E30 M52

B C

I spent all my cam install time today scrubbing my garage floor with some concrete cleaner. Lets just say yesterday I earned an Oil-Dri sponsorship for my accurate scale depiction of the BP Gulf oil spill.

I also discovered the E36 oil pan on this engine (which i'm not using) is cracked so that saves me from having to try selling it.

My vamos rebuild starts with a gross negligence towards following instructions and a blatant disregard for left handed threads so I snapped the torx screw inside the deep bore of the helical gear. Unrepairable.

This is the helical gear

I didnt want to curse my vamos by getting my Dora gloves all dirty but unfortunately oil on precision machined aluminum is very slippery and the vamos piston got away from me.

I couldnt quite get a good grip so I used some vise-grips, but the handles were oily so I dropped it again.

So the broken screw really happened but luckily i had a spare vamos assembly to pick parts from so no usable vamos parts were harmed in this rebuild.

I installed the Beisan. Its spelled Beisan, not BeSian, Beisan, like Nissan. Just like how its a Giubo and not a Guibo, and a vamos instead of a vanos, wait, dammit!

The Beisan anti rattle ring was installed and the piston seals were replaced. Its nice and tight now. Just hope it all works.

jc43089

Sweet gloves.

B C

More unbelievable progress:

VANOS solenoid got a makeover and its o-ring replaced. WOW.

KaiserRolls

Get a new cam sensor oring. I forgot to replace mine. Healthy dose of rtv and way-too-small oring for the "fix"

Jdesign

Making lots of progress on something we all thought we wouldn't see. I really enjoy your posts, informative and yet hilarious.

B C

Primary cam sprockets have been removed. Chain tensioner guides are groovy and will be replaced. Lower chain guides are broken/ disintegrating and will be replaced.

Someone has been in here before and had the sprockets off. The vanos seals were brittle so it wasnt for a vanos rebuild, the guides are plenty worn so it wasnt for that. So I would assume the head gasket has been replaced or something.

I could be sitting on a fresh BMW head gasket.

or

the engine could have overheated, they slapped on a 284k mile head with a Fail-Pro gasket and reused the head bolts.

who really knows.

I need to get my oil pan and baffle dropped off for welding so it is ready to go on in the near future.

KaiserRolls

Crazy how the guides were blasted already.

jc43089

Can you see the corner of the head gasket? It should stick out in one spot so you can see what it is if it isn't too crusty.

B C

Cams removed, they didnt break. Now to achieve the same success installing the S52 cams.

Probably Saturday

Daggerty

The first time is the worst. So the story goes.

KaiserRolls

Journals in good shape?

B C

KaiserRolls said:

Journals in good shape?

Yeah, nothing to see there

B C

Ball

Sacks

Intake cam is in but while torquing the bearing caps to 15 Nm two of the studs pulled out

I can only imagine the horror people feel as they torque head bolts into an aluminum block and feel it give way.

Not the end of the world at all but I will have to remove the cam and trays/lifters to helicoil them.

Minor annoyance. Not the progress I was hoping for today though

Jeff

Ouch man what a kick in the nuts

B C

1000x better than breaking a camshaft though. I'll take it.

KaiserRolls

Odd that the head-side went. You'd think the stud would be bottomed out and the nut wouldn't turn it anymore.

But as you said. 100000 times better than a cam

Jeff

Snap said:

1000x better than breaking a camshaft though. I'll take it.

But see now your doubling your chances at breaking it so that would be -1000x. We both know that will just cancel it self out now and create the crazy looking number "0"

Practice makes perfect?

The Full Banana

Helicoils are garbage. Get some keenserts from McMaster!

says the guy who had to use them too many times on his all aluminum engine.

HipMF

Times-sert is another option.

Don't have any experience with them, but my boss thinks they are great. Do have experience with heli-coils, mostly trying to fix ones that someone else has installed and have now failed. Not fun.

B C

Being a low torque application I will stick with heli-coils. If it were head bolt threads in an aluminum block id definitely consider the timesert. Thanks for the mentions though

WIBIMMERS

E30 M52