You shouldn't have any issues with the chain guides until at least 160k miles. Even at that mileage the guides are usually fine unless the car has gone through a lot of heat cycles in a cold climate or hasn't been maintained well. The X5 that I bought had the guides die at 213k miles, which is a pretty long run when you think about it. I see some people replacing their guides at less than 120k miles which is completely ridiculous and unnecessary.
The thing about the chain guides is that they don't destroy the engine with no warning. They generally start to make a harsh metallic noise once the plastic on the guides is gone. At that point you can still run the engine, but it'll be noisy and you'll start seeing P0011/P0021 camshaft timing codes due to the chain slack. You'd have to run the engine with bad guides for a pretty long time for the chain to wreck the engine.
Both my X5 and the 740i have a horrible racket and P0011 codes when they run, but guess what, they still run fine on all cylinders! You could probably limp around in them for quite a while without wrecking the engine.
Here's a video I took of my X5's engine running with obviously bad chain guides:
Gonna have to disagree with you on chain guides not going before 160,000 miles on an X5. We have had 8 X5s under 110k that have exhibited chain guide deterioration on the X5s at our shop. You are correct that the vehicle can still be run but they will be noisy and just a matter of time. On my personal 4.6is the guides started to go at 99k mikes and what gave it away was a whirring sound that I thought was one of the pulley bearings, alternator bearings,or a/c compressor bearings. When I went in to replacing the timing cover gaskets it was evident that part of the guides were deteriorating and contributing to the whirring sound. It's strange that the M62 engine in the X5 wear earlier than the car applications. I think it has something to do with made in South Carolina vs Germany. Just a guess. Another theory could be the M62 in the X5 is lugging around/working harder than the M62 in the car due to considerably more vehicle weight of the X5.
12-12-2016, 06:11 PM
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