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  #1  
Old 01-22-2020, 11:04 PM
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Mom ran my X out of oil

Hey Guys, new to the forum, but so far think it provides a wealth of info. So my mother has moved in with us after my father passed away and has been driving my '05 X5 4.4 she is starting to enter alzheimers and is losing a step. I think it developed a leak somehow and was losing oil while she was driving it the other day. She calls me up at work and says the car isn't running rite, and says oil pressure on the dash. In the back ground I hear the car dinging at her so I tell her to shut it off and ill come get her. When I got there I started it up and the red oil can light is on; and its running like a bag of crap. I shut it off immediately. dropped her off, went back to work and let the car cool down. went back 4 hours later with a jug of oil and it took 6 quarts to reach middle of the marks on the dip stick. So that means there was still a couple quarts in it. I started it up and it still ran like a bag of crap, but red oil light out. So I towed it home and scanned it with my
Carly a couple days later. said outlet VANOS 2, misfire several cylinders, misfiring cylinders 5,6,7,8,2,4.

So my question for you is; is there a Limp Mode that the computer will put the motor in if it gets too low on oil ?

Or do I succumb to the fact that the motor is toast ?

I think I read somewhere that the VANOS is driven by oil pressure and can get stuck if not enough pressure. Any advise would be greatly appreciated as I really like this vehicle and am hoping I can save it...Barry
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Old 01-23-2020, 04:48 AM
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considerering the misfire on the cylinders there might be a timing issue, though I really don't know too much about these cars yet.
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Old 01-23-2020, 09:48 AM
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Very likely.... the engine is done.

AM.
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Old 01-23-2020, 11:03 AM
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If you catch it soon enough it might now have done much damage. About 10 years ago I bought a Bronco. It had an oil leak but I didn't realize how bad it was and ran it out of oil to point where the motor was making a knocking noise. I immediately shut it off and topped off the oil. The knocking went away and it continued to reliably serve me for many more years.

However, I'm trying to imagine what kind of noise a motor would have to make for someone other than me to notice that my M62 isn't running right. At this point, multiple oil bearings are probably suspect to damage.

It is strange that you're getting misfire codes. I think they're probably unrelated.
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Old 01-23-2020, 11:33 AM
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Its going to be very difficult for us to determine whether your engine is toast or not. I guess I would refill and try and start (as you have done), pull off a valve cover or two and inspect cams for excessive wear. I don't know the 8 cyl well, but is pulling the oil pan an option without dropping subframe? If you did that you could check for obvious bearing failure. I might borrow a borescope and look inside spark plug holes. If all this is outside your skill set, maybe find a reasonably-priced tech to inspect it for you.
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Old 01-23-2020, 12:47 PM
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The car will go into limp from cylinder misfire. It won’t come out of limp until reset.

You didn’t say that the bag of rocks running remained after resetting the codes.

If missile set the code and put in limp so the mom called shortly after it started you could be OK.

I would put in a quart of Lucas oil treatment just to help out a bit
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Old 01-23-2020, 04:52 PM
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You need to access the oil pressure sensor behind the vacuum pump and rig up some kind of mechanical oil pressure gauge and monitor that before doing anything else. This will give you a good idea of the internal damage. You are looking for about 10psi per 1000 RPM.
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Old 01-23-2020, 05:36 PM
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Some specific info ...

Yes, the VANOS (that adjusts the camshaft timing) is controlled with engine oil, at pressure, controlled by the VANOS solenoids to actuate the VANOS helical gear cups to actually move the cam sprockets with respect to the camshafts.

So if the engine oil ran dry enough, all bets would be off regarding VANOS. I don't think any permanent damage could result (either the VANOS burning up, or the possibility of driving the camshafts to create piston-valve impact). The camshafts could have been left in an adjustment state that could cause misfires.

But some sort of resetting may very well be required. If you don't have special OBD tools to do this, you might just try disconnecting the battery for a while.

If you're lucky, the "running like crap" was due to VANOS mis-timing rather than any significant internal engine damage.

In general I would not give up hope. Good luck to you and your Mom.
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Old 01-23-2020, 07:41 PM
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so there is a limp mode for the motor; that is promising news ! It runs like it is only running on 4 cylinders.
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Old 01-23-2020, 07:44 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by andrewwynn View Post
The car will go into limp from cylinder misfire. It won’t come out of limp until reset.

You didn’t say that the bag of rocks running remained after resetting the codes.

If missile set the code and put in limp so the mom called shortly after it started you could be OK.

I would put in a quart of Lucas oil treatment just to help out a bit
yes it still ran like crap after clearing the codes with Carly. Is the Carly reader adequate to reset limp mode ?
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