[star335]

can someone tell me if this seal is intact or not? thank you in advance

[CLEAN13BOOSTED]

Seal looks fine. No signs of seepage or leak, looks good!

[udfxrookie]

Since this thread is still living, I gotta ask... what's the worst that can go... and what would be salvageable?
Mainly asking because I spun a rod bearing and am looking for a new crank and have seen engines for sale with this being the problem. COULD the crank go bad... or the engine spin a bearing? I know the oil pump could be toast, passages, timing chain, bent valves and on and on... but chances of it damaging the crank?

[DTWinters]

Yesterday, I drove home roughly 15 miles from a friend's place. While driving roughly 60 mph I noticed my AC was no longer blowing cold and I got a red battery symbol and "Battery not charging" warning on my 2011 E93 (91,500 miles). About 3 miles later I was on a flyover and noticed that my power steering wasn't working. Two more miles and I was home. The car idled a little rough before I shut it down after a minute.

I drove half a mile to an Advance Auto store and while dude was trying to work his test tool on the alternator which I thought might be bad, I noticed my accessory belt was missing.

Long story short, they didn't have it in stock and I drove home. It was raining hard and my car started freaking out (performing poorly and the dashboard glitching) and basically died as I got home. The battery was super drained. I coasted into my carport. After ordering a new Gates belt off Amazon, I found this thread. I didn't sleep well last night. Today, I pulled the crankshaft pulley off and found some of the shredded belt at the front crank seal (first pic and pile on the left of second pic).

Does this seal look compromised? Very established indy shop in Austin, TX gave an estimate of $580 to replace seal (and look around behind it). Second bid of $1,385 to pull oil pan if that is necessary. I get one free tow per mechanical issue from my insurance, so I want to pick the right shop with appropriate pricing. Just last week my home AC went out so I'm out a bunch of money between these two challenges!

Thanks for helping to set my expectations here.

[mr_malvo]

Sorry to hear. The second picture looks concerning but, the third picture looks alright. If the belt broke through the seal you would have a visible path through the block - I don't see that in your pictures. If during cleanup no belt pieces needed to be pulled from the seal, and no pieces were stuck in between the seal and the block, then seems to me you are ok.

Belt replacement, drive around for a few miles and then monitor the seal area for leaks. Worst case replace the seal but, it doesn't look like the engine ingested belt pieces.

Originally Posted by DTWinters

Yesterday, I drove home roughly 15 miles from a friend's place. While driving roughly 60 mph I noticed my AC was no longer blowing cold and I got a red battery symbol and "Battery not charging" warning on my 2011 E93 (91,500 miles). About 3 miles later I was on a flyover and noticed that my power steering wasn't working. Two more miles and I was home. The car idled a little rough before I shut it down after a minute.

I drove half a mile to an Advance Auto store and while dude was trying to work his test tool on the alternator which I thought might be bad, I noticed my accessory belt was missing.

Long story short, they didn't have it in stock and I drove home. It was raining hard and my car started freaking out (performing poorly and the dashboard glitching) and basically died as I got home. The battery was super drained. I coasted into my carport. After ordering a new Gates belt off Amazon, I found this thread. I didn't sleep well last night. Today, I pulled the crankshaft pulley off and found some of the shredded belt at the front crank seal (first pic and pile on the left of second pic).

Does this seal look compromised? Very established indy shop in Austin, TX gave an estimate of $580 to replace seal (and look around behind it). Second bid of $1,385 to pull oil pan if that is necessary. I get one free tow per mechanical issue from my insurance, so I want to pick the right shop with appropriate pricing. Just last week my home AC went out so I'm out a bunch of money between these two challenges!

Thanks for helping to set my expectations here.

[DTWinters]

Installed a new H8 AGM Everlast battery (indy wanted $518 total) for $190 and my time. There's a great YouTube video with a pro tip here (

). Got the crankshaft pulley back on (tough to get first bolt threaded!) and installed the new belt.

Car started right up. Sporadically idled a little rough, dropping below 500 rpm and popping up about 800 rpm to catch itself. Drove a few blocks and there weren't any error messages. Pulled over ,opened the oil fill cap, and a little steam/smoke wafted out. Drove home, about a mile total. Opened cap and more steam/smoke wafted out. Engine seemed hot for not much runtime. Looked in cap and I could see metal bottom (of the cylinder head?). Internal gauge stated oil level was right in the middle. I poured roughly a quart in and can still see metal on the bottom including a torx bolt head. The belly pan is off and 20 minutes after the drive no oil has dripped down from the front seal.

Anyone have thoughts on my challenge? Could shredded belt get past the seal and clog the oil pump without wrecking the seal? Do I just need to say a few Hail Marys and drive it around this weekend? I fear having to spend over $1K just to see if there is a lot more damage. I fear spending money needlessly when I'm already going to spend $5,800 to replace my home AC next week. When it rains it pours!


Or, am I being a hypochondriac and the car would be throwing warnings at me if oil weren't circulating properly? I hope so!

Thanks in advance for any and all advice!

[mr_malvo]

Severe oil leaks from a badly damaged front seal would be rather noticeable. A few miles of driving should reveal one. If things look dry from both the radiator side and the bottom of the car, then sounds like you're good to go.

Originally Posted by DTWinters

Installed a new H8 AGM Everlast battery (indy wanted $518 total) for $190 and my time. There's a great YouTube video with a pro tip here. Got the crankshaft pulley back on (tough to get first bolt threaded!) and installed the new belt.

Car started right up. Sporadically idled a little rough, dropping below 500 rpm and popping up about 800 rpm to catch itself. Drove a few blocks and there weren't any error messages. Pulled over ,opened the oil fill cap, and a little steam/smoke wafted out. Drove home, about a mile total. Opened cap and more steam/smoke wafted out. Engine seemed hot for not much runtime. Looked in cap and I could see metal bottom (of the cylinder head?). Internal gauge stated oil level was right in the middle. I poured roughly a quart in and can still see metal on the bottom including a torx bolt head. The belly pan is off and 20 minutes after the drive no oil has dripped down from the front seal.

Anyone have thoughts on my challenge? Could shredded belt get past the seal and clog the oil pump without wrecking the seal? Do I just need to say a few Hail Marys and drive it around this weekend? I fear having to spend over $1K just to see if there is a lot more damage. I fear spending money needlessly when I'm already going to spend $5,800 to replace my home AC next week. When it rains it pours!


Or, am I being a hypochondriac and the car would be throwing warnings at me if oil weren't circulating properly? I hope so!

Thanks in advance for any and all advice!

[DTWinters]

Update:

I have driven 55 miles since removing my crankshaft pulley, cleaning out all the shredded belt, and replacing the belt. This broken belt also killed off my weak battery so that was replaced. I did all the work myself. And no oil has dripped from my car as it sits in my carport after 6 separate trips including 10 min stretches at highway speeds.

The call stalled once 2 miles after the repairs. It started right back up. The "Service Engine Soon" light came on and the BimmerLink app displayed error codes 29E0 and 29E1 as described in the screenshots below. The codes displayed again after I reset them, but not immediately.

These codes never displayed before the belt broke and this repair was completed. Of note, I did remove the mass air flow sensor while removing the air filter housing to create more room to work on the crankshaft pulley.

1. Are these codes after this repair concerning enough that I should stop driving the car?

2. On this second thread (https://www.e90post.com/forums/showt...1#post31126181) Efthreeoh opined that I have a vacuum leak. Wouldn't oil seep out of the seal onto the floor when the engine is hot, but not running?

3. Facing a $730 cost (includes $120 in required BMW dealer only sealant stuff!) to replace the front seal, does it make sense to replace the 12 year old mass air flow sensor for $33 to see if that resolves the error code situation? That part can even be returned.

Any and all advice is greatly appreciated.

P.S. Yes, I should not have split the thread to ask about not seeing pooled oil when I look in the filling hole. Seemingly, that was a non issue as the car is running well 99.9% of the time.

[mr_malvo]

1. I'm not familiar with those codes, so I can't comment. I suggest searching in the forum for those to see what comes up. They seem to be unrelated to the oil system.

2. If a front seal is bad it would leak while the engine is running. A vacuum leak would also be evident when the engine is running, but it's not related to the oil system.

3. A leaking front seal is not good but, it's also not the end of the car. The bigger problem is when pieces of belt are ingested. Based on the previous pictures and comments it doesn't look your car ingested belt.

Originally Posted by DTWinters

Update:


1. Are these codes after this repair concerning enough that I should stop driving the car?

2. On this second thread (https://www.e90post.com/forums/showt...1#post31126181) Efthreeoh opined that I have a vacuum leak. Wouldn't oil seep out of the seal onto the floor when the engine is hot, but not running?

3. Facing a $730 cost (includes $120 in required BMW dealer only sealant stuff!) to replace the front seal, does it make sense to replace the 12 year old mass air flow sensor for $33 to see if that resolves the error code situation? That part can even be returned.

Any and all advice is greatly appreciated.

P.S. Yes, I should not have split the thread to ask about not seeing pooled oil when I look in the filling hole. Seemingly, that was a non issue as the car is running well 99.9% of the time.

[DTWinters]

9 days and 130 miles after replacing the mass air flow sensor later and resetting the CEL codes, the "Service Engine Soon" light hasn't come back on. I cleaned the engine and belly pan and the car is running as well as ever!

So, roughly $250 and a bunch of elbow grease later I have a new battery, new accessory belt, and a new mass air flow sensor. And I continue with the old seal.

Thanks one and all for saving me at least $1,000 and getting me through this recent drama. I drove home with the top down on a nice Texas evening last night and she ran like a top! There was joy once again.

For those undertaking the repair, getting those torx bolts on and off takes plenty of time and is a blind effort if you don't remove the radiator fan (maybe I should have). Removing the air filter housing was a must. A 1.5" socket extension was required to clear the pulley and fit in the tight space.

Good luck!

-Trevor

P.S. Looking at the original mass air flow sensor I don't see anything wrong with it, but will stick with new one since it is working and only cost $32. Why take a chance? :-)

[E91_335i]

I just went thru my own belt shredding experience myself recently. I am new to the E90/N54 world, coming from the good ol' E38 and E39 beasts. Car developed a drive belt noise so I ordered a new belt and all new tensioners, all OEM. To my dismay, the noise remained. Then I learned about the fancy alternator decoupler these cars have, so I bought the tool and replaced that. There was STILL some noise left after all this, and using my stethoscope it seemed to be coming from the alternator, so I assumed the bearings were shot. I drove it around for a while longer not wanting to mess with it any further.

The other day it started getting louder, and eventually I smelled burning rubber, so I immediately shut it off. Fortunately I was just pulling out of the driveway at the time. Belt partly shredded but still on the pulleys. To my surprise when pulling it all apart, the alternator was perfectly fine and the issue was in fact the plastic PS pulley that cracked and was wobbling terribly. I would've never thought to look for that since I have never seen a car use PLASTIC for a drive belt pulley before! I am going to look at the subframe for rubbing next time I see the car.

So I ordered a new aftermarket aluminum one and much to my dismay as I went to torque it down, the threads for 2 of the 3 mounting bolts are FUBAR....FUUUU
I am going to JB weld it and hope that holds, as there's no way I am going to be able to helicoil it in situ without removing the pump and I do not want to mess with that.

As bad as that was, it could've been muuuch worse if the engine ingested part of the belt since it was wrapped all around the other pulleys. With much relief I found the seal intact as I removed the crank hub.. very thankful I do not have to mess with fishing it out!

That said, it was clearly weeping oil so I may as well replace it while I have everything apart already.

@Mr_Malvo, any chance I could borrow your tool? I can't PM since I have too few posts so I thought I would post here. I'm new to this board but established on the other Bimmer boards. Much as I like to buy new tools, I can't see myself ever using this one again (I hope..) so it really doesn't make sense to buy.

[Masay]

Hi, could you tell whether you think the belt was sucked into the engine?

I plan on replacing the crank seal anyway as it seems it is leaking, but I am trying to determine whether I need to open the oil pan and valve cover..

Thank you!

[thekevchung]

Originally Posted by Masay

Hi, could you tell whether you think the belt was sucked into the engine?

I plan on replacing the crank seal anyway as it seems it is leaking, but I am trying to determine whether I need to open the oil pan and valve cover..

Thank you!

Your crank seal looks fine to me. Would recommend replacing belt, tensioner, etc and monitoring carefully

Sorry this happened to you. Just happened to my 2008 535i two days ago - currently waiting for my shop to inspect the crank seal