Blue smoke on extended idle. 2006 4.8is.

[BigBlack48is]

You guys are just crazy!!!

I can't wait for the meetup next week!



this is the type of device I was referring too ( BMW Oil Catch Can for BMW 135 335 1M 535 by BMS Best Oil Catch Can )



It's widely used on forced induction engines...

[TerminatorX5]

ok... it is much fancier bucket than what i envisioned...

i want it...

do they have it for the N62 engines???

[bcredliner]

Not often a 'technical' product is named after a redneck solution, that had me going. Sorry! Learn something every day, hopefully. As it reads to my pea brain this is something that wouldn't have to wait for the blue smoke to appear, could be a preventative as well?

[Doru]

Originally Posted by bcredliner

cylinders facing fron the front are 1-2-3-4 on the left and 5-6-7-8 on the drivers side side. That assumes you have left hand drive. The problem you are having is very unlikely that it has anything to do with MAF as disconnecting it made little difference. Did you check the plug and plug wire on no. 5 cyl? I don't use an INPS as I am all Apple but it sounds like coil is firing. What do the instructions say about the readout you are getting? Could also be the throttle body or the idle control.

I just thought to add the firing order as well:

V8 M62, M62TU, N62

Firing order...
1-5-4-8-6-3-7-2

4-------------8
3-------------7
2-------------6
1-------------5
Front of engine

[Doru]

Originally Posted by TerminatorX5

a design defect can be something not safety related - say, a right windshield wiper on left hand drive E53 (I am not familiar with layout of the RHD wipers) - while the left wiper can be lifted away from the glass, the right wiper can not while the wiper is in parked horizontal position...

has nothing to do with safety but makes no sense, and thus, I would consider this an oversight from the design engineers, where one team designed the wipers that can be lifted, and the other team designed hood that prevents the right wiper from being raised...

same with those valve seals - while it is not expected that something will outlasts the pyramids (gee, can i get over those pyramids?!!!), it is clear that something was not thought through... this is one of the reasons the manufacturers participate in races - race on sunday, sell on monday (or something to that effect)... they test and AGE their ideas on race engines running at 18000 RPMs and then move the ideas to the production engines... as a design engineer, they should know the properties of the materials used, if they break or bend under load, if the mineral oil corrodes or lubes the material, if sulfur in local gasoline destroys the internal guts of the engines (remember the V8 from mid-90s? the Alusil block? they were replacing the engines at that time due to the fact that they overlooked the KNOWN sulfur issue in the US petrol/gasoline)

and as far as safety goes... losing a vital component, such as engine going at traffic speed, and thus losing the power steering, the power brakes and the ability to safely command the vehicle due to UNEXPECTED mechanical failure of a major component... that is a safety issue... I am talking about those guides of mine on the M62 motor... And while you can blame me for changing oil every other christmas, and totally ignore the maintenance, the sheer number of consumers with the same problem points to one common denominator, the design flaw in the engine... a piece of plastic inside an internal combustion engine - even sound of it does not make sense... and if the plastic component would have lasted, nobody would even talk about it but since it seems to be a weak link, we are talking about it... maybe metal guides would not be appropriate, but neither would be a wooden stick... or plastic... so, as engineers, they should have come up with something for those guides... or, abandon the particular design that calls for those guides... we are paying them to be experts in what they do, not amateurs...

I am not litigating this issue, i am not a lawyer, i am a technician, and while i admire many technical advances of the BMW engineers, i think turning a blind eye to an obvious problem does not serve their image well... and certain percentage of their price tag comes from an image - hey dude, what you drive? a Yugo... and you? I got a bimmer!... whose got a better image?...

and nobody expects a freebee - like with the cluster replacement, there was price for the part and comp'd labor... or combination thereof... or, like with Alusil engines, the whole thing was replaced... granted, with N62 being in almost all V-8 BMWs (minus the M cars) made from 2002 to about 2011 (is that right, BigBlack??), that is a lot of engines to replace... nobody will expect that... but coming with an improved part might be a better solution - i've heard that the simple valve seal replacement yields the same blue smoke in another 80,000 miles... for me, 80K is only 4 years of ownership... about 3.5 years... or so...

I think it's not the engineers, but the bean counters. And environmental regulations which limits the use of certain proven materials, which are now a no-no.
Another example?: cooling system.

[pcb5]

The inline catch can makes sense. I'm beginning to think its more of a vacume issue and not a valve seal issue. When we're running thicker oil, we might be sealing off some off the oil leaks around the valve covers etc. So, we're partially sealing the vacume leak, and the result is reduced smoke.

But the whole time we've been running thicker oil, the smoke is reduced so we naturally think its the valve seals.

[bcredliner]

bb4.8

Are you going to try the catch can?

[Doru]

For the pre-facelift engine (M62), I would try to retrofit the CCV the 540 e39 instead of a catch-can. The catch-can has been tried on the i6 engines, and you have to be very careful about it. The i6 engines - they have low tension piston rings and if the vacuum is screwed up, you have some issues, so I would first research this for the M62 engine. The v8 (e39) engines (M62 & M62TU) had absolutely zero issues with the cyclonic separator they are using. Below is the realoem diagram (item #1):

[BigBlack48is]

I was actually thinking of grabbing some high temp hoses and rigging something up as an experiment to see exactly how much oil can be trapped in a jar while idling vs. at running speeds.

When I came across the catch can and started researching it, I figured I would post it on here to get everyone all fired up

[BigBlack48is]

So I have more supporting evidence that BMW fixed their blue smoke problem in their newer models.... Check out the N62 version of the CCV pipes in the newer model from ours ( RealOEM.com * BMW E70 X5 4.8i Crankcase-Ventilation )

It does not have 2 separate pipes that feed blow-by ( oil ) into the intake, only 1 and it's on the top of the intake. Eliminating the bottom hose and connecting the two cylinder heads together....

Anyone have any thoughts?