[BRG_N54]

Greetings

I have done some searching but still have questions. Problem; 2007 N54 with 173k miles on the clock. Car has shown half engine light intermittently since I bought it about a year ago. I can shut it off and start right back up and it goes away. Seems to only happen after warmup with light throttle, constant speed.

Recently I decided to try and remedy. ISTA shows 2A87 and 3100 codes. I swapped and cleaned VANOS solenoids but 2A87 is still in exhaust side. I replaced the VANOS check valves and it popped again, still on exhaust. I have read about "cam ledges" as the next possible culprit and just wanted to see what others may think about this repair direction. Should I try fresh oil change and verify cage and o rings are all in place? I also came across some cases of sheared or loose cam gear bolts, but looked like not applicable to N54.

Here are the details of the connection with ISTA:

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

Yes making sure the oil cage is intact and the O rings are proper is part of the cam ledge diagnosis. You can try new oil but IMO if you already know you use the good weight oil and it's not due (you know when you changed it) I doubt it would change anything. IMO seems like bearing ledge if oil cage checks out.

For the bolts loosening, yeah I don't think it's an issue on N54s but it's easy to check with your valve cover off.

[BRG_N54]

Thank you for the contribution. After reading more I found this service bulletin that looks like a script for my issue. I am fairly sure I checked the cage when I last changed the oil, I know I did the filter also. I always do the little o-ring. I will try oil change and filter. Then if it returns time to pull the valve cover and get at those cam ledges. New parts are megabucks, but may have to bite the bullet.

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

Originally Posted by BRG_N54

Thank you for the contribution. After reading more I found this service bulletin that looks like a script for my issue. I am fairly sure I checked the cage when I last changed the oil, I know I did the filter also. I always do the little o-ring. I will try oil change and filter. Then if it returns time to pull the valve cover and get at those cam ledges. New parts are megabucks, but may have to bite the bullet.

Yeah that's the bulletin I used for my bearing ledge diagnosis to. In addition to the check valve filters or whatever they are called.

[BRG_N54]

Did you have to do cam ledges on your car? What was the mileage? Once you got in there, did you find machined out grooves as outlined in the bulletin? Did you get new or used parts? And I assume you installed the Teflon seals. Sorry for the 20 questions, I really appreciate your feedback.

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

Originally Posted by BRG_N54

Did you have to do cam ledges on your car? What was the mileage? Once you got in there, did you find machined out grooves as outlined in the bulletin? Did you get new or used parts? And I assume you installed the Teflon seals. Sorry for the 20 questions, I really appreciate your feedback.

Yes, I had 2A82 codes and had to replace my intake cam ledge to fix. Before I got this car I had another 335is which got a accident and totaled and that car was also facing the same issue and I was about to inspect the ledge on it to after doing this diagnosis. I did this job at 158 471KM. But yeah the groove was very apparent and significant, my fingernail would catch deep in it. I also removed my exhaust ledge and inspected it while I was there and despite not getting a code for it, it also had some fingernail catching grooves, but I did not replace the exhaust at that time and figured I would wait. I tried to find used ledge but all the pics showed it with grooves already in it and I wanted one with just light grey marks. Yes but my car already had the "teflon" type seals. Haha yeah, not a lot of people who seem to have face/done the job on the forum.


I have posts around if you search but here are the grooves of one piece of the intake side and second pic was one piece of the exhaust side. You can see the intake was really worse.

[BRG_N54]

Thank you for sharing the pictures! I had no idea it could get that bad. And that is less than 100k miles. The car in question has 173k (278k km) and I can only imagine what I am going to find when I dive in there. Curiously, it has not thrown the code since I posted.

Thank you again for your input, much appreciated.

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

Originally Posted by BRG_N54

Thank you for sharing the pictures! I had no idea it could get that bad. And that is less than 100k miles. The car in question has 173k (278k km) and I can only imagine what I am going to find when I dive in there. Curiously, it has not thrown the code since I posted.

Thank you again for your input, much appreciated.

It's odd though how it's not prevalent or else we would have more threads... maybe the weather and people abusing the car without oil being hot enough makes it more worn. But if your code still hasn't came back... could be something else.

My issue always came up when like, accelerating slowly as RPM went up or sometimes if I wanted to WOT from a start. And also only when the oil started to heat up which I assume could go through the cap the bearing ledge groove made. Same way my issue came up on my other car to. That other car was also around 150k KM.

[BRG_N54]

Originally Posted by TheMidnightNarwhal

It's odd though how it's not prevalent or else we would have more threads... maybe the weather and people abusing the car without oil being hot enough makes it more worn. But if your code still hasn't came back... could be something else.

My issue always came up when like, accelerating slowly as RPM went up or sometimes if I wanted to WOT from a start. And also only when the oil started to heat up which I assume could go through the cap the bearing ledge groove made. Same way my issue came up on my other car to. That other car was also around 150k KM.

I did an oil & filter change last weekend. Motul molygen 5w-40, cleaned out as much of the old dark oil I could. Double verified the cage and all o-rings were installed as per Bentley specs. Then drove about 200 miles to my sister's and back on Easter Sunday. Got half engine both ways and even around town, only after warm, like you mentioned. Going to park that car for a bit and look for some decent used cam trays.

[BRG_N54]

Hello again,

Just wanted to post an update with the fix, hopefully this might aid another N54 enthusiast.

I was able to obtain a new OEM exhaust ledge. It was on eBay and got it for $250. Got all the bolts and seals new from ECS. Got the cam timing set from Amazon for $90. Took three days off work, first for teardown, second for assembly and third day just in case.

Removal was very straightforward, once the head was exposed. I did not use any clamping mechanism for the trays, just went slow, about a half turn of each bolt until fully relieved.



I was hoping to see more grooving on the exhaust tray, like TheMidnightNarwhal showed, but was disappointed. I figured at 174K I would see bad things, but I could only find one very small spot on the upper tray and figured that was enough for oil pressure to leak past.

Second day, proceeded to put it all back together:





Pretty nerve-wracking on first startup, but no horrible metallic music came out of the engine bay, just the expected purrr of the straight 6. Test drive was surprising; Motor seemed much more alive than before and exposed some transmission slop. (drain, fill, mechatronic seals and solenoids are coming next!)

My issue would only manifest itself after normal temps were reached, so I took the third day to go play some golf. Halfway to the course I got the dreaded "PONG" and you guessed it, "engine operating at reduced power, blah blah blah!"

What went wrong! This was supposed to be "the fix". After pondering a bit I see where I went astray. It's step #3 of the BMW bulletin "Replace both VANOS solenoids". You see by swapping them, I assumed that it was the ledge and both were good. But in fact, BOTH were BAD! So by swapping them I did not prove it was the ledges. I replaced both solenoids and all is well. Car runs really good now!

In any event, now I have had the experience of this procedure and have more of the tools I might need to maintain both my N54's out into the future. I have satisfaction knowing that the cam seals are the updated type and should not cause any problems going forward in the green car. I plan to proactively replace the seals in the grey car also, just to future proof them both a bit. It was nice to see the insides of my higher mileage N54 and just shows that when taken care of, these are really solid platforms. Thank you all who contributed to this repair, and thank you for reading my 2A87 saga.

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

Originally Posted by BRG_N54

Hello again,

Just wanted to post an update with the fix, hopefully this might aid another N54 enthusiast.

I was able to obtain a new OEM exhaust ledge. It was on eBay and got it for $250. Got all the bolts and seals new from ECS. Got the cam timing set from Amazon for $90. Took three days off work, first for teardown, second for assembly and third day just in case.

Removal was very straightforward, once the head was exposed. I did not use any clamping mechanism for the trays, just went slow, about a half turn of each bolt until fully relieved.



I was hoping to see more grooving on the exhaust tray, like TheMidnightNarwhal showed, but was disappointed. I figured at 174K I would see bad things, but I could only find one very small spot on the upper tray and figured that was enough for oil pressure to leak past.

Second day, proceeded to put it all back together:





Pretty nerve-wracking on first startup, but no horrible metallic music came out of the engine bay, just the expected purrr of the straight 6. Test drive was surprising; Motor seemed much more alive than before and exposed some transmission slop. (drain, fill, mechatronic seals and solenoids are coming next!)

My issue would only manifest itself after normal temps were reached, so I took the third day to go play some golf. Halfway to the course I got the dreaded "PONG" and you guessed it, "engine operating at reduced power, blah blah blah!"

What went wrong! This was supposed to be "the fix". After pondering a bit I see where I went astray. It's step #3 of the BMW bulletin "Replace both VANOS solenoids". You see by swapping them, I assumed that it was the ledge and both were good. But in fact, BOTH were BAD! So by swapping them I did not prove it was the ledges. I replaced both solenoids and all is well. Car runs really good now!

In any event, now I have had the experience of this procedure and have more of the tools I might need to maintain both my N54's out into the future. I have satisfaction knowing that the cam seals are the updated type and should not cause any problems going forward in the green car. I plan to proactively replace the seals in the grey car also, just to future proof them both a bit. It was nice to see the insides of my higher mileage N54 and just shows that when taken care of, these are really solid platforms. Thank you all who contributed to this repair, and thank you for reading my 2A87 saga.

Ahh it's unfortunate you did all of it and it wasn't that. I realise to in your original post, I thought you had replaced the solenoids already in addiiton to swapping but it was the checkvalves... oh well at least you did find the issue and gained some XP in your mechanic level