figueroare

Hello everybody. I've been an avid reader of this forum for a while now, a lot of very good information and tips. So I looking for some wisdom out there to tackle my issue. Now to my story, first I'm the owner of a 2008 E60 550i sport package. I love this thing and had it for about 1.5 years, cars has been well maintained, previous owner bought the car as a cpo so all maintenance was done at the dealership. I have all records on hand. Since I have the car there was a small oil leak at the passenger side valve cover, recently it became worse. I finally decide to take care of the situation and jump on to replace the valve cover gasket together with the timing cover. I only did the passenger side. Fast forward a frustrating weekend of tearing and re-installing everything back on a very cramp space the car has all kinds of gremlins in it. Using a generic scanner I have the following codes:


1- P0335
2- P0100
3- P0598
4- P113B
5- P0288
6- P0290
7- P1727


There could be one or two other codes that I'm forgetting. Also in the IDrive screen I have a message of "transmission malfunction" and "continued driving possible under reduced acceleration". All this after some gaskets and O-rings replaced. The car was starting very, very rough. After reviewing all the job performed I noticed that the two VANOS solenoids were not all the way seated against the timing cover. I thought I had found the culprit. Well almost, after re-seating the vanos solenoids and do the re-start sequence (leave the ignition on "ON" position for a while so the valvetronics do their re-learning) the car did start better than before, but still cranks too much compared to before the job when this car started just by showing the finger into the ignition push button. I did a test drive around the block. The engine feels good but the transmission I think is only allowing 1st and 2nd to engage, its just my appreciation since doing at about 25 to 30 mph the rpms are around 2500 to 3000. So this is my first big DIY and I'm really screwed. Any help would be greatly appreciated, I really don't know what to do next.


Thanks,

cakes

some of those errors have to do with the cam sensors. For the 2 in the back of the valve cover, when you replaced the o-ring, did you push them back into the cover until they "clicked in"? Did you clear the codes between trying to figure out what it is?

figueroare

Thanks for your reply. When I re-installed the sensors I push them by hand until they backed all the way against the cover. Then I installed the bolts to secure them in place. So update of my ordeal, On Monday I started the car, it requires "extra" crank turns than usual but it did fired up. Once stated at least the engine sounded good (all cylinders working no vibration). The car was still in "Limp Mode", so I tried a new "trick" to get rid of the "limp mode" a friend send me a video of a guy with an M5 shutting the engine and re-starting it really quick and the "limp mode" was cleared. I did this twice, and yes the transmission fault message as well as the reduced acceleration were gone but the car does not wanted to start again after this.


So, I did bite the bullet and send the car to a local shop. Fingers cross that is only re-programming to default settings. I'm still waiting to hear back from the shop.


Thanks,

westsidebalto

Having replaced my own VC and timing gaskets, I remember reading about the servomotor reset sequence. I simply did the "leave it in the On position for 30 seconds without starting" trick before starting the car and it worked fine. However, I recall seeing that there is a BMW programming function that will reset them as well. Hopefully your local shop has the appropriate BMW software and can reprogram them, assuming that's what's wrong.

Keep us posted.

figueroare

Hello everybody. I'm glad to report that I picked up my car last Friday (10-21-16) from the local shop and is back to normal. So for the few out there wanting to know what happened, here is the the full story. First, I would recommend any one pulling wrenches in these cars to get a good scanner that can read BMW codes and of course re-set them. The INDY I used (MOMO Auto Service, Webster Tx, recommended) told me he found a "lot" of codes in the car's computer. Some of them I already new from my generic pocket scanner as I posted them in the original thread. Once he re-set them, there was one code that kept coming back, I do not know what was the specific code, but he told me it was related with the crankshaft sensor.


For the next two days, he trouble shooted the root cause of the crankshaft sensor signal not reaching back to the DME. Here is the power of this forum, I read many threads here in this forum from guys describing when the crankshaft sensor code pops up there is a good chance the culprit it's not the sensor itself but the IVM module. I explained this to the INDY, who of course, explained back to me why that would not be the problem. He even tried a new sensor to no avail. Well, apparently he gave in and verified the IVM module which by the way contains a bunch of fuses and Eureka, a blown # 5 fuse (30 amps) was found. The car good as new.


So, me re-collecting back what has happened, my first mistake was leaving the two vanos solenoids "loose". There was a good 1/4 inch left before fully seat them properly. This threw out the timing of the camshaft for bank 1 (passenger side). Also the first time I tried to fire up the car I did not waited long enough for the valvetronic motor to re-learn it's position. There were codes about battery low voltage which I new could have been another contributing factor since I kept trying to start the car over and over during the whole weekend while I was working at home. So at the end of the day a clearing of the trouble codes, a re-set of the valvetronic motors and a blown fuse from the IVM module were all in the mix to keep my car from running normal back again.


Hope this can provide guidance to someone else trying to do a valve cover job at home. Good luck.

cakes

Glad to hear it's all figured out. I remember having to use a mallet to get those vanos solenoids all the way in.
If you have an iphone/android, I recommend getting the carly app and the wifi/bluetooth reader. It'll let you read/clear codes in all ECUs. Just so have it I have the first generation Carly Adapter for sale. Let me know if you're interested.

E60Japanese

Great post!
Glad your car is working fine again

CLN550

This is why im probably just going to pay the indy for my valve cover gasket replacement when I do it. Im sorry you went through the car struggles.

KyleB

thank you for following up on your original post, I'm sure it will help someone out in the future.