Pitster

Hi guys, so my 545i with 175K died on this last Friday. I was driving between meetings and major metal smashing occurred with the engine then shutting down within seconds. I pulled codes to show that bank 2 gave all kinds of misfires along with cam position sensor issues. I pulled 4 plugs and checked conditions with a borescope...didn't see anything actually broken, but it seemed like there was lots of oil buildup and some small nicks on the piston tops in a couple of them. The real bad part came when I drain the oil....holy crap...I have NEVER seen this much aluminum in oil. It almost looks like it's made up with how much is in the oil. I opened up the filter pleats and it was worse...

Other than the motor, the car is nice. I love it. It's NOT worth pulling the motor to have it rebuilt/machined and reinstalled. Hell, I was quoted like almost $5K to do the heads with oil blow-by.

It would appear to get out of this hole, it makes sense to find a used motor with under 100K miles, replace the seals that are known to leak (while that N62 is OUT of the vehicle), then swap them out. I'm right now in the process of disconnecting the bad motor now....

however....

I don't know if I'm oversimplifying this engine replacement. Is there any issue in the process that won't work? Electrical issues? Anything? I realize how finicky this vehicles are and before I go all in, I want to make sure from others that have done this, or know about it could give me some "road block warnings"

Thanks in advance.

DanielFD

Nothing really, just make sure your donor engine is for your car and wont require modifications. Other then that it should be a plug and play thing, you dont want to replace the DME, that wouldn't be plug and play.