FAQ on Carbon Build-Up Issue (First Attempt) - Page 28

mottati · 22nd November 2005, 18:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by wilsodh

But since "clean the heads" is specifically to address the emissions system, I guess the root question is whether it is possible for BMW to re-program (deactivate) the monitoring of a dead system rather than hoist $8,000 repair bills upon its valued customers. The latter wouldn't seem to serve anyone's interests.

Cheers,
Dave

I don't think this would be possible from an emissions legality standpoint. That is why US cars monitor this in the first place.
Mike

wilsodh · 22nd November 2005, 18:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by mottati

I don't think this would be possible from an emissions legality standpoint. That is why US cars monitor this in the first place.
Mike

Guess the point being that if the cold-start emission system is already dead, and we as owners are not legally required to fix it (say over $450 as in CA), and BMW as the manufacturer is no longer legally required to fix it (say over 80,000 miles per FCAA), then who must fix it? Sounds like nobody is required to fix it. So why are we paying $8,000 to fix it? To turn of a 50 cent SES light on the instrument panel?

At this point, wouldn't it be the best "good will" by BMW to simply deactivate the monitoring? I'm not sure why this would be illegal.

Cheers,
Dave

mottati · 22nd November 2005, 18:52

I'm not sure about the actual smog laws regarding who has to pay if the car doesn't pass, but the car would not pass with the ses light. So If we have this law that says we are not legally required to fix it, does that mean no more smog checks for the life of the car? If that's the case, from the ca emissions law standpoing, then i suppose it would be ok to reprogram the car to ignore that particular fault code. (that would be nice really). I just don't imagine it would be that easy when it comes to CARB.
Mike

Quote:

Originally Posted by wilsodh

Guess the point being that if the cold-start emission system is already dead, and we as owners are not legally required to fix it (say over $450 as in CA), and BMW as the manufacturer is no longer legally required to fix it (say over 80,000 miles per FCAA), then who must fix it? Sounds like nobody is required to fix it. So why are we paying $8,000 to fix it? To turn of a 50 cent SES light on the instrument panel?

At this point, wouldn't it be the best "good will" by BMW to simply deactivate the monitoring? I'm not sure why this would be illegal.

Cheers,
Dave

wilsodh · 22nd November 2005, 19:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by mottati

I'm not sure about the actual smog laws regarding who has to pay if the car doesn't pass, but the car would not pass with the ses light. So If we have this law that says we are not legally required to fix it, does that mean no more smog checks for the life of the car? If that's the case, from the ca emissions law standpoing, then i suppose it would be ok to reprogram the car to ignore that particular fault code. (that would be nice really). I just don't imagine it would be that easy when it comes to CARB.
Mike

I'm not sure about smog laws and their enforcement either (perhaps others on the board may know more??). My 0.02 speculation is that if an $8,000 cold-start emissions system is broken and the owner is responsible for only $450 max, then this would fall under the same situation as any other broken smog system, whereby the owner gets a "pass". We would probably need to show documentation from a BMW dealer that the SES light is due to the $8,000 cold-start smog system.

But talk is cheap. To turn off that SES light, we don't know what it would take technically for BMW to re-program or deactivate the monitoring (say, ala European cars). Obvisously we can't march into our local BMW dealer today and request such a procedure. Probably safe to say that the initial reaction would be something like "Are you kidding? We could never do that... it would be tampering with a smog system".

This is where we need to work to clearly define the problem, understand just what the smog laws require, and delinate our proposed resolution (and underlying legality) to BMW. Only then in Dave's Fantasy World could I see a TSB giving dealers a go-ahead to perform the procedure provided verified criteria are met (ie, secondary air smog system is truly 'broken', car has >80,000 miles, car is registered in state allowing such a procedure under state smog testing).

Sound like a lot of work, but for cars in the high mileage 'exempt' category, an $8,000 bill to turn off an SES light is, well, fill in the blank with your favorite expletive: _______.

Oh, BTW, want some of what I'm smoking?

Cheers,
Dave

mottati · 23rd November 2005, 19:58

What a great, reasonable, logical world that is, actually, i think that world must be europe, since they don't seem to have the problem in the first place!
Mike

Quote:

Originally Posted by wilsodh

Only then in Dave's Fantasy World could I see a TSB giving dealers a go-ahead to perform the procedure provided verified criteria are met (ie, secondary air smog system is truly 'broken', car has >80,000 miles, car is registered in state allowing such a procedure under state smog testing).

Sound like a lot of work, but for cars in the high mileage 'exempt' category, an $8,000 bill to turn off an SES light is, well, fill in the blank with your favorite expletive: _______.

Oh, BTW, want some of what I'm smoking?

Cheers,
Dave

LLcoolM5 · 23rd November 2005, 21:31

I thought I would chime in and give my 2 cents worth on a few subjects, and give a update on the cleaning of the secondary air injection system.

Well first the cleaning of the secondary air injection systems....

The SES light has came back on several times since I had cleaned the aluminium tube. Once the light comes on I fill the aluminium tube up with throttle body cleaner (xylene, acetone) and let it sit for 24+ hours and the SES light will not come back on for about another 3 to 4 weeks. I am not happy with this solution and have the following concerns and possible remedies.
1. As other members have pointed out, putting several milliliters of xylene and acetone through your cylinder heads will react with and (I fear) dilute the lubrication and detergent qualties of the motor oil. It might be OK to do this right before a oil change, but having to keep doing this every 1000 miles, I don't think is to good for the oil and the catalytic converters. As DavidS has proposed, one could pour the solution in the tube, let it sit then suck it back out without starting the engine, repeatign this procedure several times.

2. I am ready to go another route. I have been thinking about this for several months and member RRoberts has suggested it also. I want to bypass injecting the secondary air injection into the heads and instead cut a hole in the headers and inject the secondary air in right before the pre-cat O2 sensors. This way the O2 sensors will see all the oxygen they need to see, and once the bypass valve shuts and the smog pump shuts off the exhaust system will return to normal. I have been crawling around under the engine and it could be done, but it is going to take some custom fabrication and welding. The problems I forsee with this route is that it is probably illegal, but I really don't care. You must keep the bypass valve in-line to make sure the exhaust gases don't bacstream to far back into the secondary air injection system. I really don't see to much of the gases backstreaming into the newly fabricated secondary air injection tube, but the gases will take the path of least resistance, and this is something untested and who knows what other problems it could cause. But saying this I feel the risk is low and I am going to proceeed. Some other problems are that I will probably have to do this on the lowwww down. Anyone who knows anything about cars and smog laws is not going to do this work. I will have to find someone who doesn't care, or do it in pieces at differnt shops. Mayber have a muffler shop fabricate the new secondary air tube and then have a differnt shop, cut a hole in the headers and weld it toghther. It would have to look professional and be hidden as much as possible to prevent failure during smog inspections. I don't know but I plan to do this late Dec and will post up pictures and some type of procdure.

3. The other route would be to reprogram the DME to quite looking for a certain oxgen level on cold start-ups. I have talked to Powerchip and they really didn't give me a firm answer. I know there is local speed shops that make their own chips, but I haven't found any in Ausin that will make chips for BMW's.

My other 2 cents..... I would be willing to contribte some time and money to formulating and attacking BMW on this CBU situation. All sorts of consumers have been succesful in persuding manufactors to fix, refund or recall consumers produts do to defects and problems. We only need to start tyring and increase our cycles of learning. For example, ever since the new I-POD Nano has came out (several months ago) the Nano users have pursuaded Apple to replace their screens on these units. I can give tons and tons of examples of consumers getting manufactros to remedy situations.

LL

omologato · 24th November 2005, 00:18

saw this thread last night. my car started having this problem about 9 months ago. had reputbale independant diag and they found carbon build up. they didn't want to touch so referred me to dinan. talked to dinan at that time and the said should not be a big issue. looks like this predates this entire thread. net net i simply have not driven my car much for fear of "hurting" the car.

my car: 11/99 build
3rd owner dealer serviced to 4 years to 40k, currently at 61k. serviced by the book through 2 independants. chevron premium, castrol tws (10w60). 1 qt/1000miles.

i'm not a happy camper. My read is the early cars have a design defect.

i haven't been impressed with bmw service so far, i'd be interested in seeing how they treat owners of one of their premium brands. also the 80K emissions warranty mentioned earlier is of real interest. seems like this clearly should be addressed under the federal emmissions warranty as this does seem to be a design flaw, not a maintenance issue.

who has point on the issue? let me know what i can do to assist.

Jason Thomasser
jthomasser@yahoo.com
Santa Cruz, CA

mottati · 24th November 2005, 00:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by LLcoolM5

3. The other route would be to reprogram the DME to quite looking for a certain oxgen level on cold start-ups. I have talked to Powerchip and they really didn't give me a firm answer. I know there is local speed shops that make their own chips, but I haven't found any in Ausin that will make chips for BMW's..

LL

I also asked wayne at powerchip about this. Did not get an answer if it could be done, but it would not be legal "tampering with emissions system". I asked about the software i had heard about on the board to kill the SES light for those who have race cats, that is "for off road use only". Last i heard, they were going to see if they could find this 'secondary airflow too low' code on a euro dme, but i never heard back. Might be worth someone checking who has the problem, and would be willing to be a test subject, 'for off road use' of course. I too get the feeling that this will eventually effect most of us. Interestingly, my 98 528 had a similar problem, but a valve that connected the smog pump to the exhaust manifold, or where ever it was injected, was what became clogged, and was covered under cpo warranty. This is not a problem that only effects the S62.

Mike

wilsodh · 27th November 2005, 17:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by LLcoolM5

3. The other route would be to reprogram the DME to quite looking for a certain oxgen level on cold start-ups. I have talked to Powerchip and they really didn't give me a firm answer. I know there is local speed shops that make their own chips, but I haven't found any in Ausin that will make chips for BMW's.

Good to hear from you. Sorry to hear the SES light is coming back on.. was certainly hoping the tube cleaning procedure would be an effective remedy! You've got balls when it comes to the new remedy you are contemplating. A software solution ala #3 above would seem to be the best approach, if only we could realize some progress on this front. I'm not a lawyer, but I still think the illegality of this is debatable beyond 80,000 miles. Alas, I can also appreciate that since this area has evidently not been explored legally (ie, may be murky), finding a willing partner for a software solution may be an uphill battle...

Keep us posted!

Cheers,
Dave

wilsodh · 27th November 2005, 18:32

Hi Mike,

Just back from holiday travel and getting caught up on one of our 'favorite' subjects. Just to keep the conversation going..

Quote:

Originally Posted by mottati

Last i heard, they were going to see if they could find this 'secondary airflow too low' code on a euro dme, but i never heard back.

Whether or not powerchip might want to explore an off-road chip, it would be of keen interest to establish whether non-US cars have this code. Hope we hear back..

Quote:

Originally Posted by mottati

Might be worth someone checking who has the problem, and would be willing to be a test subject, 'for off road use' of course.

Might not be too hard to find a test subject or two...

Quote:

Originally Posted by mottati

I too get the feeling that this will eventually effect most of us. Interestingly, my 98 528 had a similar problem, but a valve that connected the smog pump to the exhaust manifold, or where ever it was injected, was what became clogged, and was covered under cpo warranty. This is not a problem that only effects the S62.

Agreed... carbon is a fact of life with engines. It has certainly affected other BMW models. I think we will see this issue more and more with '01-03's as the mileage piles up, and will eventually be hearing about this issue on the e60 M5 board. I guess the financial impact on car owners can depend on design-specifics of how/what secondary systems can be affected by the carbon, what remedies are available, and how motivated the owner is to fix. (My motivation would be much less for my 'beater' e34 540i, but I couldn't stand the sight of an SES light in my M5!) One thing is certain: pulling the heads for an $8,000 cleaning to maintain a cold-start emissions system is a ridiculous situation that BMW has put us in.

Cheers,
Dave