click-click-click sound when engine is cold
 

I have noticed this for sometime now, when my engine is cold and I just start it I hear a click-click sound, you can hear it from 8-10 feet away.

Once I drive for about 2 miles, I do not hear a thing anymore at ALL. Took it to the dealer, of course the only way I can replicate this is to leave the engine cold for 8-9 hours, dealer said, 'yeah it's normal'

The sound is very low and not as loud as you would get say if experiencing a piston slap...

So do you guys have the same experience? 2007, 3.0.

I do have the same problem like yours too, but sometimes only. It usually acts up in the morning.

It's not normal, but it's frequent. I had the same thing on my '08. The cylinders need a bleed down. There's a TSB.

This is a known issue with this engine:

Xoutpost.com - View Single Post - How does your engine sound....
Xoutpost.com - View Single Post - marvel mystery oil

The head or rockers need to be replaced if the bleed procedure doesn't fix the issue. Check with X5 Meister if he can pull up the TSB for you to take to the dealer.

Thanks guys! X5 Meister's inbox is full, tried to PM him. If anyone has or can point me to the TSB will very much appreciate it.

Although this sound happens for a short while and infrequently, I'd rather nip it now that it's under warranty.

I have a first batch (custom ordered mine) 08 3.0si and have the same issue. Thought it was low oil level but guess it might not be the case. I'd also appreciate the TSM info if someone could refer it.

Thanks so much!

I've replaced so many of the N52 heads for the "lifter tap" that I can do it in one day after lunch. I do the bleed down procedure then let the car sit overnight. If it does it in the morning I get PuMA approval to replace the head and order parts. The new head design has redesigned oil passages and some additional oil drainback valves etc. Have not had any problems after head replacement whatsoever.

By the way, the "bleeding procedure" in the TSB is just holding it at 3500-4000 rpms for 5 to 15 minutes to pump the HVA units full of oil, which almost always quiets it up at that time. But the same results come from a 10 minute drive on the highway... so don't put too much stock in it.

Do you know the TSB number by any chance?

Sorry, I don't... vinuneuro, any idea what the TSB # is?

SIB 11 09 07 if memory serves correctly.

I'm taking my '08 in for this issue again on Thursday. How hard should I have to push to get the heads replaced? This is the 3rd time I've brought it in for this issue.

They updated the bulletin, they must not want to pay out for any more head replacements as the bulletin now says:

1. Don't perform the "bleeding procedures" (as they didn't last past the next cold start)
2. Don't replace the head, it is no longer going to be authorized.
3. Updated HVA units (lifters for lack of a better term) are available and is the current repair.

A few have gone through the shop that have gotten the updated HVA's and it did seem to fix them.

When you bring it in for the lifter tap again, mention that you looked up SIB 11 09 07 and think the updated HVA's from the latest bulletin update would fix the problem. Just be prepared to go a few days without the vehicle as they will need to get teileclearing authorization then order parts (next day if before 3pm) then about a day of labor.

I had my dropped off yesterday for the same ticking noise from the engine bay and it was kept over night. I got a called back from the SA this morning that she stated that the engine needed a lifter and the dealer will keep my car until this Thursday at their shop. Does not sound good to my ears when she said that. I will keep you posted once I get my car back, hopefully this coming Thursday.

This is longest time ever that she leaves home. I miss my ride :( and luckily, I have a 2009 328i as a loaner.

Same thing happened on wife's 330i. Bleed twice, but didn't solve. Ultimately replaced cylinder head.

As I've said, I've replaced numerous heads for that problem... but now they switched from changing heads to changing lifters. So Stevev, you'll have your baby back soon enough, and the problem should be no more! :D

Thanks for the help and explanation. Have the info before talking to the SA is always a plus.

I noticed this this past weekend in Charlotte. I was in a pharmacy drive through first thing in the morning. The truck had only been running about 5 minutes.

I guess I'll have to take it in to see what they'll do about.

Thanks for the info I've had the same problem when first starting it only.

SA just called, it's the lifters, they're on backorder, could be a week, could be 3 weeks. I'm picking the car up this afternoon and have to wait for the parts to come in.

Backorder? I guess I got the last set! :D I'm in the middle of that job on an E70 right now, the lifters sitting on top of my tool box all pretty and such...

It's not nice to taunt ;)

I thought it is suppose to be done by this afternoon, but the SA called back and said that it will not be ready until tomorrow, Friday. She said the tech. does not want to rush on this big job. Hopefully, I will get my baby back by tomorrow. This is the first time that my car was in the shop for four days...luckily all the works are done under factory warranty :D. I hope they will fix that problem.

I have the same noise but comes quite infrequently and goes away, the repair seems to be a long day with a lot of manipulation. My question is:

What happens if you ignore the noise (since it goes away after 3 minutes and may not come back for a couple of months) and keep driving it. Is it gonna affect engine reliability in the future????

With the camshaft/valvetrain being a roller bearing setup I've yet to see any problems caused by the tapping sound. (other than annoyance)

Your case is a very mild one with it going away in minutes and coming back after months, so you can have no worries if you do choose to ignore it, but may want to get it taken care of while under warranty.

Thank you very much for your help. I wish the guys at M3post will be as supportive as people in this forum. :thumbup:

I got my car back last night after four days. The ticking noise sound from the engine bay seem to be vanished :D. I started the enginine it let it running for abt. 5 minutes and could not here anything. As the matter of fact, I noticed that the engine sound seem to be very very quite when I was standing a few feet away.

Here is what they have done:

Customer states there is a ticking noise in engine area mostly at cold start.

Cause: Hydraulic valve adjusters noisey.

Performed: as per SIB 11 09 07, replaced exhaust camshaft hydraulic valve lifter (HVA), adjusted camshaft, vanos timing, and performed bleeding procedure when finished.

Part replaced"
12 11 33 7 605 330, hydraulic valve pushrod: 113065
1 11 12 7 582 245, profile gasket: 118522
1 11 36 7 524 954, collar screw: 113095
1 11 31 7 534 251, gasket ring: 118523

I hope this information helps!!!

Yep, I just finished the exact same job on an E70 3.0i and it was 100% quiet after. The updated HVA valve adjusters seem to do the trick quite nicely. My only complaint is that BMW has reduced the warranty pay labor amount so the whole job only pays 5.3 hours... damn economy!

I don't own the 3.0L but just wondering, do they simply change the valve adjusters (the rockers on top)? What is this bleeding process? priming oil into the area ??

I think the only requirement of stealership SA's is to say that "it's normal" by default. If you can say that everytime, you've got a job. :popcorn:

We change the HVA's on just the exhaust side, and they self prime as soon as you crank the engine. We change all 12 of #8 in this link on the exhaust cam side of the head.

RealOEM.com BMW E70 X5 3.0si Valve timing gear, camshaft, outlet

In cases like this people can throw a bulletin at the advisers face and say "no it isn't fooking normal, what do you want on your survey again?"

When advisers take it upon themselves to determine what they think is normal is when they get in trouble where I work. They are not mechanics and shouldn't pretend to be... they are just the customer interface, like a translator between the mechanics and the customers.

Updated on my car. We took a ride to the grocery store and bank this morning and everything seem to be fine and the engine seem to very quiet as I mentioned on other post. Then, everything changed this afternoon when we were abt. to take the kids to the library. I got in the car w/ my two kids, close the door, and started the engine. My wife came out and knocked on my window and told me that wtf is that sound...I thought the dealer fixed the car and you just took it back last night.

When I exited my car w/ the engine still running and immediately heard a sound from the engine bay. It is a little hard to describe the sound, but diffinately bad sound to my ears :dunno:. What the worse was, even the ignition was shut off, I still can hear that engine sound for another 3-5 seconds.

I dropped her off at the dealer this afternoon and won't be able to hear back from the SA until Monday morning sometimes. This is really pissed me off. I thought everything is good and back to normal and it turned out to be worst than before it was fixed. Hopefully, it is a different issue. If it relates to the job that they just finished, I would be very mad.

I will keep you posted next week.

Crossing fingers that it turns out to be something simple, and hopefully it isn't a stupid mistake made by a tech. There is room for error when doing internal engine work which is why jobs like that usually go to the more experienced techs vs the new guys out of UTI.

Lifter issue fixed. As stated earlier, the fix is to replace the lifters now. It might be an emotional response to the fix, but the X feels more responsive in low gears now. I'll see how it feels over the next couple of days.

Strange but good after effect of this is that my X now "powers through" turns at low speed. Before this fix, if I took a 45-90* turn it would hesitate with a notable drop in power. Today while out running errands I made a left at a light and the x actually pulled all the way through the turn without the hesitation or bogging down.. I actually reached down to check that I wasn't in sport mode, which it wasn't.

I"m going to call my SA on Monday to see if anything was changed on the engine or tranny programming that might have fixed this. I'm no expert on this, but I don't think the lifter fix could fix a low power at low RPM issue like I've been experiencing since I've had my X. (Sept. 08)

Someone asked for it. Here you go: SIB 110907.

Man am I glad I saw this post, I've had this noise on my 2006 330i for some time now, technicians assured me it was normal and I bought it. I will be taking my car in soon as I only have 6 months left on my warranty. Thank you all for great information.

I absolutely agree, but I think the problems comes in when situations like yours are in the back of their head when they know they're not going to get paid in full for the amount of time that it takes, so people get pushed out the door and told it's normal so the shop can appear to be more efficient and cost effective by doing the jobs that actually pay a commiserate book time vs the time it actually takes.

When I lived in Alexandria I worked @ Alexandria Honda and was friends w/ the S/A there. He told me all kinds of stories about turning customers away, not fixing things completely, etc because it cut into his pay if the shop wasn't performing at a certain percentage of efficiency.

See my post above. Keep us posted.

I had the same problem with my MY 2008 3.0 i took delivery of in October 2007. After 6 months of dealing with BMW USA and almost getting a new vehicle, they traced the problem to a bad cylinder head. At some point they discovered the problem and switched to a re-designed head. My vehicle was supposed to have the new head (according to my VIN), but when they took the head off, it was the old one. They replaced it and solved the problem. No noise since then! My vehicle was in the shop about ten times for a total of more than 3 months time during a 6 month period to resolve this. The bleeding proceedure would only last a couple of weeks and they did that 3 times. It got to the point where them service manager gave my vehicle to one of the service guys to drive for a week to try and replicate the problem. Then once they confirmed there was a problem, they had to make several conference calls to Germany with the engine design team to try and figure it out. When they replaced the head finally, it was the last attempt BMW was going to make to fix it before they gave me a new X6 to replace my X5.

Depending if you like the X6, that might have been a good deal ;)

I read on other forums that some people got a newly designed cylinder head instead. Is that a better solution than replacing the HVA?

BMW started with the "bleed procedure" which only fixed the car for that drive cycle... Then went to complete cylinder heads with an updated design/redesigned oil passages etc. which fixed the car. Now to save money on the cost of heads they started just changing the HVA's for the exhaust bank. This does fix most, but some come back ticking and end up with the complete head replacement.

Keep in mind these "fix it" decisions aren't decides by the tech or the dealership, but the BMWNA mothership. We need to get approval for these repairs before doing them or the warranty claim will not be paid.

My car's actually in shop for this problem, getting the HVAs replaced right now.

But I sort of hoped that I would get the cylinder head replacement 'cause I heard reports that getting the newly designed cylinder head gives better performance feel like a little more horsepower or so I hear. Oh well...

Extra HP felt with the new head are mainly due to all the adaptations being cleared as part of the job. There is a chance the tech will do that with the HVA's as well. (I do, but not all techs do)

After replacing the HVAs, I had a CEL come up. It's in the service center right now. Not sure if it's just a coincidence or a bad job on the HVAs.

So I finally got around to taking my 330i in for this issue, and today I got a call from my SA that BMWNA does not want to approve the repairs, despite the SIB. I've contacted BMWNA, and they are going to contact the dealer and try to figure it out. What should I do if they come back and still say no? My car clearly has the clatter, sometimes it sounds like a diesel, they are trying to tell me that this is within their spec, and I disagree.

After replacing the HVAs, the tick-tick noise still persists. I guess I need the cylinder head swap. Does anyone have part# for it or an official document?

The dealer will get the updated part number to order from the teileclearing case they need to get replacement authorization... so you don't really need to track it down yourself.

The dealer I go to is pretty incompetent. For the HVA replacement, I had to print out the SIB someone thankfully posted here. Before that, they had no idea what I was talking about. I'm afraid they might just say no more work will enhance the problem and then I won't have any thing to show to their faces.

Hey guys,

I had the click click click problem on my car too. I had brought it in and they replaced the lifters and the noise went away for a while. However, lately the noise has returned and when I brought the car in, the SA told me that the shop foreman said that it is normal and there was nothing else he could do. He told me to do my own bleeding procedure ie. highway driving. Obviously they arn't going to do anything abt a head replacement. Any ideas on how to approach this another way?

BMW NA did send me a survey on the service exprience and i'm holding off until I get some thoughts from you guys. If I state that the problem was not solved and wish for BMW NA to contact me, would that help things?

A friend of mine is a BMW mechanic and said they're replacing the whole head now...

Craig

They're probably having issues w/ certain mechs possibly not doing the job right, so replacng the head entirely from the factory is probably easier than dealing w/ individual dealerships and mechanics who have different levels of training, mood about doing the repair, dealership cost vs profits, etc.

any ideas on how i can approach the dealership to get them to replace the head? as of right now they seem to not be able to do anything else. Is there a SIB for the head replacment?

All you can do is keep bringing it back for the problem and suggest a tech support (PuMA) case if they can't figure it out in house... With repeat cases like that PuMA usually tells them to replace the head if the lifters are already done.

I know post is a year old, but my clicking noise just started last month. I'm out of warranty, so is the consensus here that this is just a plain annoyance issue? If so, I can learn to live with it as compared to spending money to fix it.

^ also started for me this morning... it happened last winter at times too. I'll be bringing it in ASAP before my warranty is out next month. Hopefully I'll feel the better turn-in acceleration as mentioned by Thunder as a "side effect".

one question though - even if you're out of warranty, shouldn't SIBs be similar to recalls and be a free fix at any time?

Kinda gun shy about having them "work on the engine" when it's such an infrequent issue for me - it didn't occur this morning. Who knows what it could lead to... right before my warranty is out. Is it a "big deal" job in relation to the engine?