oalek

Hey guys have had my 2008 BMW 535xi for about 4 years now, was a hand me down from my dad and he's shown me the way of proper maintenance and caring of an E60! However went away to college this semester and have had some major bad luck. Was driving home one night and started to feel some serious shaking of the car when i would break or become idle at a stoplight/sign. Soon an Engine Malfunction popped up with reduced power but was still drivable, then a few minutes later a charging issue came about followed by full loss of power steering! Had the car towed ASAP from the spot i was at to a local autoshop that worked on European cars.

They ended up going ahead and R&R Drive Belt & Tensioner, R&R Oil Cooler Return Line, and Degrease/Clean Out Belt Debris, and replacing the front gasket case to stop the common oil leak issue. $1300 later and about 5 days later i go to pick up the car and begin to drive it home no more than 15 minutes. 10 minutes in and i get the same engine malfunction reduced power warning, i just begin to finish my journey home as i can feel the shakiness return to the car when stopping and becoming idle, as im about to park i receive a LOW OIL PRESSURE warning thankfully i shut my engine off just as i got it.

Any ideas as to what could be causing these issues? The car does have well over 215000 miles on it and still runs fairly well. Would whatever the repair costs that come with this be worth it as i don't want to have spent $1300 on those repairs just to not go further ahead with whatever is needed.

tttomttt

Belt debris? Did the belt break an scatter debris? I have seen threads where the belt will shred sending debris into the oil pan through the front main seal on some engines however I do not know which engine. It sounds to me as if you have a failing alternator that can be checked by testing voltage at your battery terminal when the car is off (12v or so) and when the car is running (14v and above). Worth a look.

NoQuarter

As mentioned above.... unfortunately you may have belt debris inside your engine. When the belt breaks, it can wrap around the main crank shaft pulley getting so tight that is pushed through the main seal. It then gets inside the engine and shreds clogging oil passages, etc.

This is often an engine killer as the expense to pay someone to disassemble it and clean it is cost prohibitive - especially if they don't find all the problems.

Whoever did the work could have seen any issues with the main seal if they were looking for it.
This is worse case scenario of course but certainly not rare.

Public Service Announcement
All of you old E60 owners out there - Pay attention. REPLACE YOUR BELT and PULLEYS if you can not say when they were last done. There is no warning and no second chances. If can't afford the service, you certainly can't afford sending the car to the junk yard.

- Jim

audiophool

Do you have a list of the codes that presented when it first went for repair?

oalek

They just got back to me today after coming back into work this morning and say that the car seems to leak oil when reaching higher rpms after time and that they will be replacing the front crankshaft seal so the leakage stops.