Intake manifold is off, working on vacuum hoses

[TriX5]

Intake is off, doesn't look too bad for 150k miles. Luckily there seems to be relatively little CBU. The swirl flaps are pretty clean. The CBU seems too be concentrated only where the IM and the valve cover meet. Going to think a bit about what the best approach is here.

The soup of hoses, wires and other assorted gadgets that I have uncovered on the drivers side of the engine is incredible. I can't believe the mess and of course everything is covered in black goo. Non of my vac hoses seem bad to the point of leaking but I plan to replace the lot of them. Just wondering what else needs changing while I am in there?

[Happy]

This is what is being performed on my E53 right now. She is currently at the Doc’s office.

[TriX5]

Ugh, did a manual cleanup of the manifold as far as possible. Yuk, worst cleanup ever. Everything gets filthy, your hands get filthy and it leaves a ton of trash that is not so clean either. The swirl flaps are solid but have about 1/16 to 3/32 play on the shaft. Clearly some boost is lost from there and the lines under the IM are covered in black goo. I am on the fence whether to replace them with a delete kit. I can't think of anyway to improve the seal on the shafts. Thoughts anyone?

I am spending some time thinking about rerouting the main vac line to the brake booster. There is no obvious reason for it to be under the IM. I'd need to extend the hose from the vac pump and run the hard line somewhere near the main coolant hose. Still have to disassemble it and try out some routing.

Finally the main fuel feed line feels rock hard and I am wondering if I should pee-emptively replace it.....a bit of a bloodletting at $260 from Tischer.

[TriX5]

Waded in deeper and removed all the small vac hoses from the distribution piece in main vac line going to the brake booster. Although very dirty, nothing looks like it is broken or leaking under the manifold. Since the fault code relates to the EGR system I am thinking that the pressure converter under the IM maybe be marginal (there are some posts on bimmerfest and e90post that point this way). The OE item is $140 but I really don't feel like buying a chinese copy and later having to go in a second time.....

On removing the heatshield that covers the vac hoses on top of the turbo I found some very bad looking red and blue hoses. Eventually I will take off the bracket that holds the pressure sensors and the pressure converters. First I just want to reinstall vac lines that control the EGR. If I pull them all at the same time it might become confusing.

I disconnected the hose of the EGR valve that resides under the turbos. After removing the aluminium stiffener plate I could get needle nose pliers up under the turbo and disconnect the red hose.

If only I could persuade myself to go for another session cleaning the Intake with Purple Power. I ordered some long handle brushes to get in there.

Pictures later!

[ard]

Originally Posted by TriX5

If only I could persuade myself to go for another session cleaning the Intake with Purple Power. I ordered some long handle brushes to get in there.

Pictures later!

I have an old cattle trough that is reserved for that.... started w an only Ford diesel project, then an infiniti Q45...and multiple barbecues along the way. Sticking a pressure wash wand up into things can help too, provided you know about any small passages that will need pipe-cleaner attention later.

But yeah, is is a messy job. Rubber gloves, even elbow length, just seem way inadequate.....

[TriX5]

After scouring the house and the garage, finally decided to use a steel cement mixing tray for cleaning the IM. Since the brick work has been completed long ago the tray is unlikely to get much use again.

I took the main vac hose out. Apart from the rubber bits connecting to the the vacuum pump and the brake booster, nothing much wrong with it. Plan to replace the bits of rubber hose and reuse it.

The engine bay under the IM looks grim. See a picture here of the pressure converter I plan to change.

[TriX5]

So, still procrastinating on the IM cleaning.....but started on installing the new vac lines and taking off the bracket that holds the turbo control items. On the latter, four bolts can be removed easily, the fifth one is a bear. I took off the covers above the ECU and moved the chassis brace out of the way but still haven't been able to get a socket on it properly. More wrestling today....

On the inbound package front it was fairly busy; the long handle brushes for the IM cleaning arrived. The hose for the turbo control arrived and is on the car. (Had to take one small cover off the passenger frame rail to get my hand in there. Same allowed me to pop on the hose for the lower EGR valve.

The pressure converter arrived, the Pierburg branded item saved me nearly half. Also bought a borescope on Amazon, the Depstech is acceptable quality and I could check that my intake valves are indeed clean (enough....). (Not sure if it makes a difference but I always used BMW's LL-04 oil).

Today I will climb in again to get the turbo vac controls off. However, the BlueBus arrived for the E53 and my son will be keen to have it installed. The rain is making it a bit less hot and it should be a good day for wrenching.

I know it is not going very fast but there are a lot of other projects that also want my time.....

[TriX5]

But this piece is an abomination that should never have been allowed to be bolted to the engine. With three more hours of engineering and design time this could have been a straightforward item......

I understand that strapping all the engine controls and sensors to the engine block might simplify the installation of the engine in the chassis on the assembly line but this is frankly ridiculous. Even after undoing all the electrical connectors there is one more actuator that is still attached to yet another bracket on the engine block and the hoses are not visible from the front. Also, the wiring for the pressure converters is not in the same harness as the sensor wires. These run behind the engine somewhere and are also unbelievably short. Unfortunately the vacuum hoses are also all unnecessarily short making the disassembly unbelievably difficult for no reason.


Looking at it now I believe it may be easier to undo the plastic vac reservoir/bracket from the steel bracket on the valve cover. But that is quite difficult to see when starting out on this quest.

Anyhow, I labeled the hoses and now begins the reverse journey. Of course also need to decide whether to replace the pressure converters at this time......

EDIT: Removed the bits of hose that were stuck on the various elements, they were plenty brittle. The videos that show replacing only the bits that are on top of the vacuum reservoir are plain wrong. The heat cycles next to the cylinder head are intense and those bits of hose broke off easily. Decided to order the pressure converters from FCPEuro and a new vacuum reservoir from Tischer, the latter is cheap insurance. Also ordered more vacuum hose from TuneMyEuro as my initial order is already running out.

Some posts on the e90 websites reported better turbo performance after replacing the converters and here's for hoping!!

[sgrice]

Good job!


I agree that the vacuum lines are an amazing rats nest, complete with hidden and brittle connection points. I helped one of my sons do his vacuum lines this summer.

Since you have an order from Tune My Euro, I assume you have seen his videos? He has an excellent one on giving a step by step approach to changing the vacuum lines. The link is here.

https://youtu.be/kuXEa1efpxQ



Love it when he goes into detail on how to get old brittle lines off without snapping the plastic nipples. And he's got a great tip for using a pick to get under some of the electrical connections points and releasing them. Some of these tips are reinforced on the Das Projekt vids as well. Pure genius.

As noted above, the other great resource I found on the topic is the Youtube site of Das Projekt 5seven. He has a 2 part series on the vacuum system. The links are here

https://youtu.be/Qer7vfbx77c

and here.

https://youtu.be/5-1LwCZrGQ8



Really great information on both of the sites. Watching the above videos made the work so much easier. Without them I'm sure we would have (at best) taken much longer, or (at worst) "fixed it till we broke it" (as Doug Huffman might say). The only thing I did that wasn't covered on the vids is use blue painters tape to number all the lines, and used a black Sharpie to number the connection points on the vacuum box. And of course I took a bunch of pictures beforehand. Not wanting to ever have to deal with brittle lines again, silicone replacement hoses were used.

TriX5 - I realize you probably watched the above vids, but the information might be helpful to others who are contemplating this work. Again, kudos to you!

[TriX5]

This is a great source of info. I had not seen the videos, so far only ordered a few minor parts from Rodriquez. This is so much clearer than the ones I found. He is very clear and works quickly and in an organized way. Thank you for putting these links! This type of info is what creates value for the board!

The 335d has much better access despite being a smaller vehicle, I don't know how BMW manages to make the X5 so horrible to work on despite being much larger. It always seems to me that they first design the sedans and then, to design the SUVs, they try to only raid the parts bin rather than designing them from scratch. The placement of the vacuum kit is awful, the frame for it is oversized and the design excessively convoluted. Apparently BMW's engineers are ashamed of nothing and I am just ranting at the wall :-)

EDIT: Just ordered a couple of the electric vacuum valves as well (the Pierburg branded ones), just to be sure that the entire vac system is at peak performance and to avoid having to go back in there.

I am doing the ordering a bit piecemeal but as I start to understand the system better, as to which item does what), I am making decisions on what to do. And the car will be on jack stands for another week or two anyhow....