[Shawn_speed]

The ambient temperature was 110 degrees per car’s computer around 5:30 yesterday. We were just clearing afternoon rush hour 40 miles north of Phoenix on I17 headed to Flagstaff for dinner (can you think of a better excuse to drive a 335i, 280 miles round trip when flagstaff is 25 degrees cooler than Phoenix and has great restaurants?). Just past Black Canyon City, the freeway climbs up a beautiful 7 mile stretch of canyon walls up to a mesa at better than 6% grade. The 18 wheelers with their flashers on in the slow lane and hulking SUV’s doing 70 mph in the fast lane create a nice coned course set up on top of the well engineered S curves. The canyon walls on one side and the guard rails on the other assure a cop free jaunt to the top.

I routinely drove 125 mph during European delivery on cruise control after the break in period back in October. Oil temp reading of 240 degrees was standard with 70 degree ambient temps. Yesterday, I had the presence of mind to reset the computer to record my average speed from bottom to top of the mesa, but I got too excited and the jaunt ended too soon to remember to turn off the climate control set at 72 degrees and didn’t look at the oil temp. Gage until cresting the mesa and coasting down to 85mph where cruise control took back control. The gauge was exactly halfway between 210 and 300 or around 255 degrees.

There were three of us in the car and a fair amount of stuff in the trunk and a full tank of gas.

Shawn
Phoenix

[Evo8MRto335I]

Hi Shawn,

I am glad you mentioned the temps. I live in Tucson and as you know very well we are in the same boat . I started driving my car hard after the break in and I am getting 240 degrees, perhaps 250 at the most. The temps outside are around 105-110 degrees.

My car has the newest oil temp gage which read up to 340 degrees so it basicly stays right before the mid gauge which is around 240.

Living in hot AZ the BMW overheating issue was a big issue for me, I read from other members having many overheating issues and I was very concerned. So far so good, it looks like my car is holding down the temp very well.

Just for the record, my car has the sport package so I assume that it has the cooler.

[leftcoastman]

You can look in the passenger fenderwell and see if you have the oil cooler.

BTW - I rarely, if ever, got above 255 on the street. On my first track day, it got close to 290. The consistent hard driving (with repetitive moments of low speed in tight turns) you see at the track will rarely, if ever, be matched on the street.

[Shawn_speed]

Originally Posted by Evo8MRto335I

Hi Shawn,

I am glad you mentioned the temps. I live in Tucson and as you know very well we are in the same boat . I started driving my car hard after the break in and I am getting 240 degrees, perhaps 250 at the most. The temps outside are around 105-110 degrees.

My car has the newest oil temp gage which read up to 340 degrees so it basicly stays right before the mid gauge which is around 240.

Living in hot AZ the BMW overheating issue was a big issue for me, I read from other members having many overheating issues and I was very concerned. So far so good, it looks like my car is holding down the temp very well.

Just for the record, my car has the sport package so I assume that it has the cooler.

What is your build date?

Do you have manual or steptronic?

Make sure you read the sticky posts on top of this forum. There are a great couple of BMW technician training manuals that talk about how the machine "watches” your driving. The system changes the cylinder head operating temperature depending on what it “sees”; higher temps for better gas mileage and lower temps for better power and response. This may account for the way our gages behave. First law of thermodynamics, conservation of energy, tells us that if there is extra cooling taking place on one part of the system, the extra energy would show up somewhere else. Since the oil temperature gage sensor gets an average somewhere downstream of a cooler or thereabouts (it would be nice to know for sure), when the system changes the operating temperature of the cylinder heads and lowers it, the energy dump will raise the average temperature “Seen” by the gage downstream.

This is just the system operating normally. However, since so many of us are used to idiot lights and gages that are designed not to convey real information, steady state changes of a gage while we drive spooks us.

There is talk of higher temps on cylinder 5 & 6. Wouldn’t this be true of every in-line engine? Coolant coming out of the bottom of the radiator carries the least amount of energy, as it travels along the engine, front to back, collecting heat, its temperature rises, reaching maximum as it passes the last cylinders and circulates back to the water pump.

I wonder if this engine overheating paranoia is a similar effect to what happened in the 80’s to Audi before the invasion of Japanese luxury sport sedans. Suddenly driving German luxury cars was cool for a whole new tier of middle class Americans moving up from Caddies and Lincolns who couldn’t quite stretch for a BMW or MB but an Audi fit their bill. They were not used to the small brake pedal and cramped quarters by the accelerator. When a few trial lawyers were thrown into the mix, instead of a bunch of idiots ending up on America’s funniest Videos looking backwards and driving forward through garage walls, they ended up instant millionaires through the magic of “sudden acceleration”.

All you slush box drivers that have to push the brake pedal before you can change gears can thank the happy millionaires and their lawyers.

Throw in the accountant’s decision to omit oil coolers on step cars (the same tech. manuals mentioned above from N54’s release time in summer of 2006 mention oil coolers for both manual and step 335’s), the ease of driving these puppies hard by relatively inexperienced drivers on tracks, magazines that test them when rigged and offered up by competitors and a few bogus posts on forums like this and presto, you have a widespread engine overheating issue.

These factors explain why the gages were changed to show up to 340 degrees instead of just 300 in my opinion.

Shawn
Phoenix