[StradaRedlands]

Words of wisdom there doit659!

[doit659]

Well, I am not arguing with you. I understand your approach.

I was speculating on why BMW would suggest the procedure is to drop the oil pan, which is their recommended procedure for the recall.

Actually, I have a question for you.

I have watched videos of guys rebuilding BMW engines and they are like surgeons not wanting a piece of lint polluting the engine.

How can some VANOS bolts shear off and drop all the way down to the oil pan and not rip up the engine, especially the cam shafts?

I would think random pieces of bolt heads whipping off the VANOS would damage the engine before they fell into the oil pan.

Also, how possibly could those bolt heads travel from the valve cover down to the oil pan?

[Mike K]

Originally Posted by Efthreeoh

I'll ask a dumb question. Why does the pan need to come off to find the broken bolt heads? If it was my car I'd get a borescope and look around for them then fish them out with a magnetic tool. The oil sensor hole is plenty big enough to get either tool in the pan to search for and fish the broken parts out.

The Vanos bolts are aluminum so a magnetic tool won’t help... And, there’s deep crevasses in the oil pan that may make a scope tool usage problematic.

[doit659]

Ok, that's all good information which I didn't know.

But why don't these bolts shearing off, even if aluminum, tear up the engine on their way down to the oil pan? Are they just softer metal than the camshaft, manifolds, etc.?

[Leucosticte]

Had a similar scenario when my parents took their diesel X3 in to get the NOX sensors replaced under warranty, in the process they broke the SCR metering valve and refused to cover it and then wanted $1k to fix it when I did it myself for about $200 in parts and about 30 minutes of labor.

The funny thing is that the service advisor was like "the SCR metering valve is nowhere near where we did the work" even though the metering valve is right next to one of the NOX sensors and it's obvious that the tech broke it while he was in the area. No big deal, it's old plastic, shit happens, but I don't know why they refused to cover it and then tried to lie to us about it being their fault. My dad told me that the two service advisors there said that he should just get a new X3 instead of trying to keep this one going even though he's put 40k miles on it (122k now) with nothing but oil changes and brakes and some recall/warranty work with the emissions system.

Anyway, I was derailing the thread, my buddy had a Duralast axle on his 328xi put in by the previous owner and when he tried to remove it when he was replacing his engine he had an absolute bitch of a time doing so. So to me, it's believable that the aftermarket axle is harder to get off than the OEM stuff. However, I think that this is due to the lock ring being different on the aftermarket axle and nothing to do with the splines themselves. After my buddy removed the axle, he popped a used GKN one on there and had 0 issues afterwards, so I think that your diff is fine.

There's also this thread where the OP had issues with aftermarket axles: https://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1770569