80K Preventative Maintenance....Including Rod Bearings

LuigiRM5 said:

Hello,
I have finally had some time to work on the beast. As per my intro post awhile back I bought a 12/05 with 80K miles got lucky that I had the new Vanos pump gears and oil pump chain tensioner set up. I have taken a week off of work to spend with the beast.

Here is the list of all the work performed:
-Spark plugs
-Throttle bodies cleaned
-Thermostat
-Idler pulleys
-Belts
-MAF sensor cleaned
-WPC rod bearings
-ARP rod bearing bolts
-Vanos high pressure line
-Oil pump guides and tensioners
-Oil pan secondary drain plug
-Powersteering pump pulley
-Removed radiator to clean all the junk in between condenser and radiator
-and more fun.........:biggrin:

I did send an oil sample to blackstone and the lead was 42ppm which was high compare to average of 12ppm. That kind of freaked me out so I let the car sit until I had time to do all this work.

Here are the pics of the bearings @ 42ppm.
This is from back to middle of engine ( right to left of pic)

This is from middle to front of engine (right to left of pic)

I was really happy to see that the bearings looked like that at 42ppm. As you can see only 2 bearings are showing the copper color.

To my surprise I measured the Vanos pump backlash before I loosen the pump and the lash was out of spec at 0.00375 in = 0.094mm. I set the backlash at 0.0026 in = 0.066mm and that definitely made the pump quieter. I can post a pic of the setup I used to measure the backlash if you are interested. The vanos high pressure line was giving me a hard time and from reading Jcolley experience that he had to bend the line slightly I took a shortcut by cutting the line and to my surprise the new line was a little different and slide right in!!!!
Here is a pic of the of the difference between the lines:

While I had the the pan off I decided to install the secondary oil drain plug. I was amazed how much oil stays behind. I machined a little sleeve and welded in and for insurance I coated the area with aluminum putty and gave it a little spray paint job to make it look like new. Here is the progress in different stages:

Here it is welded in and smoothed the welds

Here is the aluminun putty for extra insurance and smooth it out

Here it is all nice and painted

Here is a pic on the car

After so much oil recommendations I choose to used M1 0W40 and I will be doing a 750 miles break-in for the bearings and SMG here I come next!!!

Well I wanted to share my adventure with you all and because of this forum was able to educate myself of how to hopefully have a very reliable S85 V10 that was always my dream car.:biggrinbounce:

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rt7085 said:

I am really impressed. Welding aluminum in such a dirty environment and with such a big amount of "heat-sink"metal behind it is REALLY challenging. That could easily be a new oil pan. I noticed you did not show a picture of your weld before you applied the putty. Was it a good weld? You used a TIG setup right? I am asking because I would not have attempted this knowing the challenge of Al welding.

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B767capt said:

Outstanding. That's what I call reading the forum and doing your home work. You didn't leave anything out. You were right in the zone mileage wise on the rod bearings from what we are finding out.

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douglas_ngo said:

Nice work and thanks for sharing. I have all the parts needed to do the rod bearings job, just need to find some free time to do it. I am definitely dragging my feet for sure.

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tjav8b said:

I don't see a need to break-in the rod bearings. Maybe just run a tank of gas and go easy on it to make sure no problems.

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