I noticed that bearings are covered under my extended warranty...

Going to give them a call tomorrow (hope I don't need to blow my engine before they decide to cover them). I'm at 66k now.

 

Hey Wally, were you able to take any photos along the way of changing out your bearings. Would like to see a diy with photos to better understand how difficult it would be for one to change them out themselves.

 

Sorry I did not take any pictures I just followed the attached instructions. I questioned whether I could do it as well, but just decided I would go for it and really there is not anything too difficult. If you follow the instructions it gives you a general idea of what you need to do and also requires a little common sense as you pull things apart you will see what you need to do.

I heard rumors of someone else putting some photos together, but we will just have to wait and see.

 

Wow that was fast Wally. Looks like you made the right choice by changing them. At least they look uniform and you don't have one way out of spec from the others like we have seen in other posts. You were in that zone where others didn't have such good luck. Now the fun part putting it all back together. I think what this is starting to show us is that bearings will be a must. So far no one has pulled any that didn't have significant wear. Ideally we would want the uppers to look like the lowers but we haven't seen that yet. I think the new OEM bearings are harder with no lead so time will tell.

 

Speaking of the lowers, both these and Woody's look like they show signs of cavitation? I've not seen that in S62 rod bearing replacement photos, and I don't recall seeing any S65 pics with cavitation damage on the bottoms, but not too many of those have been posted.

 

how much do u think this costs to do this ??? just out of curiousity

 

...and taking that thought further, according the Mahle/Clevite one way to reduce/eliminate cavitation wear is to reduce bearing clearances...

 

Did you do a blackstone analysis before pulling? Just curious as some reports indicate high lead and others have been inconsistent with helping before pulling the bottom end out to check.

 

Nice to see more people doing this as preventative maintenance.

 

It would be interesting to know if these are the supposedly better bearings that were used in later models. If so it would seem there no distinctive difference with regards to wear.

 

Good question as I looked into this when I was doing my build but it looks like they used the same design in the 08's.

One reason why I went with a completely different plating and finish on mine.

 

Thanks for sharing this Chad. Did you replace them with OEM bearings or something else?

 

I went with the OEMs anything else would only create even tighter tolerances than what BMW already did.

 

Good call on replacing your rod bearings. I can't remember, but your Pb numbers were high and decreasing from your BS report -- after running race gas.

Anyway, I've got my new bearings broken in, and will be swapping my oil when I get back to SoCal in a couple days.

 

Wally,

These do not look half bad based on miles and photos others have posted. You got to them just in time !

 

Part numbers changed, but are now identical to those used on the S65. Wanna guess if they have bearing problems too?

The bottom line is, for reasons known only to the M engineers, they chose a tolerance for the rod bearings orders of magnitude smaller than those recommended by the company that manufactures the bearings for them.

Paul, you changed your bearing type for a coated bearing, but I believe your builder worked the crankshaft for the proper clearance, no?

VAC recommends their coated bearings for high performance engines and has many customers, but I doubt if they would stand behind the benefits of using coated bearings without properly building the engine up for them.

The only real facts are:
- Mahle specs larger clearance than BMW chose to use
- The bearing wear shown in everyones thread is consistent with that of starvation (note I did not say "can only be caused by")

Thats pretty much it. Most everything else is speculation and supposition. Until someone runs a set of new bearings for 75k miles on 0W-40 or has a crank rod journals machined to raise the bearing clearance and then puts 75k miles on it with TWS, we are only applying engineering principles to the problem with no theory-to-practice.

I think it's just more of a fact of life for us we are starting to realize. You're hedging your bets changing them every 50-60k miles.

It seems like the latest scare of M5 ownership at first, but the scare has prompted a lot of people to change theirs out of fear. I hate to be that guy, but I haven't seen a good looking set come out of an S85 yet...

 

Paul, you changed your bearing type for a coated bearing, but I believe your builder worked the crankshaft for the proper clearance, no?

Jim I can't share the process that mine went through on the forum. The email I received from the builder is very clear not to but I will send you a PM.

 

From the info I read on the M3 forum it seems like going to M1 0w-40 might be the trick. I'm inclined to believe a guy who builds motors for Hendrick Motorsports (easily the best engines in NASCAR, if not the world) that its a lack of oil getting to the bearings and replacing them wont fix the issue in the long run.

 

Those don't look too bad for 94K?!

 

I meant compared to other pics that have been posted of bearings that had less miles driven. Not that the wear was good obviously that not the case.

 

Well they look worse than mine....94k on engine with 20k with the SC kit. My builder said I had 5-10k miles left before something bad would have happened.

 

what would a job like this cost at a dealer -ballpark?

at an Indy shop?

 

what would a job like this cost at a dealer -ballpark?

at an Indy shop?

can anyone please answer this all too important question? enough members here seem to have done this as a preventative step and to me this seems to rank high up there in terms of a preventative measure.
Please share more info...pics for DIY'ers would go a long way too.

 

^^ Good post!

 

Guys these bearings look absolutely FINE for a 100k miles of wear from a v10 revving to 8k rpms in a performance engine. Find
some other pictures of any performance spec engine driven hard after 100 k and you will see these bearings look absolutely fine. I am not
saying everyones bearings look fine but these specific ones look absolutely fine and probably had another 50k miles on them which is well within
the range of realistic expectations for the life of bearings in a high revving v10 M engine. I really believe this issue is blown out of proportion and if
every engine got broken down at 50k miles and 100k miles, only a handful out of all M 5/3 engines would show bearing wear that is out of the normal expected range and this is one example of something to me not worth changing. I mean now that the engine is apart obviously it makes sense to change. So did your oil analysis show anything? I also personally think M engineers designed this engine to rev high and that gets the oil
temps quite high and thin. I believe that way less people than expected really drive these engines properly and the oil never gets to a good high temp which would thin the oil out and properly lubricate those tight areas. It was probably somewhat of an oversight that the vast majority of owners would never rev the engine out enough to keep the thicker oil needed thin enough to lubricate the tight areas. If you redline the piss out of your engine from early on and keep the oil temps above 210 or better 255 than I bet the bearings wear absolutely fine

 

Probably been discussed before but being on my mobile device it's hard to search.

What are the symptoms of rod bearings going bad? Knocking sound?


Sent from AutoGuide.com App

 

Chad, I'm trying to remember, what mileage did you switch to liquimoly?


Sent from AutoGuide.com Free App

 

And Chad...good seeing you on your Beast's maden voyage!

Eventhough it was just a "passing" moment!

 

Look like I will be tackling this job soon. I followed your DIY when I changed the transmission fluid. The only thing I am concerned with is the program portion. What software did you used? Also did you have your car on a lift or jack stands?

 

I have the ISTA software but ended up not using it as mine loads so slow.

I did not have a lift but just used jack stands on some blocks of wood.

 

No software needed to do this job? I have it on a laptop but haven't really spend a lot of time on it. I tried it once to register my new battery and could not get it to work so I gave up. I will have to get my car on jack stands like your. It also be a good time to get my new headers install too. So you think I can get everything done on a weekend?

 

I used the ISTA to bleed the vanos, turn off injectors to spin the motor over several times unloaded and to reset the zero steering angle for SMG. The steering has to be disconnected and on start up the SMG knows that and wants 0 to be reset.