tom_il

Same here, Scared the crap out of me not knowing if it was there or not. Last one at the back of the engine is easy to loose.
Look into the inlet ports and did find anything. Then I tried if it could get in there and saw it was possible but not easy as there is a bend in the inlet where it normally would get stuck.
Contemplaited to get a endoscoop or not to be 100% sure if it didn't get in there. But couldn't find one easy and desided to take my chance and mounted everything back.
Engine started with no problem and could't hear anything wrong.

Inlet has to be removed for a number of reasons so it seems mine was put back into place when done some maintenace before.
Don't think its a problem to have one missing.

keithscossie

I dropped one of those and couldnt find it, not in the engine though, it was sitting on the top of the slam panel at the time. Anyway I made a small seal from nylon on my lathe and fitted that, no problems so far, but I only finished a few hours ago !!
BTW your instructions are so much better than the ones I got with the blanking plates from PMW Eng in the UK and better than the instructions in Total BMW magazine.
They left out about 75% of the stuff you need to remove to get the manifold off.
Thanks again, very helpfull !

greenfingers

New owner of 2005 525d touring with 198kkm on the clock here.

Gotta say massive thanks to Anzafin for helping me and so many people - you should be knighted for your prevention of BMW diesel engine fails, but that is not possible if you are not British!

I've been through this complete thread twice now, and it is a fantastic lesson for anyone with a 'swirled' BMW. I have today taken off my inlet manifold and it was made relatively simple having read all the advice here.

My contribution which may save some folk a little trouble is to be sure you don't let the boot slam shut after disconnecting the battery! Yes, eventually I found the manual opening solution (inside the tailgate on mine), but that wasted an hour or so before I got started!

The other thing which seems to have caused me (and other DIYers) problems, was the round orange washer/seal nearest the bulkhead, which got pulled off when removing the manifold. Fortunately, I saw it drop behind the engine and I think onto the rear undertray, so I am not too concerned and will probably leave out one of the middle ones instead on reassembly.

My plastic coated flaps were all solidly connected and the mechanism works fine, but there is a lot of crap in there and I will get rid of them with the 'cut off the insert and plug the spindle hole method'. There is also a lot of oil which seems to have leaked from the flap spindles.

I replaced the faulty (original) thermostats last week and have just managed to get a DPF regeneration. I did also clean the EGR valve, which seemed o improve the performance a little. However, before doing the swirl flaps, my 0-100km/h time was still nearer to 13 seconds than 8. I hope this work will at least rule out some possibilities like vacuum hoses and obstructed swirl flap openings.

greenfingers

Just to update, everything went back together without problems. No flaps now - I removed the actuating rod too, but left the vacuum unit connected so as to fool the car into thinking the flaps were still present. I also replaced three glow plugs, because they were showing far higher than the recommended resistance.

Guess what? This operation has made an unbelievable difference to the car's performance! I don't really know what has caused the change, but it now accelerates to 100km/h is under 10 seconds! There is much more power all the way up from 2000rpm and the engine feels smooth at the same time.

I read about someone else getting this after changing glow plugs, buy could not make sense of the logic. I have no idea, but maybe the glow plugs really can affect the performance.

Anyway, now I'm really happy with the car at last!

tom_il

Glow plugs only work a few seconds after the car has started and only at colder temp. So totaly impossible they have an influence on how the engine runs.

greenfingers

I understand that they are linked to the vehicle electronics, so that they can be controlled to give varying degrees of heat according to certain engine parameters (temperature etc).
If that is the case, then is it not possible that a faulty glow plug could send the wrong signal back to the ECU, which in turn might make the fuel mixture richer to account for a lower combustion temperature?

tom_il

Nice theory, but its only a theory.

I had 5 of the 6 glow plug defective. Changed them together with removing the swirl flaps.
Felt no diference in how the engine runs.
You would be surpriced hem many engines have one or more defective glow plugs and since the dealer doesn't check this when doing normal maintenance it remains unnoticed uptil the engine begins started badly in the winter. This would mean many many bad running engines.

100% sure you had some other problem, maybe a bad contact in one of the electric plugs you disconnected and reconnected when removing the intake manifolt and reinstalling it.

greenfingers

You're probably right. I did clean the MAP sensor, so maybe that made a difference. The only other thing I can think of is the possibility that the flap spindles were leaking air and now that the holes are blocked up, it has improved the performance.

tom_il

Then i's very lickely the MAF sensor that was dirty. It is very important for proper functioning of the engine.

Anzafin

Nice work greenfingers!

- Antti -