E60 M5 yearly war chest

[TheAngryDog]

Is there a recommended yearly war chest to have when running one of these That is out of warranty and over 80k miles?

[johnfm]

Didn't you just get rid of an e39 M5?

[TheAngryDog]

Back in February yes.

[Shaoxter]

Totally depends what's been done previously. Throttle actuators for example are very likely to fail at 80k if they haven't been replaced already. Hopefully the clutch would have been changed though. There's probably also an expensive oil/plugs/diff oil/SMG oil service due around that mileage. And don't forget the expensive brake discs/pads.

But at the end of the day a lot of it depends on your luck to be honest! Random electrical errors (like a broken iDrive) can easily run up big bills.

[TheAngryDog]

Thanks for your information.

Would it be better to buy a higher mileage car that has already had this type of work done? Or would it be best to stick to low milers?

I am aware that rod bearings are a potential issue on these (more so than the E39).

[Schermerhorn]

Buy my M6. Its on a renewable warranty. So far in repairs it has cost me £0.00

Fuel tax and insurance are another matter though.

£100.00 of fuel in half a day is easily possible

[StuH]

Schermerhorn said:

Buy my M6. Its on a renewable warranty. So far in repairs it has cost me £0.00

Fuel tax and insurance are another matter though.

£100.00 of fuel in half a day is easily possible

Sounds like a plan.

If you get an M5 without warranty and you get the red cog of death you could clock up a £5k+ bill easy.

[StuH]

Schermerhorn said:

Buy my M6. Its on a renewable warranty. So far in repairs it has cost me £0.00

Fuel tax and insurance are another matter though.

£100.00 of fuel in half a day is easily possible

Sounds like a plan.

If you get an M5 without warranty and you get the red cog of death you could clock up a £5k+ bill easy.

[Shaoxter]

TheAngryDog said:

Would it be better to buy a higher mileage car that has already had this type of work done? Or would it be best to stick to low milers?

Absolutely. The phrase buy on condition/history rather than mileage is even more important for these cars.

TheAngryDog said:

I am aware that rod bearings are a potential issue on these (more so than the E39).

I think the consensus is that the rod bearings really depend on the previous owners. Look for one which has had frequent oil changes (preferably every year) and has not been ragged from cold or just used for short journeys driving with cold oil all the time. A quick chat and you should be able to tell what kind of owner they are.

Schermerhorn said:

Fuel tax and insurance are another matter though.

Tax is £285 if you get a MY05 car. Insurance isn't bad at all for me: under £700, London postcode, 28, 2yrs NCB.

[Schermerhorn]

StuH said:

Schermerhorn said:

Buy my M6. Its on a renewable warranty. So far in repairs it has cost me £0.00

Fuel tax and insurance are another matter though.

£100.00 of fuel in half a day is easily possible

Sounds like a plan.

If you get an M5 without warranty and you get the red cog of death you could clock up a £5k+ bill easy.

No doubt as to keep it running under warranty you'll need to go to BMW to buy the parts (BMW rip off prices) and then get bent over to fit them also.

[130R]

StuH said:

Sounds like a plan.

If you get an M5 without warranty and you get the red cog of death you could clock up a £5k+ bill easy.

This happened to me recently (not the red cog but the £5k+ bill). VANOS oil pump failure which luckily didn't wreck the whole engine.

I ran my M6 (now sold) for 3 of the 6 years I owned it with no warranty, but my advice is don't. It can be very, very expensive and I certainly didn't save anything by not renewing.

Edited by 130R on Tuesday 26th May 13:40

[jcolley]

Recommended preventive replacement list:

- Throttle Actuators: It's not an if, but when. The gears are made of marshmallow apparently and wear causing electronics damage due to excessive motor current. There are a few sources for replacement gears of better design (I highly recommend PH member Alpina's) that can be had for about 150 and will last far longer than the originals. Replace them before they fail and life is much cheaper.

- Rod Bearings: Of the 200+ engines rebuilt and sold in the US from the largest rebuilder, 3 of those were not due to spun rod bearings. Preventive replacement is a far cry cheaper (performed by dropping the oil pan) than replacing the crank. Approx $750 in parts (IIRC) and 16 hours labor. BMW chose extremely tight oil clearances on these (and the S65) engines (tighter than any previous S engine) and stuck with the same 10W-60 oil recommendation. Mahle/Clevite (producer of the bearings for BMW) published a white paper years back discussing smaller bearing clearances and specifically calling out thinner oils. Dinan, VAC, and others open up this oil clearance with every engine built. Many debate the validity of this argument, but having seen inside of over 30 of these engines now and obsessing on this platform for over 9 years, I've made my choice. Mr. Raikku himself of Evolve has preached this for years as well. TWS will never part the lips of my S85 again.

- VANOS pump internal high pressure line. Easy fix, cheap part, medium-to-high failure rate. There is insufficient bend on a hard piped portion of the line where it transitions to the flexible portion which bolts to the pump eventually resulting in stress fractures. Labor however is absurd since you have to drop the oil pan. Most dealerships let this one kick their arse for a while they try and figure it out. I think "muppets" is the term you chaps use. $150 part. While you're in there for those rod bearings...

- SMG Hydraulic pump motor: Somewhere around 65-80k miles, these tend to go, some sooner. Standard DC brushed motor operating a high torque load with insufficient cooling and no path for carbon dust to escape. Carbon dust lower winding resistance and motor torque is diminished, making for poor hydraulic performance. $350ish US for parts, about 4 hours labor.

- VANOS solenoids. For gods sake, don't buy new ones. Have a reasonably intelligent mechanic remove them, source the proper size O-rings on the cartridge for replacement and use a 9V battery to cycle the spool with it dipped in solvent. This removes the varnish, flushes the rod bearing swarf out of them, and restores the pressure seal. VANOS performance test yields a lot of useful numbers, but the "quality" metric is utterly worthless. As long as the stroke times are in spec, VANOS is fine.

- Clutch slave cylinder: If you have the clutch replaced, for god's sake replace the slave cylinder. Getrag in their (probably BMW directed) infinite wisdom changed the fastener configuration on the GS7S47BG transmission to have the retaining nuts inside the bell housing. This means when the 10 year old slave cylinder piston o-ring finally gives out (they do often) and soak your newish clutch disc in hydraulic fluid, you'll be cursing the tech who didn't replace the slave cylinder when he did the clutch.

-Fuel injectors: This one will be argued by many here. If you can find a really great deal on 10 injectors, snag them. Someone recently posted a link and snagged a full set for around $40 each. 3 hours labor. I had one fail open and sent the other 9 off for performance testing where two further failed there and a fourth once my engine was back together. If you want pictures of what happens when one sticks open, search the web for S85 hydrolock. The injectors were somewhat redesigned late in life. It's long odds that they will fail, but for $400 in parts, I found it prudent insurance.




Not recommended preventive but common failures...deal with these if they happen.
- PLCD: Permanent-Magnetic Linear Contactless Displacement sensor aka. clutch position sensor. It happens occasionally and signals itself with a unique 510D and 510E error code stored in the SMG module. $350 in parts and 3 hours labor. No known cause yet, but I have four to take apart and experiment on.
- Failing cats: We see this a lot in the US, but I don't think I've ever seen it mentioned here. My theory as to why lies in your DME software. In the US, our DME monitors the post-cat O2 sensor for cat performance. Some of us who have decat headers realized that if we flash the Euro DME software, we no longer get the SES for missing cats. 14k miles since I've done mine and the light hasn't come back. I believe the US DME software monitors something that the Euro doesn't. No error light..no worries for you guys.

[Depthhoar]

/\ Awesome post!

jcolley said:

- Rod Bearings: Of the 200+ engines rebuilt and sold in the US from the largest rebuilder, 3 of those were not due to spun rod bearings. Preventive replacement is a far cry cheaper (performed by dropping the oil pan) than replacing the crank. Approx $750 in parts (IIRC) and 16 hours labor. BMW chose extremely tight oil clearances on these (and the S65) engines (tighter than any previous S engine) and stuck with the same 10W-60 oil recommendation. Mahle/Clevite (producer of the bearings for BMW) published a white paper years back discussing smaller bearing clearances and specifically calling out thinner oils. Dinan, VAC, and others open up this oil clearance with every engine built. Many debate the validity of this argument, but having seen inside of over 30 of these engines now and obsessing on this platform for over 9 years, I've made my choice. Mr. Raikku himself of Evolve has preached this for years as well. TWS will never part the lips of my S85 again.

(Unlike Angry Dog, I'm not in the market for an E60 M5 but would be interested to hear more about the oil issue you outline above. I know oil threads rage on for years and can be inconclusive but you have real evidence based on the observation of multiple rebuilds. Could you post up some links to illustrate your thinking?)

Mike, everything I've read about the best way to avoid the pitfalls of E60 M5 ownership points to having a proper all singing & dancing warranty with full on 'get-out-of-jail-free' cover in the event of catastrophic engine or drivetrain issues. This probably means an official BMW warranty (if available) or Mondial one, but I hate to think what the monthly payments would be for a 80k+ miles vehicle.

[jcolley]

Depthhoar said:

(Unlike Angry Dog, I'm not in the market for an E60 M5 but would be interested to hear more about the oil issue you outline above. I know oil threads rage on for years and can be inconclusive but you have real evidence based on the observation of multiple rebuilds. Could you post up some links to illustrate your thinking?)

Apologies if this derails OP's thread, but should be factored (IMO) into the decision to purchase one of these cars. I changed my mind at the last minute of purchase to abandon my initial plan of getting a warranty when I bought my current M5 3 years ago. I have not been displeased with that choice, but I like to work on things and find many dealer technicians less than savvy enough to adequately resolve problems on these very unique cars.

My thoughts are the collection of probably hundreds of various discussions over the years, mostly within the last two though. It was believed early on that the VANOS high pressure pump was the weak link in the S85 bottom end and may have been in fact. BMW redesigned the drive sprockets on both the crankshaft and the pump with a taller tooth profile, therefore lower specific tooth loading. No firm evidence to support the cause other than perhaps there were tooth shears that occurred. We have seen many failures of the pumps though coinciding with worn or spun rod bearings and the many believed the cause was initially the failing pump debris clogging the bearings and resulting in failure. However, fast forward to the beginnings of similar problems on the S65 which has no VANOS pump and it would lead one to believe the bearing wear has perhaps contributed to the VANOS pump failures in the mid-to-late life engines. There is a massive thread of concrete data, along with tons of speculation as well in a thread on M3post:

http://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8928...

Although this discussion is specifically referencing the S65 in the M3, the S85 shares the same bearing part numbers, connecting rods, pistons, etc. as well as crank journal diameters. The three initial personalities that stand out in that thread are the OP, who spent significant time and money putting this all together, a gent who builds NASCAR sprint cup engines for a very successful race team in the US (although I abhor NASCAR), and one who rebuilds very large diesel engines for a living. It was the NASCAR engine builder who's statements led to my choice of oil change though.

As all of this discussion was going on, this thread was started to collect data

http://www.m5board.com/vbulletin/e60-m5-e61-m5-tou...

The purpose of this thread was to collect information on engines which *had not* failed and the condition of their bearings. Honestly, it was in hope if finding a set that looked good enough that it would provide some evidence that the bearing wear shown was not prevalent in every S85 built. So far, that hasn't been the case. There have been a couple noted as looking "better than anything yet", but nothing which anyone would consider reusing. Of course, there have been a fair share of naysayers insisting that all that wear occurs within the first few thousand miles and that all looks normal, but my S54 certainly didn't look like that at 65k miles when I rebuilt it and installed the supercharger. Start looking at the oil clearance ratios as described in the last post in that first thread and it certainly is compelling evidence.

I had planned to replace my rod bearings preventively and had most of the part son hand, but was still researching and deciding if I really wanted to. When my injector failed, it hydrolocked the engine on the start when I attempted to restart it and just to ensure I hadn't bent a rod, I pulled the oil pan to inspect the bottom end. It would have been pointless not to replace then at the time since the majority of labor is getting the suspension dropped, so I went for everything I could think of while it was apart. 14k miles later, my car has been completely trouble free and it is driven year round in horrid winter weather as my primary vehicle.

Time will only tell if the thinner oil is the answer, but it certainly is nice spending $60 for an oil change every 5k miles. I use Mobil1 0w-40 based on the NASCAR guys results having run that oil through his race team's oil analysis regime and reporting extremely favorable findings. I will probably pull the engine and rebuild the top end in another 10k miles or so to replace the ste design oil scraper rings with those from the S63TU and say goodbye to oil consumption. When I do, I'll know the answer to the oil choice.

The key to enjoyable ownership out of warranty is to get as much collective knowledge as we can out there and educate ourselves so we are not at the mercy of dealership's playing "maybe this is the problem" on our dime or the warranty company's. If you want to know why these cars have had such a horrid depreciation, look no further than the exorbitant labor charged to guess their way (often wrongly) through problems. The car is actually quite simple once you come to understand it, but given the fraction of market share it represented for BMW, there's no way it was justifiable to spend the money on training every tech properly. The result is that very few truly understand hydraulic systems design (essential for SMG problems) and the complexity of the electrical systems beyond what ISTA/D tells them to do.

My good friend in the US is Troy Jeup who if you google, is the largest volume S85 builder likely in the world now, aside from BMW themselves. I have seen the inside of many of the engines he has rebuilt and consult for him occasionally on non-engine related problems. He's seen every manner of failure on these engines including my favorite, a dealer installed one of his rebuilt engines for a customer and it leaked oil constantly. The car was sent to him and the dealership had installed the top two bolts for the transmission (significantly longer than the rest) in two of the lowest mounting holes and punctured the oil pan due to the excessive thread length. One car came back to him with numbers and notes written on every piece indicating the mechanic was trying to keep track of what piece went where and when. Not what one would expect when removing or installing the engine of a luxury car of this caliber.

Edited by jcolley on Tuesday 26th May 15:30

[Depthhoar]

Jc: excellent. Many thanks!

[TheAngryDog]

Hmmm, food for thought. It'll take me a while to save for a waranted E60 I reckon

[r-spec]

Awesome thread, thanks again jcolley! I swapped to Mobil1 0W-50 about 10k miles ago in the hope of avoiding the issue of bottom end bearing replacements (thanks to the excellent advice on that thread, compiled by jcolley and the wise words from the NASCAR and Diesel engine builders plus supporting evidence). I'm quietly confident prevention will hold out in favour of cure (as with no garage of my own and an indy that can't have cars sitting on a ramp for more than two days) I'm in that position like it or not. :-D Hope mine can run to 140k miles before the bottom end goes!