Rod Bearing Replacement on my 2006 Z4MR

[MadGus]

Thought I would post up some pictures of this work, and also offer a plug for "The Shop VA" where I had this done. They are located in Richmond, Virginia.

69k miles on the clock, and Blackstone UOA at every oil change since I bought her (45k miles) has never been above 4ppm Lead. Significant wear on the top bearings of cyl #3 and #2.

The shop also took an oil sample as a part of this work, and I'll post up those numbers when I get the report. Would be interesting to see if the numbers had gone up (maybe indicating some recency with the visible wear).

$2600 parts and labor (VAC bearings and OEM bolts, which yes, they were properly torqued per the crazy factory spec instructions). No, I am not interested in debating the bearing or rod bolt choices, nor am I asserting that my choices are the right ones for anyone else... I pretty much drowned in reading all about the various opinions about what to use for our S54s. At the end of the day, this shop has done north of 10 bearing swaps on S54s in the last year or so, and I trust their work.

Oh, and if you're reading this, JimBob0047, yes I had them upgrade the oil pump sprocket (VAC) and they found the passenger side motor mount arm had cracked (so they replaced that as well). Thank you for mentioning that to me on a post some time ago!

Can't wait to get her back out on the road this weekend!

[racerbruce]

Congrats on the great work.
I too, am at 69K miles and all of my Blackstone reports show <4 ppm lead readings....hoping I'm not in a condition where readings vs reality are of concern.

[wdb]

Thanks for sharing the information. I've seen bearing a lot worse than that on here...

[MadGus]

Well, interesting that the UOA showed no increase in any wear metals. Also, looks like I need to start chasing perhaps a leaky fuel injector or two...

At least the rod bearing work is behind me!