New VANOS? - I drove through the problem...

[m3f_Holdon4DearLife]

Hey All,



Been a while since I've been here, mainly because I was really starting to hate my Cabrio!



Anyway, managed to sort all the issues out, have some Goodyear F1 D3's now which I must say are excellent for a rainy country like Holland!



Anyway.......my VANOS system had gone! Lumpy at lick over, very noisy and loss of power up to 4,500rpm. €1,600 + labour to replace!!!! F*** that!



I really couldn't afford to replace it just yet and after advice that it doesn't cause any problems with the engine, drove apprx 3,000kms....it was horrible but I needed the transport!



...and then my garaage changed the engine oil to the BMW E46 hand book recomended, 500kms later and the VANOS kicks in again. That was over 1,000kms ago and I've not seen or heard a thing! Whether it was the oil, dirt and grit stuck in the butterflies or a hand of God. Fingers crossed I've saved myself well over €2000!!!!



Car has done 98K kms and I've been told that the VANOS goes around then......maybe others should try changing the oil and bearing with it....did my head in but worked out in the end...



Holiday in the sun this year!



:dance: :dance: :dance: :dance: :dance: :dance:

[m3f_M-avant_0baeb1c2f5]

pretty cool. is the oil thicker or thinner now? will you be staying with the E46 spec oil?



but most important - enjoy the sun !

[m3f_M3AN_5f4dc0ba80]

This is very interesting...



I was recently talking to a tech at my stealer and he was saying that the VANOS issues that required replacement were not a result of bad design, rather bad maintenance.



Apparently there's a tiny filter for the dual VANOS that's meant to get cleaned every 40,000 clicks but normally it doesn't because it's a PITA. If it doesn't get cleaned the unit can get noisy and occasionally fail due to lack of fluid. If it's noisy, here at least, the first thing they do is replace the stainless steel filter - he reckoned that this solved more than 90% of all reported dual VANOS issues.



According to him, BMW AG updated the Inspection II service procedures for the Euro e36 M3 about mid '99 and since then there's been a massive decrease in VANOS failures *except* for those cars not serviced by an authorised service centre (i.e. didn't get the update). This prevented BMW from needing to issue a worldwide recall according to him.



It seems consistent that they changed out your filter and once the system had flushed itself (500k's seems reasonable for this) your problem went away.