The complete repair, rebuild, repaint, and v8 swap of my early model sedan

[Schnitzer318is]

Yeah, n62 valve seal failure is very common, leading to the smoking you're experiencing. That'll be a hell of a job for you haha.

My heads were not rebuilt, but oil in the intake can only come from the crankcase, not from any part of the cylinder head. Even if oil was getting into the combustion chamber through valve seals or piston rings, it won't go upstream, against airflow, into the intake manifold, it would just burn and smoke out the exhaust.

Gotcha... I was thinking it might be contributing to the crank case pressure not necessarily contributing additional oil. At any rate... why not add a catch can to prevent the oil reaching the intake. I realize this does nothing for the head gasket leak... but it seems a common problem with the BMW V8's to be getting oil into the throttle body. I haven't opened mine up yet... but I wouldn't be shocked to see it in there.

I am notoriously bad at remote diagnostics... lol I have to see and own a car to be any good at troubleshooting usually. And yes, I am dreading having to all that work on the X5. Ughhhhh... got a decent deal on it and it's such a good looking truck, but man everything is 10x harder and 5x more expensive than any of the 3 series chassis. It leaks oil from everywhere... and the dealer did one helluva job degreasing the engine before I saw it.

Edit: Just noticed you're in PA... BMW V8's seem to not like the cold at all because of the CCV system freezing/clogging. Have you done the entire system? I know on the m62 they added an electric heater wrap and updated the oil return tube because of this. If the CCV is stuck closed it causes excessive pressures... usually blowing out VC gaskets and oil seepage from filler cap. If it is stuck open it sucks oil into the intake possibly hydrolocking it. I'm new to BMW V8's (e53 X5 is my first) and I'm not loving the complexity of these things so far. The power and torque are fairly addictive though.

[JGood]

Sorry didn't know how far to go back and check... but were the heads rebuilt? New valve stem seals/guides specifically? Ever get any smoke when you hit the throttle after idling for a long time? This might cause oil in your intake... though theoretically your CCV system should keep that from happening I think?

Reason I ask... is that I am experiencing this with my N62 in my e53. After idling for 10-20 mins I'll get a puff of smoke from the exhaust on take off. Going to do the stem seals, VC gaskets, upper (maybe lower too) TC gaskets, alternator bracket leak, coolant transfer pipe, valley pan, etc, etc... fun stuff.

Yeah, n62 valve seal failure is very common, leading to the smoking you're experiencing. That'll be a hell of a job for you haha.

My heads were not rebuilt, but oil in the intake can only come from the crankcase, not from any part of the cylinder head. Even if oil was getting into the combustion chamber through valve seals or piston rings, it won't go upstream, against airflow, into the intake manifold, it would just burn and smoke out the exhaust.

[Schnitzer318is]

Sorry didn't know how far to go back and check... but were the heads rebuilt? New valve stem seals/guides specifically? Ever get any smoke when you hit the throttle after idling for a long time? This might cause oil in your intake... though theoretically your CCV system should keep that from happening I think?

Reason I ask... is that I am experiencing this with my N62 in my e53. After idling for 10-20 mins I'll get a puff of smoke from the exhaust on take off. Going to do the stem seals, VC gaskets, upper (maybe lower too) TC gaskets, alternator bracket leak, coolant transfer pipe, valley pan, etc, etc... fun stuff.

[JGood]

My guess is that rectangular metal contact thing ensures that the head is grounded to the block?
It is a fiber gasket right? so whatever is leaking will just make its way around the right stuff

I would think the head bolts would take care of that. That rectangular thing is very thin, and is only pressed/glued into the surface of the gasket, it doesn't go through it.

It is a fiber gasket.

I'm now investigating the possibility of excessive crankcase pressure, possibly only at high RPM's. I pulled the CCV off the intake manifold, and saw that the intake was covered in oil, and there was actually a small pool of oil at the bottom. This is generally caused by a torn CCV diaphragm, but mine was not torn or otherwise failed.

I verified that the OSV drain tube is not clogged. I didn't see any damage to the OSV that would cause it to not function properly. So there's no reason that I should have excessive crankcase pressure. I do have crankcase vacuum at idle and while revving the engine in the garage. But, for oil to get in the manifold, something is happening. And if it is excessive pressure, that would likely explain my leaks. Possibly only happening under load near redline?

I'm going to try to make a stable setup to check inches of water vacuum while driving. Should be interesting haha.

[pandaboo911]

My guess is that rectangular metal contact thing ensures that the head is grounded to the block?
It is a fiber gasket right? so whatever is leaking will just make its way around the right stuff

[JGood]

One of the things I wanted to do this winter was make a new set of engine mount arms. When I originally put the m60 in, I used 300mm.de mount arms. When I did the m60b44, I notched the oil pan, ditched the 20mm subframe spacers, and made my own mounts that lowered the engine 20mm. When I did this, I completely jacked up the alignment. Height wise, I was dead on, but the engine was shifted about 3/8" to the passenger side.

I fixed that by remaking the mounts. I put them on, and noticed right off the bat, the steering shaft is now kissing the header. When I originally modified the header, I curved it around the steering shaft, so when the engine was lowered, it no longer fit that curve. But the fact that I screwed up the mounts and pushed the engine to the passenger side gave it clearance, until now. There's no easy solution there, as much as I wanted there to be. So I removed the sway bar, control arm, steering rack, engine mount arm, and lifted the engine about 3", all so I could wrestle the header out after spending an hour getting the bolts off. There just isn't any room at all.

Once off, I notched it. Yes, this will theoretically impede flow. But one look inside the flange where it bolts to the cylinder head, and it's obvious this stamped steel piece of crap isn't exactly doing a great job from the start, so I'm hoping it won't be noticeable. I'll eventually do a set of custom headers.

I picked up the harbor freight fender-mount hoist thing. It's spectacular, I wish I would have bought one years ago. Worth every penny.

[JGood]

Looking at a pic of the head gasket.... You can see how thin the area around the oil drain is. And what the hell is that little metal-looking thing at the edge of the gasket? That looks like it's right where mine is leaking. How could the head possibly seal to that? I don't remember seeing that when I assembled the engine.

[JGood]

I've had the car back together and ready to drive for a couple weeks now. We've been getting a ton of bad weather so it's just been sitting. I did take it for a 5 mile drive Friday to test things out. I parked it after that for the weekend, and yesterday got under it to check for any leaks. Sure enough, it had a run of oil coming from the same spot, where the head/block/timing covers intersect. I can't imagine my new gasket/sealer didn't seal, so I'm thinking it's possibly the head gasket. It's really frustrating because I pulled the engine mainly just to fix this leak. I decided to throw a big glob of 'The Right Stuff' all over where it's leaking, just as a hail Mary. I am 99.9% sure that it will not do anything, and I will have to tear the engine apart. Really frustrating...


Here's a pic from before I tore it apart. Looks the same right now.

[dirtysix]

Fair enough. You've had it apart a few times ha.

I forget now but did you get to the bottom of your running problems? Have a shocking miss on mine at the moment that I have to work through.

[JGood]

Last lot of detents I mucked about with, I just cleaned/polished them up with some fine emery paper. Worked a treat.

I was considering that. I saw an article in the Roundel where they actually recommended that, before the tools/parts were available to replace the sleeves. But the sleeve has some sort of coating, I'm afraid I'll get it working nicely, put it all in the car, then have to pull it back out again 3k miles later. I literally have to tear my entire car apart to get the trans out :(

I found the parts, and the drift tool specs (they're simple, just 1" rods with stepped lips to hold the sleeves). I'm having a buddy make me the tools, so I think I'll give this a go.

[dirtysix]

Last lot of detents I mucked about with, I just cleaned/polished them up with some fine emery paper. Worked a treat.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Since the pinion is helically cut...
As the pinion rotates, the next pinion tooth engages the rack tooth at the "top" of the rack. As the pinion rotates, the contact moves from the top of the rack to the bottom of the rack.
The distance the rack moves as the same pinion tooth pushes on the rack tooth is greater for the more steeply angled teeth near the ends than it is for the shallower angles at the center.

Those are cool photos. Thanks for posting!

It looks like there are only 2-3 transition teeth and then after that the high angle teeth and rack speed are constant.

[JGood]

Is it the width of the teeth that makes it progressive?

That, and/or the angle. Maybe both are required to allow proper mesh?

[kristov]

Is it the width of the teeth that makes it progressive?

[JGood]

Had off work today, so I went to town on this car. Engine is out, and the top end is resealed.

Here was the problem. The m60b44 requires home-made upper timing cover gaskets, and after about 8k miles, mine started leaking pretty bad. It happened very quickly, one day it was fine, the next it was dumping oil. I cut off the ends of the old m60 head gaskets and reused them, but cut them a bit short. I figured RTV would seal it up fine.

You can see the problem area:





And my fix below. As you can see, I made my own gaskets out of 1/16" gasket material (1.58mm) vs. the stock headgasket material (1.74mm), and also made them a bit on the long side (you can see the gasket bulging up because it's bottomed out against the head). In addition, I used Permatex "The Right Stuff Grey" sealant, as I've heard great things about it, vs. RTV. I put the valve covers back on, and there is definitely a difference in the timing cover height vs cylinder head height (1.74mm head gasket vs 1.58mm timing cover gasket). Hopefully it won't cause a leak. I used sealant at the joint of the valve cover/timing cover/cylinder head junction.






I then started messing with the trans. My old 200k mile Getrag 420g is working fine, but I picked up a 50k mile 420g a few months back, and figured I'd swap it in as 'preventive maintenance'. I bolted up my shifter to the trans to row through the gears, and immediately noticed an issue. The shifter would not spring back to the center position, after being moved to the 5th/6th gate. It just flopped around. I removed the 5th/6th detent cover and detent spring, and found the problem. The pin was seized. I pulled it out (with a lot of force), cleaned both the pin and sleeve, lubed it up with Synchomax, and worked it back and fourth a bit, but it's still very difficult to move. I reassembled it, and the spring barely provides enough pressure to push the pin back in and pull the shifter over to the normal neutral position.

My problem is, I don't know if replacing the pin will fix it. My pin looks fine. No scoring or anything. So I assume the sleeve is shot, although nothing is really apparent to me while looking at it. After doing some research, it appears that the 420g shares the 18mm pin sleeve with the ZF tranny's, which BMW sells sleeves for. But doing this without the proper tool seems like it could be a major chore, apparently it's hard to get the old sleeve out without damaging the bore, and hard to get the new sleeve in without bending the edge.

Then I have to ask, how/why did this happen in the first place? Why did the clearance close in to the point where it's too much friction to slide? Is there another problem, that caused this?









I also spent some time with an e36 325 and e36 95 m3 rack side by side. Not the results I was expecting, considering info I've read recently. The e36 325 rack is linear, the 95 M3 rack is progressive. The 95 M3 rack is *slightly* slower on center, but noticeably quicker after about a 1/2 turn of the wheel in either direction.

I measured my e36 rack as 44mm/rev the whole way through. The 95 M3 rack was about 42mm/rev for the first half rev, but after that jumped up to 50mm.

Both racks had 160mm of travel. The M3 rack does it with 3.2 turns, the e36 325i rack does it with 3.5

Proof of linear vs progressive:

95 M3:


e36 325i:



The only thing I still want to do, when I have time, is take measurements near center at small increments on both racks, maybe 1/8 rev's.