Very Poorly E53 X5 3.0d Sport............
 

I've just had a phone call from my garage and it looks like my 2001 3.0d Sport with 100,000 miles is not very well at all. Whilst driving it over the weekend it all of a sudden lost power and really started to run like a dog, I only just made it to the garage.

They've told me that it's a cylinder down and 2 others are not performing as well as they should. They think it's down to a carbon build-up on the valves that is preventing the valves from seating properly, and one of them is not seating at all and thus caused the cylinder to fail. Also on the faulty cylinder it's caused the plastic manifold to melt slightly due too the heat build-up..

The head is coming off tomorrow to find out exactly what the problem is but they have told me to expect around a £1,000 bill. :(

Hopefully it doesn't need new valves and they just want cleaning.:rolleyes:

Does anyone have any thoughts on this or has anyone else had this problem?? Aparently it's happened before on X5's & 5 Series's and is mostly caused by using sub-standard fuel i.e. supermarket fuel as aposed to Shell, Esso or BP etc.

Sadly, I think you're going to find warped heads and bad valves.

Do you think the heads would of warped even though the engine hasn't over-heated?? They heat that has caused the mainfold to melt slightly is contained to one very small area.

Couldn't even say until you get them off the block. But anytime an engine produces more heat than it was intended to, things are at risk.

True, I'll post what they find tomorrow when they take the head off.

its probably gonna cost you a bit more than that :(
at least my garage charged a bit more for that stuff

What do you mean?? Have you had this problem??