Great fun to read this thread! A quick few thoughts/points:

1. While in this state, replace the main bearings. These cranks are awesome and rarely out of round or require anything more than a light polishing, so the standard size bearings are almost always fine. Use BMW bearings with WPC treatment.

2. Don't re-ring unless you're going to do the whole kit and kaboodle of Alusil cylinder wall reconditioning and know the specs to achieve. Just measuring Ra isn't going to get you there! Have to consider Rvk, Rpk, Mr1 and Mr2, the first two being the most important IMHO absent real outliers in the graph. With outliers, you do have consider the reciprocal of the fraction or just recompute the average after excluding the outliers. Unless a stock ring is damaged, just clean them up and carefully reinstall. I always use .016"-.017" for the top ring, .018"-.019" for the second, and .020" -.023" for oil control. But that spec is for 2618 pistons, not 4032. Generally, I wouldn't mess with the existing ring gaps if reusing the stock pistons.

3. As part of our process of creating an uprated U-shaped guide, we will ultimately make an uprated Bank 1 Tensioner rail and some uprated "tops" for the cam chain tensioners, likely out of Stanyl 46 or a more recent variant of that polymer. The springs inside the cam chain tensioners rarely if ever go bad, but the tops wear pretty significantly.

4. When cleaning vanos, you discovered the virtue of ultrasonic cleaning, viz., it gets where you can't, and with ease. I would never try clean a vanos any other way. Solenoids? Yes, brake cleaner blasted through them while activated with a power supply (9V, 1.5 amps) works great. But the units themselves need ultrasonic cleaning IMHO.

5. We've been working for while now on a completely revised replacement for vanos solenoids that definitely includes doing away with the gratuitous PCB and replacing it with harness that includes a more durable version of the rectifier and a plastic fixture that holds the solenoids more securely and provides a better oil seal. The racer in me wants to pot them, but given the frequency with which solenoids go bad, that's not feasible for anything other than a high-dollar race team, and most race teams delete the units altogether, so we disposed of that idea.

Again, great threat.

--Peter

 

The man, the myth, and the legend is here!

I have new main bearings on order! I was debating WPC or not but if you're recommending it I'll do it. The crank seems to be in perfect condition overall so I'm not planning on touching it besides just cleaning, the journals all look brand new. One question about the crank though, do you find it worthwhile to balance the rotating assembly if not replacing pistons or are they fairly well set up from the factory?

For the rings, I left the top ones alone and opened the bottom rings up a tiny bit so they would be about 0.002" larger than the top ring gaps rather than 0.003-0.005" smaller. The ring gaps are a little wider than I'd like TBH but should be okay, and the least of my worries as far as oil consumption goes. Out of the 8 cylinders I touched up 5 or 6 of the 2nd rings.

1) 0.024" / 0.026"
2) 0.021" / 0.024"
3) 0.023" / 0.026"
4) 0.025" / 0.027"
5) 0.025" / 0.027"
6) 0.024" / 0.026"
7) 0.025" / 0.027"
8) 0.024" / 0.028"

Very curious to see what y'all come up with for the chain guides and VANOS, hopefully it'll be ready by the time this engine needs a cylinder bore refurbishing.

 

Thank you. I appreciate the recognition, but I’m just a crazy enthusiast who spends nearly all of his money on this stuff, nothing more.

if you have access to a digital crank balancer, I absolutely would rebalance everything after replacing the rod bolts with ARP2k (torqued to 70NM) and weight matching the rods. As you noted the rods have some gratuitously large weight pads, so they can be lightened substantially. That all said, the factory balance is very good, and there is something like .1 gram difference between the stock rods and ARP2k, so that does not require a rebalance (just reconfirmed this last week). So you can leave it alone if you want and it will be fine. When you upsize the piston and use aftermarket versions with aftermarket lightweight rods, however, some of the Mallory has to come out of the crank and a few drill points made in order to balance the crank.

—Peter

 

BTW, those ring gaps are HUGE—confirming my suspicion that the difference in ring pack tension between the MY 99-00 engines and later engines is accomplished solely by larger ring gaps!

Be well, and go fast.

—Peter

 

I've nothing constructive to say, just that I'm in complete and utter awe and inspired by the level of competence and craftsmanship shown. I can only wish to bring such added value to the community instead of only being a parts swapper in my garage.

 

This is the best thread ever already. I love the fun tone while at the same time incredibly casual technical brilliance. Resourceful and inventive every step of the way. Also a fellow Y2K Silverstone owner with 12yrs of diy ownership. This is a whole 'nuther level though! I see you haven't got to the worst project in the car which is an AC Evap coil replacement, so you're lucky on that front.

 

Unfortunately I don't have a crank balancer, the shop I go to for balance jobs is about 2 hours away so I'll probably just leave it alone for this one. I've got a drill press that's older than me and a harbor freight mini lathe to work with, which sadly isn't quite big enough to hold the crankshaft.

I hope you aren't talking about me because I am most certainly not brilliant, more just willing to take stuff apart that I may or may not be able to put back together. I was debating not even mentioning this out of shame, but after I replaced the rod bearings, and had decided to ahead and tear down the whole block, I removed the pistons and found that I had missed one rod when doing the final 65 degree twist and it only had the 15lbft initial torque on the bolts. So that unfortunate situation ultimately saved me from launching a piston into low earth orbit...

The TIS lists the ring end gap spec for new engines as 0.15-0.25mm (0.006-0.010") for the top ring and 0.20-0.30mm (0.008-0.012") for the 2nd ring, then 0.20-0.40mm (0.008-0.016") for the oil ring which all seems crazy tight compared to anything I've ever come across before, it seems like most ring manufacturers recommend at least 0.004" per inch of bore size! but I guess thats because the aluminum cylinders will expand more than a steel cylinder will, so the initial cold gaps can be tighter?

I haven't been able to find a ring gap service limit specification for the S62, but a "similar" comparison I know of is the Honda C32 V6 from the 97-05 NSX which has a 93mm bore and FRM cylinders which are also a predominantly aluminum alloy, and it has a ring gap service limit of 0.020" and 0.024" for the top and bottom ring respectively, and we are a good deal beyond that, so I suspect I will be feeding this thing a decent amount of Amsoil 10w60.

I got my timing covers back from vapor blasting and they look great, so after a few more valve cover thread repairs time for the heads to go off. The covers have some plugged up blind holes so I used hot glue to block off the oil drain ports prior to blasting to prevent any media from getting inside them and ending up in the oil pan. I'm tempted to paint the inside of these covers with glyptal red enamel so they are easier to clean in the future and same for the lower oil pan, oil and grime just sticks to these castings like glue.

2 of the 6 holes in the front covers had been helicoiled prior to my acquisition, so I removed the helicoils and replaced them with more timeserts. An M6 timesert will actually thread into the same hole that an M6 helicoil came out of, but will be a little bit more snug than if you just used a timesert tap. So I ran the timesert tap down then did the countersink drill operation and installed the new 12mm length inserts. I went ahead and did the other 4 holes as well so I don't have to worry about them stripping out later. It's annoying because the timesert countersink drill bit will cut around 0.075" deep, but to have the insert be perfectly flush with the surface and not recessed, the countersink should be 0.055" deep. So each countersink was a matter of drill a bit, check, drill more, check... Then there's the final step of drilling down about 2mm into the thread insert with a 5.5mm drill bit so the non-threaded end of the bolt next to the shoulder doesn't lock up in the threads before the shoulder seats against the cover. I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the process.

Also, used Supersprint headers from Mikhail Epelev on Facebook arrived and were inspected by the cat so hopefully there will be a nice little power bump. I can't imagine putting those stock M62 headers back in after doing all this. The collectors were dropped off at a fab shop to have V bands welded in right after the collectors, then everything will get ceramic coated bronze, then once the car is back together they'll fabricate a pipe to mate the collectors nicely to the rest of the factory exhaust out the back.

 

I pressure washed the block out in the yard to get it clean enough to test fit the mains. It's by no means clean, but the saddles and bolt holes are clean which is all I need for now. I'm hoping I can find a machine shop to put the block in a parts cleaner for me because I have no way of removing all the buildup easily myself. The caps and bolts I deburred and cleaned a while back in the US cleaner, I have new bolts but the old one are just used for checking clearances.

At first I put the (Glyco, OEM seems to have a long delay) bearings in and bolted up all the mains. The TIS calls calls for 0.025-0.050mm oil clearance here which translates to 0.0010-0.0020". The #1 main measured out at 0.0025", too big. Great. I measured #2 and #3 and they were 0.0016" and 0.0017" which is fine but I'm not sure what to do about #1. I didn't measure #4 and #5 yet since I'll need to take the block off the stand to reach them.

I took all the bearings out and mic'd them all, and put the 2 thickest one on #1 but still got 0.0022" so still too much clearance.

The TIS calls out STD size journals as 2.7545" for the #1 main and 2.7553" for mains #2 through #5. My crankshaft aligns with this pretty much perfectly, and the difference in clearance is about this much as well. As far as I can tell there are no special bearings provided for #1 so it seems like the first journal is supposed to have more clearance? Or is the first main housing supposed to be smaller? Seems weird that the journal dimensions are different but clearance called out is the same.

In more positive news, I installed ARP rod bolts in the rods and stretched them to 0.0065-0.0070" and they measured dimensionally identical to the factory bolts with zero distortion that I can see with a bore gauge. 70nm will get you dang close to that range if you don't have a stretch gauge.

I was able to switch around a few bearing shells and get all the clearances in the 0.0020-0.0021" range when checking with a bore gauge which is better than the plastigage implied. I like to put a piece of 0.003" shim stock in the bearing to keep it from getting scratched up by the bore gauge, when zeroing the gauge with the mic you use the shim there too so the thickness is cancelled out and does not introduce measurement error.

 

Good work getting the main clearances above .002" Just FYI, the clearance on the first main is always as little as .0002" and as much as .0008" larger than the rest. This is because of the distortion of the front portion of the crank caused by the four M12 stretch bolts that attach the harmonic balancer. Once those bolts are torqued, the clearance tightens up. .0025" main clearance is fine in any event. That is what I aim for all the way around, but frequently, the first main has even greater clearance than that. And yes, Plastigauge is almost always the culprit for crazy readings. I eschew it like the Plague.

And thank you for confirming what I have been preaching for a while about ARP2K rod bolts in stock S62 rods, viz., that 70NM is not going to effectuate any dimensional change in the bearing crush. And 70NM approximates .0065-.0070" stretch. Always better to use stretch if and when one can to torque rod bolts especially. But that is very difficult to do accurately in situ. So I typically determine what torque value will get me what stretch out of the engine, then use that torque value to install the rods.

--Peter

 

NB: Also, the stock rod bolts and the ARP2K bolts are within .2 grams of each other in weight, so factory balancing will NOT be disturbed (at least, not materially) by using ARP2K bolts when changing rod bearings.

--Peter

 

Wow that is GREAT info! I couldn't find any mention of that anywhere, even on forums about other BMW engines that apparently share a similar crankshaft design with a smaller diameter on the first main journal!

These Glyco bearings will sadly be going into the trash. I was trying to figure out why the back sides showed some odd witness marks, and why it felt like I was chasing my tail in terms of clearance adjustments, it turns out the shells themselves are warped. I sharpied all over the back side of one of the bearings and torqued it up, and most of the ink transfer I saw was on the very edges of the bearing, with maybe a tiny very faint patch here and there in the middle! The $65/set price tag should have tipped me off but the internet said Glyco was good lol....would it have been okay to run? Maybe, but I'm not willing to bet a whole engine on a set of $65 aftermarket bearings that seem even a little bit questionable. The surface finish left a lot to be desired too, as well as the machining of the oil grooves. I'm probably being too paranoid but I don't want to take chances with the bearings.

Looks like a set of OEM STD main shells will run me $300ish from any of the various BMW parts sites so not too bad, I'll call the local dealer on Monday.

 

Wow that is GREAT info! I couldn't find any mention of that anywhere, even on forums about other BMW engines that apparently share a similar crankshaft design with a smaller diameter on the first main journal!

Some have speculated that the failure to spec this additional clearance on the first main of S65 engines is at least one of the causes of the premature wear on that main. That and "start/stop"on the later E9X models.

--Peter

 

You can certainly tell which set of thrust shims had the weight of the clutch on it! I can see bypassing the clutch switch on race cars to save the unnecessary wear but seems like thrust shim failures are pretty rare on the S62. Even though the wear patterns are ugly, the actual measurable wear on these shims is only 0.0002" after nearly 150,000 miles! I'm almost tempted to just put the new looking front shims on the back side and run them for another 150,000 🤪.

The local stealership wanted $60/main shell so I ordered them from BMW parts of Atlanta where they were $29 each. Hopefully they won't take too long to arrive.

 

You can certainly tell which set of thrust shims had the weight of the clutch on it! I suppose it could make sense to bypass the clutch switch on race cars with heavy aftermarket clutches but seems like thrust shim failures are really rare on the S62. Even though the wear patterns are ugly, the actual measurable wear on these shims is only 0.0002" after nearly 150,000 miles! I'm almost tempted to just put the new looking front shims on the back side and run them for another 150,000 🤪.

The local stealership wanted $60/main shell so I ordered them from BMW parts of Atlanta where they were $29 each. Hopefully they won't take too long to arrive.

View attachment 992209

I always buy parts from online BMW parts stores unless they're big, like plastic under panels, bumper covers and such where "free shipping" from the local dealer factors in. Plus, for some reason the local dealer is always price competitive on bumpers. The online stores are always slight cheaper or way cheaper than what I can get my local dealer to quote for most other things though, even with my CCA discount.

 

Yeah it seems like the local dealerships almost never have reasonable prices on anything that isn't like a single bolt or O-ring, or like you said large items with crazy shipping otherwise.

I measured my piston to wall clearance and found that I've got about 0.0025-0.0030" at the top of the bores and 0.0012-0.0015" at the bottom which explains why the ring gaps are so loose. With that kind of taper the gaps will close up by 0.0040" or 0.0050" at the bottom of the piston travel resulting in a much more reasonable 0.0020ish. The service limit for piston to wall clearance is 0.0039" though so it looks like we're okay on that front. Overthinking like I always do, I'm tempted to do a light polishing with Sunnen AN30, like maybe 30 seconds per bore, due to the wear but I feel like that is a dangerous path to go down.

I took the block out back over the weekend and pressure washed it and it pretty much did nothing except for blow off the gunk from the outside, and I still have loads of oil varnish left in the crankcase except for where I scrubbed it off with a brass brush. Do y'all think its worth trying to remove the varnish or just leave it alone and make sure the various oil passages and drains are clean of any loose debris? I know a guy with a dry ice blasting setup so I was thinking of having him take a crack at it while it's all apart. It should be pretty safe since the dry ice evaporates and leaves nothing behind and also won't damage the aluminum.

 

The block is clean in my opinion (once you check the passages). That minor staining has zero affect on anything other than your OCD haha (no offense! I'm guilty of overcleaning as well).

 

I'm going to let my dry ice guy give it a go if he has any leftover from his undercarriage cleaning project this weekend, but otherwise yeah I'm not going to worry about it. The 4 tapered plugs at the back of the block in the oil galleys feeding the piston squirters are REALLY stuck though, allen socket just rounded out, and even an extractor isn't working so I might have to drill them with a 9mm bit, pick the pieces out, and replace the plugs with new ones to properly clean in there. As far as I can tell the plugs are just 1/8npt plugs that BMW wants to charge $15 each for, so I'll just buy some generic plugs and thread them in with some sealant.

Anyways, with the rod bearing clearances done, I did a final measurement in each rod without the shim stock as a sanity check and got the following, which I'm quite happy with. So the shim stock measurements were consistently about 0.0001" tight which is fine for what they are, they let me switch bearings around a lot without worrying about excessively scratching the bearings. Mains should arrive tomorrow so hopefully that will all work out and we can start thinking about shortblock reassembly once the main shells come back from WPC.

1. 0.0021"
2. 0.0022"
3. 0.0023"
4. 0.0021"
5. 0.0023"
6. 0.0021"
7. 0.0023"
8. 0.0022"

The factory pistons have some sharp machined edges around the valve reliefs so I'm gently filing those down. Sharp edges can be hot spots so smoothing piston crowns, at worst, is just a little extra knock resistance, at best it can let you get away with a little more timing. After this the piston tops will be etched in the blasting cabinet and ceramic coated to reduce heat transfer into the pistons. Keeping a little more heat in the chambers can theoretically increase power output by a small likely immeasurable amount. This is probably overkill, but I have the equipment and leftover ceramic coating materials so we'll try it out. Stock piston on top, smoothed piston on the bottom.

More thread repair. One of these 6mm bolts holding the U guide to the block didn't make it to the 10lbft torque spec when I put the new guide rail on a few weeks ago, so I installed 12mm length inserts into all of them. I fabricated drill guide and tap guide bushings to help ensure the thread inserts are (nearly) perfectly straight.

 

your work continues to be amazing!

 

As a new e39 owner, absolutely loving this thread! Very educational and insightful!

Thanks for taking the time to document everything and share it with us!

Sean

 

COLOR ME IMPRESSED! Between you and Streten w/ M539 restorations, my entertainment calendar has been full. Thanks for the wiring diagram on the LCI taillights as well. I have the LCM, taillight and pigtails but I don't suppose you could share what programs you use to get them to work? It has been on my to-do list and your thread is reminding me I have been lazy.

 

The process for installing a used LCM is basically this:

1) Install the new-to-you used LCM in the car.
2) Code the VIN and odometer values to match with PASoft.
3) Code the module to the car with NCSExpert.
4) Set up any other options you want. Some options will not be exposed by PASoft so you might have to use NCSExpert/Dummy, I don't remember what it's called now but there is an LED tail lights parameter you can set to "aktiv" to use with CELIS lights to regulate the voltage.

Also these are the areas you'll need to gently massage with a hammer for the lights to fit a MY2000 chassis. I recommend using a piece of 1" wooden dowel cut about 6" long to protect the paint from the hammer.

Also if you're upgrading your LCM it's pretty easy to upgrade to automatic lights you just have to buy a new light switch and RLS sensor for the windshield. The only tricky part is changing out the prism thing on the windshield but there's a kit for that that isn't too expensive.

My buddy dry ice blasted my block yesterday and it turned out really well, so I'll post some pics of that later. He's going to take care of the upper oil pan too.

 

Great info on the taillight upgrade!

 

Great work on this car. You are in deep and doing it right. Impressive. Be careful with the sealing on the facelift tails after you work the metal to get a good fit. The sealing gasket shape is slightly different and some people get leaks. Be mindful on how the gasket seals at the rectangular openings.

 

Thanks! Hopefully this all pays off and the car is mostly problem free for a while. But its a BMW so something is gonna break soon lol.

Out of the 4 tapered plugs in the block, zero of them came out without a fight. The 5mm hex just spun, and I even tried hammering in a larger size torx bit and that also just rounded out. So I had to drill out most of the plug and use an extractor, fortunately the threads in the block survived.

The dry ice did a pretty good job on the block. I also took an hour or two and smoothed the sharp edges with a small file throughout the crankcase and outside of the block. Just makes it nicer to work with if rags are snagging everywhere and you don't get cut on sharp edges. In theory, reducing stress risers can help strengthen the block too but that's a little more dubious.

The outside of the block came out looking like it just came out of the foundry.

This part was almost black before.

The crankcase isn't perfect but it's a vast improvement.

The pistons cleaned up quite nicely overall. The "Chem Dip" buckets from the parts store work wonders for loosening up stubborn carbon deposits inside the ring grooves and what not. After cleaning, deburring/smoothing, polishing pin bores, more cleaning, and pin bore clearances checks these are going off to WPC along with the wrist pins, main bearings, and thrust shims. Once everything comes back hopefully end of the week or early next week, bottom end assembly can commence.

In the meantime I'm making some progress on my 3.2L Honda C32 engine project for the NSX. This build has been ongoing since about 2020, and I'm finally getting the main clearances dialed in. The block has Darton MID sleeves bored to 93mm, billet main caps, ARP main studs + 6 bolt mains, factory forged crankshaft, titanium rods, Calico coated bearings, and Toda 12:1 pistons. When all is said and done, hopefully it will make power at 9000+rpm with cams and ITBs.

I do not recommend having 2 engines fully disassembled in the garage once, it's too much to keep track of.

 

You've totally taken things to another level. Thanks for the thread. Question - was the titan trim that came with car in decent shape? I'd be interested if so. Whoops - you probably put it into the 540...

 

The titan trim was okayish, it had some scratches on the center console but minimal lifting. And yeah it got swapped into the 540 and sold along with it, the original brown wood trim from the 540 was pretty cracked so ended up in the trash years ago otherwise I would have held onto the titan trim.

 

Kudos to you for bringing this beast back to life and for sharing this awesome thread! I'm actively shopping for my first E39 M5 right now, and I'm hoping to find one that doesn't require this kind of service immediately.

I see many cars with the burl wood trim that I'm not crazy about either. Titan and anthracite both look awesome. I'm curious how fiddly the trim pieces are on these interiors - is it difficult to swap them without breaking tabs (or anything else)?

 

Kudos to you for bringing this beast back to life and for sharing this awesome thread! I'm actively shopping for my first E39 M5 right now, and I'm hoping to find one that doesn't require this kind of service immediately.

I see many cars with the burl wood trim that I'm not crazy about either. Titan and anthracite both look awesome. I'm curious how fiddly the trim pieces are on these interiors - is it difficult to swap them without breaking tabs (or anything else)?

Trim is easy to swap on E39s so don't let that be a deciding factor against an otherwise good car.

Titan and Anthracite trim can be sourced separately on the used market. Recommend picking up a handful of the trim retainers too. Part Numbers are 51458161557 and 51417001629.

 

The worst ones for me are the 3 pieces on the dash. Those are the toughest to remove, as the process is basically just "grab and pull, and good luck". If someone has found a better method please bless us with the knowledge and I will be eternally grateful.

For the door trims I like to remove the door cards and squeeze/push the clips thru from behind since it guarantees you don't break anything but if you're feeling adventurous pulling can sometimes work too. The end clips often loosen up over time from the door closing so I remove the plastic thingy from the door and use a washer and nyloc nut on the stud until its just barely snug. Won't back off and won't get loose that way. Just don't try to pull it off lol. I'll see if I have any pics of this.

The center console piece is the least likely to damage the trim during removal, but getting the center console out is kind of annoying.

 

Excellent tip on removing the door cards. If I end up needing to do this project, maybe I will capture the process in a mini version of a thread like this. Cheers!

 

This is a boring post but sort of illustrates how tedious the whole process of putting together a motor is and I always manage to forget these bits.

The lower oil pan was nasty, this car has probably been leaking oil for 5-10 years so it was caked in black stuff on the outside with lots of oil staining on the inside. I had it dry ice blasted on the outside but the inside was still messy.

First I figured I'd just leave the oil staining and just hosed it off with 3 or 4 cans of brake cleaner. Worked the remaining grime was still too loose for my liking so I went for the elbow grease approach with a spray bottle of simple green and a plastic brush in the back yard and it actually turned out pretty well. Using little nylon pipe cleaner type brushes I was able to get them in the "scavenge" pump pathways and get all the grime out of there along with removing most of the staining. If I were going all out I'd probably bake the pan to burn out any oil that might be left in the pores, then blast and coat the inside of the pan with glyptal but that seems like overkill. Same for the lower pan and timing covers.

Secondary oil pump tubes cleaned and installed with new O-rings. Looking at this pan, it's kind of funny the lengths BMW was willing to go to not use a dry sump. The oil pump has 3 stages, the first/largest stage pulls oil from the main sump, and the 2nd and 3rd smaller stages pull oil from the back of the motor through these tubes under normal operation, then apparently under hard cornering the big solenoids in the sides of the lower pan activate, and the 2nd and 3rd stages start pulling oil from the head drains (those 2 holes on the sides of the pan).

The crossover of the tubes is kind of cool though because when cornering, it means the oil pumps are pulling all from the side of the engine where oil is trapped. For example when turning left, oil is pulling to the right side and collecting in the right head. So the right side solenoid switches over to scavenge the head and the left side pump is still pulling from the right side of the sump.

Bolted back together. The bolts are M5x0.8 grade 8.8 so I torqued them to 45 inch pounds per the TIS with some blue thread locker.

And last but not least, cleaning, sorting, and labeling of lots and lots of hardware. Cleaning bolts is probably the most thankless part of this project, but overall makes everything so much nicer to reassemble and not having to dig through piles of nasty oily hardware makes everything much more pleasant. I've been using the ultrasonic cleaner for this in batches, and undiluted green simple green works great, so I fill a small baggy with the undiluted cleaner and put the bolts in it, then put that baggy in the US cleaner. The waves go right through the plastic bag so the bolts get clean and you can use different cleaning fluids that way. I usually keep the cleaner full of diluted purple simple green which is safe for aluminum but nowhere near as potent as the green stuff. 10-15 minutes and the bolts come out nearly perfect. Don't forget about them though or it will eat the plating off.

The bearings/pins/pistons should be back this week so with any luck the bottom end will be going back together this weekend.

Speaking of assembly, this engine uses metal timing cover gaskets, is any particular brand preferred for these? The ones I have are victor reinz which seems to have a hit or miss reputation. And are timing cover leaks generally a concern with these engines? On the M62s I know those upper cover gaskets were awful and almost guaranteed to leak after a few years but this is a very different design. If these metal gaskets are leak prone too I might explore alternative options for sealing the covers.

Same question for the upper pan, I know the M62s use a sort of fiber gasket that lasts almost forever and with how porous these castings are seems like it might seal better than a metal gasket.

 

Great stuff.
Use only BMW or Victor Reinz gaskets. That’s what we use on endurance and sprint race engines, so it’s more than good enough for the street.
The paper gaskets need to be used with the Loctite that remains flexible once it dries. Can’t remember the number, but it has to be painted on. Messy messy.

—Peter

 

I concur. Victor Reinz is fine. I've had good luck with Elring oil pan gaskets as well. I have a can of the Loctite Peter is referring to. I can't remember the number but can check if needed. I use it sparingly on most "dry" gasket locations and regular gray RTV for the corners where TIS specifies.