[pifane]

Hi guys and girls,

Last night I was gently driving and coming back to my home. At the intersection, when engaging the third gear, I heard a loud noise near the transmission. I immediately pushed the clutch and stop the car. Called the tow truck.

Look what we found at the garage today :


immediately



My car is a E90 2006 330XI, manual with 70k miles. Never been at the track, no modification. Shit really happen. Anyone already saw this??

This is the part #1 on this :


No bimmer for the week. Part is expensive. But for now the transfer case is ok, so I done the right thing by stopping the car immediately.

[pifane]

Is that a good idea to but a used one? New one cost 800$ easy. Less than 300$ shipped for a new one.

[freon480]

i just replaced mine with a used one. they are out there for cheaper than 300 used. i paid 100 cash for one off a 2010 with 10k on it. no way i was gonna shell out almost a $1000 on a shaft.

[pifane]

freon480, You had the same problem? How many miles on your car?

I've the do the same thing. Found one from a 2009 for 250$. I wonder what is the cause of our problem. Is there an engineer in the room?

Maybe a rock? I dont think it's a normal thing to replace a 70k miles driveshaft (with no abuse of course) . Indeed, Im not the first owner, but I dont think the last one was drifting with the baby seat behind....

[freon480]

well im the 4th owner and i noticed mine was about to break a few months back while checking over everything while the car was up on the lift doing an oil change. my car is a 2006 325xi with manual transmission and i had about 140k. the pervious owner for mine was a friend that put a hard 10k on it. i coined it up to that and mileage seeing as the front universal had no play at all. i also believe that the fact that the motor is constantly adjusting the amount of power from front to rear plays into the wear as well.

[pistolpete5113]

By the way things looked in the picture, it looks like it may have been going out for a while. It's possible the needle bearings in the yoke started to loose it's grease, and possible water intrusion further helped with the bearings go out. Finally, metal to metal impact from driving in traffic, stopping and starting, and acceleration over time caused the shaft to break.

Now, after 70k miles having something like this to happen is beyond me, especially on a car that isn't driven hard. I have seen something like this on an x3, but it had 140k miles on it.

[07lilredwagon]

It looks like the drive shaft itself is fine. its the yoke where the bearings reside. This is a bearing failure and not a shaft failure. Indeed, the needle bearing seal had been compromised, grease comes out, water gets in and rust demolishes the bearings in short order. It looks too, like the problem had been festering for a while. Its hard to see or feel this unless you are looking for it, so dont feel too bad!....There should have been some vibrations or noises coming from it for a while...though they may have been small and did not register as anything other than road vibrations, ect....

glad you stopped and pulled over right away..you were mere yards from a catastrophe....

JP

[jeguth1s]

Took my car in to have my oil pan gasket replaced and I got a call informing me that this has happened to me as well... Mileage123k

[turbolover]

Dang BMW are built like SHEET! With time they break down and are spendy to fix....!