S54 Maintenance

[Daemonblitz]

Some S54 maintenance happening.
Car is currently at 149000km (92000 miles)

VANOS gear bolts being updated:



VANOS Exhaust hub wear (VIDEO)
I had my exhaust hub and Oil pump disc sent out together to a local shop to have it redrilled. You can see in the video how much play it had developed over time.

Rod bearings: Not in the greatest shape when they came out, if you're on the fence about doing your bearings, hopefully this will help

[wdb]

Maintenance items. Nice work, nice pics.

[Lucky1]

Originally Posted by wdb

Maintenance items. Nice work, nice pics.

Thanks for the update. How do we know exactly when all these things need to be done? Is it guesswork, are there preliminary signs or do these areas need to inspected periodically? When it comes to VANOS, bolts, timing chain guide, etc I'm not sure what to do and when and it drives me nuts. Like worrying about a ticking time bomb.

[GuidoK]

Those bearings arent a moment to soon; normal advice is to do them every 50k miles (80k km); at least among the european/german specialists.
Did you also replace the control valve piston in the oil pump?
That is also a wear item on the s54, and is usually also replaced (at least in germany; there you can get specially coated ones):

[Lucky1]

Originally Posted by GuidoK

Those bearings arent a moment to soon; normal advice is to do them every 50k miles (80k km); at least among the european/german specialists.
Did you also replace the control valve piston in the oil pump?
That is also a wear item on the s54, and is usually also replaced (at least in germany; there you can get specially coated ones):

Argh, see? Even more preventative stuff. Keeping track drives me nuts.

[Daemonblitz]

I have not heard of this part before, nor anyone replacing one. Do you have a part#?

Originally Posted by GuidoK

Those bearings arent a moment to soon; normal advice is to do them every 50k miles (80k km); at least among the european/german specialists.
Did you also replace the control valve piston in the oil pump?
That is also a wear item on the s54, and is usually also replaced (at least in germany; there you can get specially coated ones):

[GuidoK]

I dont think bmw gives a part# for this part for the s54.
I've seen the parts somewhere on facebook from a german tuner/shop.
Maybe the m54 version fits I dont know (bmw lists this part for m54 but not for s54)

Browse the german M3/z4m forums. The germans are quite a step ahead in maintenance and dealing with s54 problems compared to the US crowd.
There are multiple topics on the german m3 forum and z4m forum (all my pics come from german topics), over there this is a common way to deal with this problem.
Even this newsarticle in Auto Motor und Sport speaks of it (it addresses what issues to expect on an e46m3, thus also s54)
https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/...rprobleme-smg/
This article even hints on that there might be a relation between the wear on this part and the wear on the rodbearings (I dont know if thats really true, but I also dont know if anyone really monitors oil pressure on s54's in the right place)