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      02-11-2014, 05:41 PM   #89
///M Power-Belgium
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Quote:
Originally Posted by regular guy View Post
SFP, I'm not sure the purpose of this post because it doesn't really address anything I said. It's probably an honest mistake because this follow up came in a separate post; but you forgot to quote this part:

Q: Do you recall if the signs of detonation were predominantly on supercharged over NA bearings? Or did you see signs on each?
A: It was all supercharged engines. The NA engines didn't show signs of detonation.

BTW, the NA engine bearings Clevite saw all came from California.

You're jumping from point-A to point-Z without anything in between. You're taking a bunch of "what if's" and saying "that's what happened." Don't ignore that the Clevite guy also said he saw no signs of detonation on the NA bearings. If you have engine experts who believes 93 octane isn't "low octane to a 12:1 engine" then feel free to line them up so their beliefs and expertise can be analyzed in public. Just show me an engine expert who believes you can even run 93 octane on a 12:1 engine without active spark management.

This engine isn't supercharged, had pretty low miles, was meticulously cared for, never tracked, was warmed up before driving, was serviced regularly, and oil changed more often than required using BMW required 10W60 oil. Yet it suffered worse than any other engine I've seen short of a rod out the side of a block. I'll stand behind what I said and what Clevite said in private (parts I couldn't post verbatim but did paraphrase): if 91 octane is a problem, then BMW doesn't know how to program ECU's.
Agreed about the octane problem !
Why......... ?
Last year in november i had an oil change at my BMW dealer here in Belgium and 2 days before my appointment i had sent a email with the link and pics of a previous thread of this forum about bearing failure and blow engines to the chief mechanic of my BMW dealer .
So i arrived at my BMW dealer and asked him that he saw my email link,yes was the answer and we talked about this bearing problem.
The first thing that he pointed out was.....all this bearing failures occurred in the US ,and the main reason for him was the poor fuel quality and low octane in the US !
My answer was ....so here in Belgium there are no bearing failures ?
His anser was .... 0 % ! And he showed me the Puma system with the result of 0 % bearing problems !
And his last words of our conversation were like this.......
Simply continue to fill here up with 98 Ron and you will have never bearing failure !
Not to forget that the chief mechanic works for more than 20 years for BMW and is specialized in ///M cars and that he has all of his education,training,updates in Germany with BMW !
So personal all that i can hope is ...that he his right
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Last edited by ///M Power-Belgium; 02-11-2014 at 06:09 PM..
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      02-11-2014, 07:52 PM   #90
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There are several S85 engine bearing failures in threads over there that occured in the EU according to member Duschaino who seems to have worked on a lot of different S85 engines.
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      02-11-2014, 09:17 PM   #91
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Quote:
Originally Posted by chris719 View Post
There are several S85 engine bearing failures in threads over there that occured in the EU according to member Duschaino who seems to have worked on a lot of different S85 engines.
Similar comments came up in the bearing thread. Many people just want to ignore that there are any failures outside the US.

Last edited by regular guy; 02-11-2014 at 09:38 PM..
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      02-11-2014, 09:24 PM   #92
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Originally Posted by ///M Power-Belgium View Post
Agreed about the octane problem !
Why......... ?
Last year in november i had an oil change at my BMW dealer here in Belgium and 2 days before my appointment i had sent a email with the link and pics of a previous thread of this forum about bearing failure and blow engines to the chief mechanic of my BMW dealer .
So i arrived at my BMW dealer and asked him that he saw my email link,yes was the answer and we talked about this bearing problem.
The first thing that he pointed out was.....all this bearing failures occurred in the US ,and the main reason for him was the poor fuel quality and low octane in the US !
My answer was ....so here in Belgium there are no bearing failures ?
His anser was .... 0 % ! And he showed me the Puma system with the result of 0 % bearing problems !
And his last words of our conversation were like this.......
Simply continue to fill here up with 98 Ron and you will have never bearing failure !
Not to forget that the chief mechanic works for more than 20 years for BMW and is specialized in ///M cars and that he has all of his education,training,updates in Germany with BMW !
So personal all that i can hope is ...that he his right
I understand you hope he's right. But he's not an engineer, nor a chemist, nor ever seen the problem. Yet he tells you the root cause is low octane fuel in the US and he's never so much as inspected a single failure? Did you ever ask him to explain the failures in the EU?

98 RON is the same as 94 AKI. Most of the US is filled with 93 AKI.
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      02-11-2014, 11:16 PM   #93
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Quote:
Originally Posted by regular guy View Post
I repeatedly made this same point in the bearing thread. Do you remember why? I made that point because many people couldn't separate BMW from Clevite. They just couldn't grasp that Clevite only made the bearings at the specification BMW gave them. So it's a difference between the engineering reality that Clevite was a contract manufacturer and the public perception that Clevite is to blame. The Clevite response reflected this perfectly by deflecting blame away from bearing clearance and onto oil thickness. The Clevite guy is smart enough (or was reading the thread) to see that people were blaming Clevite anyways. So I don't find it terribly coincidental that he deflected blame away from clearance and onto oil thickness. Now take the next step and do what I did: follow that up with engine builders and see if it makes sense. So far, it doesn't make sense to any of the engine builders I've queried. But I'm still out there trying to find one who does make sense of it.



You're a physics guy, maybe you can explain that to me. This never made sense to me. When I think if "area" I think of the mathematical definition. I'd like to know how thinner oil clearance spreads the oil film to a wider area. To me, the area is the same regardless of clearance. Help me understand that please.

The Clevite guy also never answered the question about the role of supercharging. Most of the supercharged bearings I sent had very low miles on them. One set as low as 1800 supercharged miles. Yet the Clevite guy labeled all of them "terrible." That's not sitting well with me. If bearings went from perfect to the verge of failure in as little as 1800 miles, then I think we'd see a lot of supercharged engine failures (we aren't). Here's another example where I think the Clevite response was more expedient and politically correct than expository. I'm simply not buying that those bearings were fine one day and then like a light switch they turned terrible the moment a supercharger was added.
I don't want to get too far off topic here... but...

You worked very hard to get some input on this situation from Clevite. That's great. Now most of what they say that disagrees with "your" speculation (and that of our other non engineer experts in the main thread) and you call conflict of interest. You not only call conflict of interest but you call it on only those parts of what they say that you don't find palatable. I don't disagree that there could be conflict of interest but you can't have you cake and eat it too. Clevite claims they do not see clearance as a problem, period.

Look, flow rates are cooling are pretty obviously tied to both clearances and viscosity but bearing lubrication, specifically pressurized oil fed journal bearing tribology is not a simple subject, not in any way. That is why there are Professors at top Uni's who devote a considerable portion of their careers to this subject. Thus unless we are talking about variation in the oil pressure along the axial direction of the bearing or some other subtlety of the tribology, I'll have to claim ignorance on their comment about "more area".

Now matter how much emotion we all have here on this topic. We should accept the reasonable analysis I've done placing this at a maximum failure rate of 0.5% and substantially lower than that during the early E46 M3 bearing situation. Would 0.1% be "better" sure, acceptable, that's a relative term. Would all owners prefer a 0.01% rate, sure. Did BMW believe that the overall financial, longevity and performance tradeoffs were best met with their existing clearances? Yes almost for sure. Let's not forget those that blame the accountants here - BMW is running very tight tolerances, as you measured and as are required to run tight clearances in the first place. This is not cheap and was not a bean counting decision.
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      02-11-2014, 11:21 PM   #94
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kawasaki00 View Post
Not playing your games in this thread
Massive hyperbole will be called out, like it or not.
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      02-11-2014, 11:42 PM   #95
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Quote:
Originally Posted by swamp2 View Post
You worked very hard to get some input on this situation from Clevite. That's great. Now most of what they say that disagrees with "your" speculation (and that of our other non engineer experts in the main thread) and you call conflict of interest. You not only call conflict of interest but you call it on only those parts of what they say that you don't find palatable. I don't disagree that there could be conflict of interest but you can't have you cake and eat it too. Clevite claims they do not see clearance as a problem, period.
I did work very hard to get the info; an I presented it without any additions or subtractions. But just because I worked hard to get the information from Clevite doesn't mean I should be deprived of the opportunity to state my opinion, or deprived of my opportunity to analyze it -- especially when others are using it in a way that seems inconsistent with its meaning. We're all here trying to make sense of the situation. And just like you want to call out hyperbole when you see it, I want to point out an inconsistency like this when I see it. See my example above. I'm not young and naive enough to think a lifelong BMW mechanic knows anything about engine design or the chemical composition of gasoline...so I called it out as unlikely and untrustworthy.
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      02-11-2014, 11:49 PM   #96
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Quote:
Originally Posted by regular guy View Post
To all the naysayers who believed BMW designed the perfect engine .....: what's your explanation for BMW replacing an engine free of charge 1+ years out of warranty?
Has it ever occurred to you that BMW is replacing the engine because they are simply trying to do the right thing?
I've been in two situations with BMW where the stakes involved were about the same as being discussed here. One thing I learned during those occasions was that BMW was staffed with good people. Top to bottom. Perfect? No. But then, neither am I.
Do I think the S65 is perfect? No. But, despite all the consternation, it remains perfect enough for me.
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      02-12-2014, 03:00 AM   #97
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Quote:
Originally Posted by chris719 View Post
There are several S85 engine bearing failures in threads over there that occured in the EU according to member Duschaino who seems to have worked on a lot of different S85 engines.
I have read up on his threads on the M5 board and there are some odd inconsistencies - not least that this one guy claims to have worked on more S85 failures (30) on his farm in Germany that the whole of M5board has seen put together. To be fair he seems very knowledgeable and helpful but I suspect that its actually his friend at the BMW factory who has seen that number of engines as exchange returns from worldwide BMW dealers.
Try googling for euro S65 m3 bearing failed cars and see what you can come up with - I tried with little success.
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      02-12-2014, 09:00 AM   #98
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Originally Posted by SenorFunkyPants View Post
Try googling for euro S65 m3 bearing failed cars and see what you can come up with - I tried with little success.
Did you try google searches in non-English languages -- specifically the native languages of non-English speaking countries in the EU?

Doesn't matter anyways because lack of forum threads isn't proof that something didn't happen. We went through this in the bearing thread and many people (including myself) pointed to numerous examples of dealer replaced engines for people not on the forums. I mentioned four from just one of six dealers in my area, and Kawasaki mentioned something like six just from his local dealer.
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      02-12-2014, 09:02 AM   #99
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fuddman View Post
Has it ever occurred to you that BMW is replacing the engine because they are simply trying to do the right thing?
I've been in two situations with BMW where the stakes involved were about the same as being discussed here. One thing I learned during those occasions was that BMW was staffed with good people. Top to bottom. Perfect? No. But then, neither am I.
Do I think the S65 is perfect? No. But, despite all the consternation, it remains perfect enough for me.
You'll have to explain that. Why is the reason it's the right thing to do to replace an engine 1+ years out of warranty? And how far out of warranty would it be for this same car when it would be the right thing to say no?
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      02-12-2014, 09:09 AM   #100
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They grandfathered a warranty which covered the engine. Correct? They didn't cover the cost of the engine. They allowed a warranty to be put in place only 5000 miles out of warranty. Correct?
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      02-12-2014, 09:29 AM   #101
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Quote:
Originally Posted by regular guy View Post
You'll have to explain that. Why is the reason it's the right thing to do to replace an engine 1+ years out of warranty? And how far out of warranty would it be for this same car when it would be the right thing to say no?
You would have to be so far out of your warranty such that the bearing failure could be attributed to normal wear and tear. At 100k miles, you're more likely to have bearing wear and thus a small chance of ruining your engine (however I still wouldn't accept 100k as a lifespan of an engine) . With a young engine it's reasonable to expect that your engine won't grenade for any reason other than abuse.
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      02-12-2014, 10:06 AM   #102
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This is a known issue in the 2007 and 2008 cars. They had a supplier problem in that period. I had a 335i, yes I know it's not the same as the S65. At 42,000 on the clock and still in warranty, I spun #5 and #6 rod bearing. Had metal shavings throughout the motor. BMW blamed Dinan and said they would not warranty. So Dinan footed the bill. BMW will do what it takes to save themselves a buck.
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      02-12-2014, 10:11 AM   #103
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      02-12-2014, 10:14 AM   #104
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Nice to hear there was a happy ending to this horror story.
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      02-12-2014, 10:24 AM   #105
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Originally Posted by Bmw M3 Guy View Post
Hello All,

This one is going to be long! If you want to skip to the verdict, scroll down and look for the dude!

I recently experienced something with my car and wanted to give everyone an update and help people in the future that own or want to own an E9x M3. This post is to simply lay down the facts and experience I've had with my M3, BMW North America, and my dealership.

Justin
I can not understand why you are so excited... Once the marriage is broken ( chassis and drivetrain ) the vehicle will never feel the same. I had an engine replaced in a X6M and it never drove the same... Felt a bit unbalanced.
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      02-12-2014, 10:31 AM   #106
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Originally Posted by ///MTUNED View Post
I can not understand why you are so excited... Once the marriage is broken ( chassis and drivetrain ) the vehicle will never feel the same. I had an engine replaced in a X6M and it never drove the same... Felt a bit unbalanced.
this is not correct. Perhaps the work you had done was subpar or it's all in your head, but there's nothing wrong with pulling the motor in a car time and time again.
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      02-12-2014, 10:33 AM   #107
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This is a great article and an eye opener for me. I'm going to get my oil checked out on my next oil change. I hope I never run into this issue!
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      02-12-2014, 10:35 AM   #108
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kawasaki00
And everyone told me I was full of crap when I stated BMWNA has been doing the goodwill replacement at many dealerships even out of warranty.
They know there is a problem. They would not be giving out free engines if not.

Glad it all worked out for you, cheers. You have a lot more faith than I do if you put 10-60 back in.

If you want to do the break-in procedure follow the rpm/mileage they state. Run 5-30 synthetic and add a bottle of this in the picture

You are best to mix it in a bucket with the rest of the oil as it will stay in suspension better and not sit down in the pan.
Anytime i think my car has an issue my friend who is a tech says fuck it we will do a goodwill replacement later on down the road and dont waste your money lol.
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      02-12-2014, 10:37 AM   #109
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Hmm...me thinks BMW saw the large amount of research the OP had done on this problem. He documented everything, had all the evidence he could get. BMW probably said it would be best to help the OP out. Better than let him go to a lawyer and get a class action lawsuit off the ground.
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      02-12-2014, 10:39 AM   #110
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BMW does the right thing!!! you are lucky my friend.

on a side note, I thought BMW learned their lesson with the S54 but I guess not. They will issue a recall soon if this gets worse
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