clips were very loose, made me wonder whether BMW did this right when they changed the same hose two years ago under warranty. Maybe they just did not bother with tightening the clips.

The only hose that caused a problem was the large one at the rear right of the plenum. Best attempted when the plenum is loose already; I found it hard to get enough push on the disconnector whilst also being able to pull it down.

When the plenum is off take mandatory victory photo with your phone and marvel at the engineering that went into making the V8 and these glorious eight individual throttle bodies!

When the time comes to put the plenum back on, first check that the hose clamp screws are in the correct position next to their stop blocks and that they are tightened enough so that the metal clips are completely in the rubber grooves of the throttle body rim. That way there is no worry that things get out of shape when you put the plenum back on. One advantage of the minimal removal approach is that the plenum has a very positive fit on the black side bits, which gives you confidence that it is in the right place when you start to push down on it to settle it on the throttle bodies.

Have fun!

Last edited by Candide13; 11-06-2016 at 09:14 AM..
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      11-06-2016, 02:21 AM   #2
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sounds like i'm in the same boat as you... taking off the plenum sounds intimidating, but i know someday when my under-plenum-thingy goes bad, i'll have to do it. do you have a link to the tool or a picture of it that you used?
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      11-06-2016, 05:49 AM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by roastbeef View Post
sounds like i'm in the same boat as you... taking off the plenum sounds intimidating, but i know someday when my under-plenum-thingy goes bad, i'll have to do it. do you have a link to the tool or a picture of it that you used?
See this significantly more detailed DIY which involves removing the plenum.

DIY: Replace Fuel Tank Breather Valve (Fix for bouncing idle at fuel station) http://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1273927
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      11-06-2016, 04:21 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by roastbeef View Post
sounds like i'm in the same boat as you... taking off the plenum sounds intimidating, but i know someday when my under-plenum-thingy goes bad, i'll have to do it. do you have a link to the tool or a picture of it that you used?
Here is a link to the tool I used:

https://www.ecstuning.com/ES3063498/

This made the biggest difference in comfort level, a nicely fitting tool that cannot fall off!

Last edited by Candide13; 11-06-2016 at 04:26 PM..
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      11-06-2016, 04:23 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by drrust View Post
See this significantly more detailed DIY which involves removing the plenum.

DIY: Replace Fuel Tank Breather Valve (Fix for bouncing idle at fuel station) http://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1273927
Nice photos on this one, I looked at it before.
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      11-23-2022, 03:51 PM   #6
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What's a fair price to have someone or a shop install the Eventuri plenum? How long should a job like that take?
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