Our latest BMW project car? The one that’s just off warranty? It broke after just a lap and a half.
While cruising around a damp-but-drying Florida International Rally and Motorsport Park in our 2015 BMW 435i, just warming up the oil, the dash let us know that our charging system was no lon…
You guys should have read this article before going to the track!
Interesting! Does anyone make a steel pulley to replace the plastic one?
Wait! You guys have a lathe.
Glass half full - you made it all the way from Cincinnati without issues.
Slippery said:You guys should have read this article before going to the track!
I know, right!?
Jerry said:Glass half full - you made it all the way from Cincinnati without issues.
On balance, shredding a belt an hour away from home with a trailer is better than a day away from home on I-26.
Perfect example of why that era of turbo BMWs is not great. When mine started making a noise even the specailist couldn't diagnose, drove it down the street and traded it for a one year old Mazda 3.
$10k DCT? $7k for a used engine? Nope.
calteg said:
Uh, me?
Actually they got off easy. I'm glad the project update didn't begin with, "It ate the belt."
On my F25 chassis you can pull the whole fan assembly out the top and then have plenty of room.
If you see any sign of a leaking front seal I have the primer, glue and tools to do the job. The primer expires this month so let me know.
Every time I think about getting a BMW, I see/hear/read about something wild happening to them.
This doesn't seem toooooo bad, but still.
Duckzero said:Every time I think about getting a BMW, I see/hear/read about something wild happening to them.
This doesn't seem toooooo bad, but still.
Exactly this. And I spent half my life driving Subaru's and Rotaries and these BMW stories still scare me.
Weirdest belt failures I've had:
A bolt on my AE92's 4AGE started backing out and machining away the timing belt. I heard a weird whistling noise and came off the track, luckily I caught it when I still had half a timing belt left.
A Samurai's belt got sanded away from the inside until it started slipping because a replacement pulley was rusty.
Duckzero said:Every time I think about getting a BMW, I see/hear/read about something wild happening to them.
This doesn't seem toooooo bad, but still.
Me too, that's why I've been tracking Minis since 2005. Hundreds of days, thousands of track miles, one transmission. All else routine track maintenance.
This gave me a cold chill thinking about the time I supercharged my Miata and drove it to Track Night In America. I got exactly one lap and spent the rest of the day pulling shredded belt spaghetti out of my engine bay, bumming a ride to Autozone for a replacement belt, and fixing it in the dark with a flashlight and a pair of borrowed vice grips.
In reply to ShinnyGroove (Forum Supporter) :
Been there, done that.
I had a Sebring supercharger on a second-gen CRX. It was a magazine project car BITD.
Driving home from Orlando one night, I ran over something on I-4. It popped out from a truck in front of me but no time to react.
A second after I ran it over, my alternator light popped on. The supercharger and the alternator shared a belt–a rather long one that, as I remember, wasn’t available locally–and whatever I had just run over scored a direct hit.
I stopped at a gas station to check it out. Yep, shredded spaghetti.
This was before cell phones. Fortunately, I was able to bum a razor blade from the person behind the counter.
Made it home without boost and without an alternator.
One nice thing about the BMW N55 is you don't even need the belt to limp home. It has an electric water pump so it won't overheat.
jgrewe said:One nice thing about the BMW N55 is you don't even need the belt to limp home. It has an electric water pump so it won't overheat.
This is exactly the kind of positive attitude this project needs.
And those are the "dependable" turbo's.The N54's are even more finicky.
All told an idler failing after 70k miles has nothing to do with the vehicle in question, it's just a maintenance item that would have beaten up any vehicle given the same failed part.
To the idea of upgrading that pulley, I'd argue the plastic part made it 70k miles. It doesn't need any upgrade.
They're not Toyotas, and that's good and bad.
Did you have a serpentine belt tool?
In reply to JG Pasterjak :
Is this the engine where a shred of belt works it's way into the front main bearing?
Pretty tempting to leave some snark, but good on you guys for finding out how trackable (or not) these things are.
Failed idler pulley?
Another plastic engine part that shifts manufacturing pennies to owner repair megadollars?
In reply to dnospamplease :
It was the bearing that failed, the plastic pulley was fine. Not all plastic engine-related parts are as worthy of our scorn as plastic radiator end tanks.
Edit: If that Samurai pulley I mentioned earlier was made of plastic it wouldn't have rusted and sanded away the belt...
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