Anzafin

Hi.

Actually this is a continuation to my previous thread about a concern of swirl flaps in diesel engines. Here: Major diesel engine failure

The issue (in some cases) is about those swirl flaps braking off and being sucked into engine --> obvious "malfunction"
These swirl flaps are located in the intake manifold in M57N (=M57TU) engines and in M57N2 engines too (I think).
The structure could have changed in M57N2 (2005 -->), but I'm quite sure they're in there anyway...

I finally decided to take the bull by the horns and investigate this thing out in my 2004 530D (M57N) with 87000kms in it.
As mentioned in that another thread, some people have completely removed the flaps from their E39 diesel engines without any problems.
Since E60 seems to be quite pedantic about everything, I decided to keep the swirl flaps where they are. But inspecting and some cleaning
shouldn't hurt, right...?

This is a short story about removing the intake manifold and EGR and cleaning them up. And reinstalling them of course .
Maybe this could work as a some kind of DIY for those who want to do the same...
Ok, with help of TIS and RealOEM.com I started the job...

1. Disconnecting the battery:


2. Removing the acoustic cover:


3. Removing the fresh air microfilters and their housing:


4. Removing the air inlet base plastics:


5. Removing the tension strut and the last piece of acoustic cover:


6. Disconnecting things out from the intake manifold:

- Air duct from supercharger and a tube of recycled exhausts and a sensor plug and a rubber tube(which cannot be seen in the pic) on the side of EGR valve:


- Oil stick support and a sensor:


- A plug and tube from electric valve under the manifold (I wasn't able to remove them until I opened all bolts and nuts from manifold
and was able to lift it a bit). You can see these items in the another pic later.

7. Removing the intake manifold:


8. Sealing the inlet ducts with my high quality sealing fabric (old socks lol)

Anzafin

9. The first inspection. I'm pushing the vacuum box to close the flaps. They didn't seem to be "very" dirty at this point...


10. Removing the swirl flap moving mechanism and the flaps themselves. You can see the electric valve here and the points where the plug and tube were connected under the manifold (which I mentioned earlier)


11. Cleaning mayhem going on.

- What a mess. I used a strong cleaning solution with different brushes, tooth sticks and Q-tips. Damn I messed up the whole house... Someone didn't like it.


- Here's one swirl flap cleaned. The flap itself was not very dirty, but the walls in the casing were and I don't wonder if the flap could get stuck because of that junk after a while (some ten thousands of kms from here). Couldn't do any much more better with the cleaning, since I didn't want to break the rubber cover.


- The seals of intake manifold were in great shape, and I cleaned them too.


- Sorry I don't have before pics of EGR valve, but you can believe it was dirty. I was able to carve out the soot with a knife. Here's the EGR cleaned.
It's attached to manifold with four bolts and is easy to remove/install:


12. Reinstalling the things is just doing everything opposite. Just have to be careful with things. Especially have to remember to connect every plug to get an error code free startup...

I put all back together and only message I got was about resetting the date and clock. The engine started immediately. No problems so far...

Ok, actually cleaning the intake manifold itself inside out perfectly would have been too big job for me now with limited time and resources. I suppose some washing machine would have took the dirt out easily, but since by bathroom isn't a workshop I couldn't do this. But as mentioned, the flaps were my main concern.

What did I get with all this then?
Well, at least some kind of a relief and a satisfactory of inspecting this issue out. And a ton of black sticky dirt!
Maybe I got a few kilometer more too with my 530D now!

AlwynMike

Thanks for the instructions.
My car has not done the miles (kilometres) that yours has done, but I will keep a link to this so maybe next year, if I keep the car, I will do this job.

Mike

hondik

You're a brave man to perform such jobs yourself. No. 1 rule I learned is not to fix something that works

Anzafin

That's quite right, but I prefered doing this compared to thousands of euros a new engine costs
Sure if you (and I don't mean YOU hondik ) have no idea what you're going to do, then you should left it undone.

This swirl flap thing is surely a design error from BMW, that has to be admitted. And I don't have any warranties left...
Besides, after all, I have always wanted to know how things work

dubbers

Great thread Anzafin - It seems a real hassle to clean the EGR thanks for the thorough disassembly. It was soo easy on my old MKiV PD130 Golf. Shame no photo's to show how clagged up the EGR gets with tar like soot. I may have a go at it when mine reaches ~100,000kms/60k miles.

Anzafin

Thanks.

And yes, too bad I didn't take photos of EGR before cleaning... There was about a 3mm thick layer of soot inside the EGR.
With a little of dexterity, the EGR can be dismounted and cleaned without removing the intake manifold.

seppoi

Thanks Anzafin! I repeated just the procedure for my E39 530d driven 230000 km. The procedure was very similar. My EGR valve was stuck to closed position and based on some material on the net I decided to keep it that way to avoid doing this maintenance again The flaps in intake manifold were extremely contaminated with about 2 mm extra stuff on both sides.

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FMINUS

Wow you guys are advanced, I would be so lost....

DrLev99

DAMN! I was thrilled just to figure out how to install my AIB V3.0's and fogs!!!

Great job!