[Don N.]

What started out as a possible simple no crank and no start issue has progressively gotten more confusing with each passing day.

Initially, out of no where, the car would not turn on after running perfectly fine when it was parked the day before. Everything powered on, but there was no crank.

Then as I tried testing out various things, such as the IBS, driver side ground cable, CAS relay, battery (reads 12.4v), all of a sudden now the wipers are constantly running when the car is on, the trunk doesn't latch close or open remotely anymore and there are a ton of error codes now.

Only clue I might have so far is when accessing the BCM on the passenger side underneath the fuse box, it seems like there are some water stains on the kick panel. I don't think those marks would be there naturally from assembly?

I don't have ISTA or INPA, but I have protools which I have tried using to scan the car, but there are just a ton of codes.

[Don N.]

In case it helps those in the future, the issue did end up being my starter. This is going to be a bit long, but I figure more information is better than less. No prior signs of it going out at all, which was the main reason why I never suspected it. If I could go back and redo it, I would have tried tapping the starter to see if it would cause it to turn over, which it most likely would have, since the starter worked when bench testing it.



That just goes to show that the starter can be bench tested and look like it is good, but not work or respond at all when still in the car. The starter didn't even make any noise while in the car, so it wasn't a load vs no load situation. If I had to assume, it was probably the solenoid on the starter that went bad. I did test the starter outside of the car before putting it in, by connecting jumper cables to the power wire on the starter and ground, and then a wire for the solenoid switch. One, this was to verify that the new starter itself was good, since I had seen some people mention their starters were DOA out of the box. Two, I also wanted to just double check and verify that the electronics/power from the start/stop button was sending the signals and power correctly to the starter.



People suggest using a 10mm wrench for the back starter bolt, but I noticed that a 3/8" wrench fit almost perfectly. The 10mm is fairly loose and I wouldn't trust it. Not worth the risk. Realistically, a 3/8" wrench might not be worth the risk either, but I used it in conjunction with an actual E12 wrench. My 3/8" flex head was too thick and would hit the firewall, so that didn't work. Using a 1/4" flex head helped, but with the angle of the wrench, it wasn't easy enough for me to apply any real torque on it to get the bolt loose. I ended up just using an E12 wrench that could slide between the turbo inlet and the firewall and with my fingertips, slowly break/turn the bolt. It wasn't easy, but I wanted the bolt out more than it wanted to stay in.



The E12 wrench "bottomed" out against one of the fins on the bell housing, so that's when I had to use a 3/8" box end to move the bolt just enough so that I could get the E12 wrench back on there again. I didn't realize that the N54 bolts were steel, so I didn't replace them. I had bought replacement bolts that were aluminum and noticed that those were E14, which I ended up not using. Obviously getting the rear/top starter bolt back in, I just had to guess the torque. It was almost harder to tighten it down than it was to pull it out. Some people mention getting a cheater bar back there, but I just don't see how there's any room or angle to do so, but I guess it has been done before.



My OFHG had been leaking, so I went ahead and changed this at the same time, since it was pretty convenient with the intake manifold being off at the same time. This all was pretty straight forward. Only difference for me was since the car had to sit while the starter got shipped to me, I ended up loosening the rear OFHG bolt to slowly let the oil in the housing slowly drain out into a rag. The next day when I went to go pull the main housing off, there was basically no oil.



Additionally, with the engine cover off, I also replaced the spark plugs at the same time. With the starter back in and the spark plugs not connected, I went ahead and primed the engine since it was convenient enough for me at this point. However, otherwise, I don't feel like it would have been necessary. When you change your oil, the filter is completely dry, so that's a bit of a moot point. Also, the based on how much oil that came out of it, it doesn't seem like there's much oil in there anyways, since the majority of the oil in the housing probably drains due to gravity naturally every time the car is turned off and sitting.



If I were to do it again, I probably would have done the valve cover gasket as well, but my main goal was to really fix the no start issue.



After I got everything back together, the car turned on immediately, but had rough idling issues, went into limp mode, a bunch of engine error codes, misfires in 3 of the cylinders, etc. My initial though was maybe I didn't connect something, a hose was loose, or some issue with the new spark plugs. I did find one intake pipe hose to be seated, but not tightened down. However, that didn't change anything. At this point, I was thinking about the threads/posts I read about priming the engine with oil and engines having oil starvation issues after doing a OFHG, so it worried me a bit, but again, I did prime the engine, so I ignored that possibility.



A quick search online showed a few people had mentioned that their vanos solenoids malfunctioned coincidentally right after changing their OFHG. I thought it was a weird coincidence and I wasn't sure if the vanos solenoids could cause engine misfires in 3 of the cylinders, but they were easy enough to pull out and clean, so I went ahead and did it. Luckily and surprisingly, that completely solved all of my rough idle/limp mode issues. I was pretty careful not to get any debris into the passages, but who knows.



As a final side note, my wiper issue did end up resolving itself. I guess wipers are one of the first things to freak out in a sense when there are issues that could result in the battery having a slightly lower charge than usual. Even with a real battery pack attached to the car and the voltage reading 12.4v the entire time, the wipers were still freaking out and constantly running. However, once I put everything together, when I went to go turn the car on, it only had 11.9v, there were no issues with the car turning over or wiper issue any longer.