Done 3 jobs today....first was the Swirl flaps.....Nightmare...... would have been great if it had have all went to plan, but when i lifted the manifold off 2 things dropped off......1 down the side off the engine (orange spacer) and the other (metal spacer) onto the metal floor pan......so i had to jack the car up and take off both floor pans but was still nowhere to be seen, after loads of blind feeling about i found the metal one.

Now the plastic orange grommet was a bit trickier as i had to get a chair and climb up into the engine bay as it went down the side of the engine right at the back, so armed with a torch and a metal hook type tool i went on the hunt, long story short after some tricky fiddling about with the hook with bursts of adrenalin when it kept sliding of the tool i eventually got it back.....phew 1 hour wasted,




Next problem was cutting the flaps with a dremel, i had some shonky dremel wheels which were shite to say the least (kept shattering) so i decided to take another members advice and cut the plastic holder to gain access to them and then just cut them off with my trusty bolt cutters.




Then the box of assorted screws that i bought were no good so i had to walk to the local diy shop with swirl flap end cap to get some.









Egr valve was absolutely caked in carbon that took about an hour to clean up with a screwdriver, toothbrush and some thinners.











Airfilter was ok apart from getting the main cover back on.....was a bitch to line it up again properly at the back but after taking it ion and off 3 times i got it by lifting up the front a bit and it slotted into place.



old one...





New pipercross....



Next week end is DPF gut, then map delete and power remap.

 

Job well done!
Sorry I can't stop laughing at your problems with the dropped parts haha ! It just sounded so hilarious!

- Antti -

 

hahah I remember when swirl flaps were still in my car and while my dad was driving it 2 of them broke and destryed few things inside xD
After totally full repair we took them out and its ok.
But I have one question.
black cloud from the muffler is because I have removed SF or because my car dont have particulate filter??
cheers Anzafin great job

 

Hello Maemike,

If you've got the early e60 (could be due to your '04 year if it's an early one) without the DPF it will smoke considerably, these are recognizable by the downward pointing exhausts. All 2004 and later models with a DPF have the straight exhausts.

I have never seen or heard of a visible difference in sooth production due to swirl flap deletion. Though it is theoretically possible that in a lower rev range the combustion is less optimal and thus more sooth is exhausted it seems unlikely to be noticeable.



Edit: (just saw in another post that you have a 2003 without DPF, that's definately the cause for the black smoke)

 

I have E39 530D 142kw from year 2000 with manual gearbox. I wanted to remove these swirl flaps to, but read the topic and i read that E39 530D 142kw with manual gearbox doesnt have these swirl flaps, only automatic gearbox have these, did i understand correctly, is it true that,if have E39 2000 530d 142kw with manual gearbox,then i dont have to remove these swirl flaps,because this engine doesnt have any, engine with automatic gearbox have these ?

 

Yes Veiks1, that is correct .

- Antti -

 

Hi, I just performed this on my e39 530d and after I put it together I reconnected the battery and started her up and she ran fine. I turned off to go back inside to get changed into clean clothes and went outside, started the car and all it does is crank over, any ideas guys?

 

Maybe something left loose?

- Antti -

 

Can't be, I don't think it would of fired up the first time?

 

If you have your laptop connected to the car, pull the plug, otherwise the car just cranks over don't ask how I know....

I removed my swirl flaps on my 535d from 2/2006. They were in pretty bad shape, and the seals on the sides of the flaps were ok on 2-3 flaps, and on the other 3 they were destroyed and small orange rubber bits were constantly falling in the engine.

I didn't cut anything, just screwed the flaps loose from the metal bar with those 2 extremely small torx screws, and left the metal rods in place, the ones on which the swirl flaps were attached. (I removed the big metal bar that moves all swirl flaps)

Unfortunately I can't say anything about fuel consumption (I'll have to check that soon), but the intake noise (diesel rattle like a tractor) got a lot better after this.

Thanks Anzafin for the wonderful idea!
Greetings from Romania
Vlad