if it makes you feel better, my previous 1999 540 had the EXACT same vibration and I never did figure it out. My 1998 does not have it.

I had found a few posts on bimmerforums.com with the exact same symptoms; alas, no resolutions were ever reported.

 

Where do you feel the vibration?

In the shifter?Seat?Pedals?

 

Vantaam5,
Vibration is from the engine itself. Not possible to locate which part of the engine as no noise associated with the vibration. Next thing we are going to check is harmonic balancer (damper) and water pump etc by taking all belts off.
Thanks for your interest.

 

Try loosening the motor mounts and transmission mounts. While the are loose run the engine at idle for 30 or so seconds and while the engine is still running tighten the mount up from the tranny first and then the motor mounts

 

Oil Filter Mount and/or pipework.

Exhaust Mounts

Vibration Damper (Harmonic Damper)

Water Pump

Good Luck !

 

Was any work performed to the crank or was the bearing journals ok?

Mine had a slight 1500rpm vibration that went away with the new flywheel!Did you check the play of the dual mass itself?

 

Crank only needed linishing. Journals good.
I will check on the dual mass play - thanks.

 

Hi Whammy,

I'm in Sydney too (as the name would suggest) and have just posted a thread on a vibration issue. I since found your thread and was wondering if you had any luck resolving it?

Also curious to know who performed the engine work?

Thanks!

 

you feel this vibration revving the car at a standstill? vibrations like these usually exibit themselves in multiples of the problem rpm range. ie if you feel it at 1500 then you will feel it again at 3000 etc. unfortunately i believe this is just and issue with resonance in the engine and there is nothing that will fix it. there are certain engine configurations that just cannot be balanced perfectly. a 4cyl engine is a prime example, because of the way the engine fires it cannot be balanced prefectly. a v8 is basically two 4cyl's together so it exibits the same issue.

 

M5 Sydney and others who were so helpful,
I know this is 7 years late but the problem was crank shaft balance. It wasn't rebalanced with the rebuild because there was no sign of vibration beforehand.
Yes, the solution was to take out the crank and balance (ouch!). After that the engine has run strong and faultless (touch wood) for 150K km.
Engine rebuild was done by BEMW at Castle Hill. Could not recommend highly enough. Speak to Mark for any M5 issues.

w

 

Wow. Congrats on fixing the problem (even though a big ouch $$$). Thank you very much for posting in the thread for others to see!

Regards

 

good to read a solved problem after all those years

 

Tim,
I see your car has high mileage like mine. I have had the car since 80K km in 2007 and now has 250K km. Engine rebuild was at 110K km. I continue to be amazed at this car and it's strength of design both in drivetrain and chassis.
It has even been reborn as my race car for amateur events. Virtually nothing needed to be done to the car for this transformation although I have fitted Bilstein PSS9s all round and it already had Dinan rear bar, camber plates and front strut brace. Still doubles as a spare road car!


w

 

Reading this thread from the beginning for the first time tonight, the first thing I thought of was that the crankshaft was out of balance. It is something that is so easy to get right, and so expensive to get wrong, when doing a rebuild. Glad you figured it out, but so sorry to have been so expensive a fix.

--Peter