[lurker14]

Just got a call from the Indy, I took the car in knowing it needed a new eccentric shaft sensor/motor. They diagnosed the same and said they would call me when it was done. They called and the part was in, but it still wasn't working, said they would call back when they knew what it was. That call was today and they need to replace the eccentric shaft also, instead of $1100 its going to be $3000.......FML.

It seems there is a service bulletin from BMW about the issue, it is also not the first eccentric shaft my indy has replaced and there is no revised part or anything so i may be back here in another 48k miles. so much for more reliable than the N54.

Here is my question to all of you since I can't find anything online about the replacement procedure, is there any work/mods that could/should be done while they are doing it?

I took it in because I though I should get the motor right before putting a tune on it, even though it ran perfect except for the codes. The usual bolt-ons are a sure thing and I may go pure turbos and additional fueling down the line so I am really hoping there is something that will save me a few dollars later that can be done today so its not just 3k to get me back to where I started.

[weehe126]

As someone who replaced the eccentric shaft servomotor. It blows my mind that the shaft could go bad. It is basically a third cam shaft, what could possibly break on it. What made them think the actual shaft is bad?

[lurker14]

they put the new motor in and it wont turn the shaft, to much resistance, they said usually they can get away with just lubing it but no dice. Also said it was probably the shaft that killed the old motor, which makes sense because about a year ago i was intermittently getting a loud rapid pinging after shutting the car off that eventually went away(no codes).

video in this post is the same noise I was getting http://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1116989

[weehe126]

Originally Posted by lurker14

they put the new motor in and it wont turn the shaft, to much resistance, they said usually they can get away with just lubing it but no dice. Also said it was probably the shaft that killed the old motor, which makes sense because about a year ago i was intermittently getting a loud rapid pinging after shutting the car off that eventually went away(no codes).

video in this post is the same noise I was getting http://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1116989

I had that exact same sound which lead to me replacing mine. There is a lot of resistance in a normal shaft because it is spring loaded. The BMW instructions specifically say be careful when manually rotating the shaft as it may harm you or the servomotor. I find it very hard to believe that they were able to replace the motor (because they had to turn the shaft to do it) and after determine the shaft is seized. Even if the shaft has resistance idk if that means it needs to be replaced, just removed and cleaned.

[lurker14]

its hard to say, info is going from the mechanic to the girl who called then to me an on to the internet, lots of room for confusion. I have only seen the parts in drawings, ill ask for them to give me the old ones and post up some pictures, i have enough of a machining background that having the bad parts in hand should give me an idea of the failure. I have a usual shop that I take most of the cars to when a job is bigger than I want to tackle but I have never used this shop before, but they have a good reputation for BMWs and have been a family business for a long time so I though with this being a very BMW specific issue they would be the better one to deal with it.

[weehe126]

Originally Posted by lurker14

its hard to say, info is going from the mechanic to the girl who called then to me an on to the internet, lots of room for confusion. I have only seen the parts in drawings, ill ask for them to give me the old ones and post up some pictures, i have enough of a machining background that having the bad parts in hand should give me an idea of the failure. I have a usual shop that I take most of the cars to when a job is bigger than I want to tackle but I have never used this shop before, but they have a good reputation for BMWs and have been a family business for a long time so I though with this being a very BMW specific issue they would be the better one to deal with it.

The servomotor priced seemed right as the part alone is $500 and took me 8 hours to replace. So I assume they are reasonable and the shaft replacement is probably right as I think the part is $1500. Please post up whatever you find as I have been thinking the servomotor failures have been due to incompetent techs replacing the VANOS bolts.

[E92nate]

Did you get any weird noise when putting your key in the ignition before startup?

[lurker14]

just the noise in the video above about a year before failure, i have comfort access so I assume you would get it when you put the key in without it. I took it to the dealer at the time and they said "could not recreate" but im pretty sure what they meant is we tried it once and didnt hear the noise so let us get back to screwing people on maintenance work. The noise eventually went away and I never had any codes so I thought it might have just worked its self out.

edit: car is still at the indy i presume they had to wait a couple days for parts and I would imagine I will hear something this week, they know its not my only transport so they are not rushing anything.

[lurker14]

update time
still don't have my car back and had not heard anything so I called them on friday(week and a half since our last chat) they said that the high current draw of the stalled new motor cooked the ecu(may not have been the ecu, so many damn computers in this car I don't even know what to call them all...could just be her dumbing down the explanation but what matters is it cooked something). She also said that bmw is covering it because there is a recall on it....that part makes very little sense to me. I cant imagine there is actually a recall, maybe a service bulletin for something that is easy to screw up and they are in well enough with BMW that they can get them to cover the part. Or they just flat out screwed something up and would rather eat the cost quietly than tell me "sorry but we are taking care of it". I would love some opinions on that. I was told it will be done Tuesday.. but we all know how that goes.

[lurker14]

I picked the car up a couple weeks ago, I have been out of town a lot so I have only driven it once since then, but the girlfriend has been driving my car the past couple days with no problem, so it's fixed.

i have the old shaft, I have not gotten a chance to take it to work and get measurements on anything so i will update with pictures again when i have done that, if i don't get to it in the next 2-3 weeks it will be at least October before i have time. But i will get to and provide pictures when I do. just looking at it with my eyes i can see some wear on part of the gears where near one of the ends(not sure if its the full valve open or full closed end of the travel) so that was probably where it was jamming. The bearing surfaces don't look right but its hard to describe any better than that until i can get some tools on it. I don't want to jump to conclusions but i am going to guess if anything is to blame it was a lubrication issue, my car was a lease the entire time before I owned it and I have full records. Oil was done at 13k, 25, 34, and 38 before I got it at 41.

[weehe126]

A friend just fixed his shaft by lubing it up and manually rotating it. I'm pretty sure there is some oil starvation issues with the shaft and it is also causing the motors to burn out. Some (like me) got lucky just replacing the servo motor, others clearly have not been lucky.