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  #31  
Old 03-18-2021, 10:36 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by crystalworks View Post
I use it in every neglected bmw I buy. Half can in oil, half in gas tank.

No negative results yet. But ymmv of course.
I've been using Liqui Moly products the last few years. Engine flush at every oil change and jectron and valve clean alternating every few tanks of gas.

Having cleaned out some of the mayo and gunk from the top end of M54s when changing a valve cover gasket I honestly don't see how much cleaning a liquid mixed with oil would do.

Thre's been quite a bit of elbow grease used to clean the build up off and anything that's gunked up and hard I'm pretty sure wouldn't budge with anything less than a brush. I've even poured a bit of cleaner directly on the gunk and it's not like it just washed away.

Do I believe anything horrible would happen? Probably not, but I don't think any of these cleaning solutions are nearly as effective as I would have originally thought.
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  #32  
Old 03-18-2021, 12:18 PM
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Originally Posted by c-bass View Post
I currently own an e46 wagon, e46 330 convertible and 2 e53s. I also have 2 e83s that I finally decided have had enough and are getting parted out.

I fully understand
E83 being parted out you say? hahaha PM me when this is happening with pics please
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  #33  
Old 03-18-2021, 12:40 PM
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Originally Posted by Court X3 View Post
E83 being parted out you say? hahaha PM me when this is happening with pics please
happening right now

PM and pics sent
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  #34  
Old 03-18-2021, 12:48 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by c-bass View Post
I've been using Liqui Moly products the last few years. Engine flush at every oil change and jectron and valve clean alternating every few tanks of gas.

Having cleaned out some of the mayo and gunk from the top end of M54s when changing a valve cover gasket I honestly don't see how much cleaning a liquid mixed with oil would do.

Thre's been quite a bit of elbow grease used to clean the build up off and anything that's gunked up and hard I'm pretty sure wouldn't budge with anything less than a brush. I've even poured a bit of cleaner directly on the gunk and it's not like it just washed away.

Do I believe anything horrible would happen? Probably not, but I don't think any of these cleaning solutions are nearly as effective as I would have originally thought.
Oh for sure. I should have mentioned that before I do the seafoam I run a quart of ATF for ~500 miles to loosen things up. It worked wonders on the heavily sludged n52 in our wagon. LoL, use that at your own risk though. Could be easy to clog oil passages with the amount of crap that comes off.
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  #35  
Old 03-18-2021, 12:53 PM
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I should also mention that during my CCV refresh I cleaned out the MAF, throttle body and Idle Control Valve. I also checked the DISA flap and whatever vacuum hoses are around.

TEST DRIVE TIME!

I figured I would go for more of a real world test and not just around the block a couple of times so a quick check of my wallet for my CAA card (AAA for our US friends) and I was off.

I'm not a big fan of "intermittent". Either it works or it doesn't, and if something is on it's way out I'd rather have it fail under controlled circumstances than leaving me stranded in the most inconvenient place possible as the case usually seems to be.

During the drive I definitely wasn't holding back with the skinny pedal and there was NO SMOKE coming out the back anymore. Drivability wise it didn't feel different than before but there was no smoke so I was feeling pretty confident the CCV was the issue...maybe...solid maybe

As I was doing about 70mph down a long stretch of country road I noticed movement in the cluster and caught the temp gauge spike ALL the way over to the red and then bounce back to the middle.

Earlier in the year I had my rad fan fail on the e83 while I was stuck in downtown traffic doing deliveries so I'm VERY familiar what it takes to nurse one of these things back home without melting the engine block. In my experience if you're moving 40-50kph and have the heat on full blast you'll be fine. Moving at speed on the highway even with the heat off there should be very little reason to overheat. I've done this twice in distances well over 200 km to get back home.

There was no build up of the temp gauge it just shot into the red and then settled back down in the middle...meh nothing to worry about, I'm not going to pull over until I get to my destination. For the remaining 20 min trip the gauge behaved.


I'm calling this first test drive a success. I was focused on the smoke and we ain't got none no mo so we celebrate with a picture.





While I was flexin my camera skillz I let the X sit there idling to see if the gauge would move again or if the engine block will start melting. Nothing happened.

Faulty sensor?
Air pocket?

I dunno, but what I DO know is that I'm totally going to ignore this for now and enjoy the lack of white smoke a little while longer. Join me in the smoke free glory
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  #36  
Old 03-18-2021, 02:13 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by crystalworks View Post
Oh for sure. I should have mentioned that before I do the seafoam I run a quart of ATF for ~500 miles to loosen things up. It worked wonders on the heavily sludged n52 in our wagon. LoL, use that at your own risk though. Could be easy to clog oil passages with the amount of crap that comes off.
ATF in the oil? I heard about those kinds of shenanigans from the old school chevy forums. I've also read people suggesting using diesel motor oil because it does a better job of cleaning.

Having lived a good portion of my life south of the US border you get to see a lot of interesting solutions, mind you they're usually applied when you're broken down on a dirt jungle road but either way they're used.
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  #37  
Old 03-18-2021, 02:26 PM
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Since I'm playing a few months worth of catch up with these posts I'll be missing some details here and there so my apologies if things get a little confusing.

I forgot to go back this





It seems at some point the rear nut holding the engine cover was either put on slightly cocked and got stuck and rusted in place, or it just got stuck by rust. Either way it wasn't coming off easily enough for someone and they decided to break the plastic and free the cover

It didn't take much to get an impact driver on there and zip it right off so whoever was in there before put more effort into breaking shit than dealing with the problem.

I cleaned the stud with a wire brush and replaced the nut.

I found some pictures I was looking for. Oddly enough someone put them in a folder labeled "black bastard". Nothing too exciting but here they are anyway.

This is the slightly longer oil return hose.





The clip I broke removing the old one





The dipstick tube wasn't gunked up at all





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  #38  
Old 03-18-2021, 03:09 PM
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Driving 70km one way for a test drive means I have another 70km to get back so I jumped in the X and headed home.

No temp gauge issues
no white smoke

Got home without any incident, parked the car in the driveway and rolled the windows down to air out previous owners combination of Brut cologne/cigarettes.

It was getting dark and I wanted to do a quick scan and see if our codes stayed away so I plugged the bluetooth/Torque app on the phone and did a quick scan.





BOOOOOOOO!!!! I also had a cylinder 2 and 6 misfire that was present before.

Feeling a little defeated (but still no white smoke) I proceed to roll the windows up and hear a pop coming from the rear driver's side door.

Uh oh...

The only logical thing to do in a situation like that is push the button again until you're confident that the sound is in fact coming from that door...right?

I'm familiar with the sound of a busted window regulator so I managed to get the glass up and taped it in place for the night.





The next morning I popped off the door panel and...


I pop off the door panel and:





Naturally the spare regulators I have from my e83 won't fit and an aftermarket replacement is $153+ tax around these parts so it's off to the pic n pull yard.


Found a donor candidate and turns out it had the regulator replaced fairly recently so at least I'm not putting in a 16 year old piece.








Since we're here I might as well find the couple pieces of broken door sill trim while we're at it. Total spent $30



Last edited by c-bass; 03-18-2021 at 05:44 PM.
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  #39  
Old 03-18-2021, 06:26 PM
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The window is now fixed and it's time to pick some error codes to try to diagnose.

The misfires seemed an easy enough place to start off with as I had some spare coils laying around. I got them swapped out, cleared the codes and started up the motor. After a couple minutes I shut it down, did a quick bluetooth odb scan and didn't see any cyl 2 or 6 misfire. That's a good sign because the misfires would come up immediately after I cleared them before. Must have been a couple bad coils right?

I'd like to point out that at no point during any of these codes did the X run rough, hesitate on acceleration or feel like it was underperforming in any way. Just a little uneven idle. Even when the back end was doing it's fog machine impersonation the engine would still feel fine.

I have a few other M54 based vehicles, they all have a check engine light, run "fine" and I've put lots of miles on them so I wasn't too worried here. Now that it was not throwing the cylinder misfire codes the rest would just fall into place right??

So let's take a drive to the big city and get some paperwork done for this thing and run a bunch of errands. I mean what's the worst that could happen right? (cue the stranger things music)

The next morning I jump the car and head off to the big city. It's about a 250km drive and my first stop is my mechanic buddy. He gives it a quick look, comments how it looks great and I stole it for the price I paid, signs some papers and I'm off.

I drive around the block about 200 feet, park the car and run out to the convenience store. I fire the engine up and right away I feel the car stumbling. Seriously??

Shut it off, restart it and now it seems to be running ok again. Hmmm

I drive a few km down the road and it starts to stumble again. I can feel it misfiring as I'm trying to accelerate and the car is vibrating. I was meeting someone a couple km away so I limped it along there and shut if off again.

The person I was meeting is my liqui moly and sometimes parts supplier who also happens to be a working mechanic. I mention to him the stumbling, I checked the coil etc etc but other than the same things I thought of he didn't have any other ideas. Oh well, guess we'll keep going.

The next couple stops were also a few km in between and the whole time it wasn't running great. I finally made it somewhere I was able to investigate a little further and had a look under the hood for something obvious. I figure there's a chance maybe a coil wasn't seated well so I took them all out and had a look. Nothing blatantly obvious...

I hung out with a buddy for about an hour and then it was time to keep moving. The car started ok but within a few km it was misfiring again. GRRRRR!!!

I got to my last destination before the long drive back and contemplated my options. I'm too far away from my free CAA tow range and I sure as shit aren't paying for a tow truck out of pocket. Seeing as this was in full COVID swing I didn't really have any options where I could crash overnight in the city and realistically it would only put off the same issues until tomorrow.

So what to do? what to do?...remember how I said I wasn't a fan of intermittent? If this thing is going to die on me I might as well be behind the wheel and getting closer to home base right?

I had to make it at least 100km to be back in free CAA tow range so that's the goal I decided on. Let's make it back to tow truck range!

I wasn't feeling super confident and I definitely didn't want to be stuck by the side of the highway in the middle of the night, but I've never been one to make the most sensible decisions so might as well get going.

I fire up the engine aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand....it's NOT misfiring!!!

Now prior to getting in the vehicle I thought it would be in my best interest to get a meal into me in case I do get stuck on the side of the road, but now that this thing is running "fine" I don't want to give it the opportunity to change it's mind...screw it let's go!! I'll eat tomorrow

So I hit the road
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  #40  
Old 03-18-2021, 10:58 PM
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I'm about an hour into the trip and everything is running smoothly but I'm getting tired. Still got over an hour to go

Since I've succesfully managed to get within CAA range I decide to pull through the drive through at the truck stop and grab myself a coffee.

I was idling for less than a minute before the rough idle came back. Clearly a reminder that I should have stuck to the original plan and just drove the rest of they way.

I got myself out of the way and shut the X down to let it rest for a minute. A couple minutes later I fire it back up and it's still running rough...the hell with it I'm going.

Getting up to speed was a little sketchy because I didn't want to floor it under these conditions but once I got cruising it was tolerable. At least for me, not sure how the X feels about this.

I drank a large coffee, it's 40 min later and we're pulling over at the next rest stop for obvious reasons. Car is still running like crap so what do I have to lose.

I park, run inside for however long a large coffee lasts and I'm back in the car.

This time when I fire up the engine it's running smooth Whatever we're going with it, let's roll!

Another 40 min later and I'm about 15 km from the house. As I'm driving through one of the small towns I notice there's a RIDE patrol up ahead (that's what they call the impaired driving checkpoints the cops setup around here).

The cops flag me down and motion for me to stop, which I do.

I roll my window down and I'm getting the usual how are you have you been drinking tonight routine when I feel the car start running rough again

Son of a bitch! You hear that??

cop looks at me a little confused

I start bitching about ...well you just read through it so we won't go over it again and a moment later he's waving me through and I successfully make it home.

After all this bullshit I'll say this much....Still no white smoke

Who's ready to call the CCV system fixed? Let me see a show of hands
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