525d_EU

Good evening everyone, I ve been looking around on the interned to find someone that has/had got the same symptoms as my car but no luck.

I ve owned my 2005 525d auto for about 3 monts and it always run very smoothly, yesterday tho I experienced something weird.

I was going to pick my wife up from a GP appointmen and the flow of traffic was very slow, traffic lights, pedestrians etc etc. The car didn't get chance to engage 3rd gear for about 20 minutes or so, all of a sudden i started feeling a vibration trough the pedals/gear stick and the tone of the engine changed from the usual purring+heavy turbo whistle to a truck like noise , every time i pulled off a traffic light I swear the sound of my car was not different from a tractor pulling off, so bad that pedestrians were looking at me as my car was about to grenade itself.

I quickly called my wife and told her to wait and drove straight to my mechanic but unfortunately he was so busy that couldn't even take a look at it but from my description of the symptoms he pointed towards a transmission issue, so i drove off to go and pick up my wife , it took me 10 minutes to get there i could feel the car vibrating really badly, the more I revved the louder the engine was, I should mention that the car didn't throw any code , no errors what so ever, it was idleing fine, stable at 700rpm, the gear changes were on point and smooth as usual , tha car was behaving normally appart from the very loud noise and the vibrations everything was perfect.
after picking my wife up while sitting at a traffic light all of a sudden the vibrations stopped and when I pulled of the nice smooth engine+turbo noise was back again, it drove fine since then.

I looked everywhere online and there are some people with similar symptoms as mine that are pointing towards a radiator fan issue which kind of makes sense since my car turned into a van when it got warm and then stopped after about 30 minutes, is the fan supposed to stay on that long ? Is it possible to be the fan that caused all that noise and vibrations ? ... everyone online that had similar symptoms as mine wre having them on an e39 5series , as far as I know the e60 uses an electric fan instead of a beld driven one like on the e39, also if I am really having a fan issue how is it possible that I haven't felt it in 3 months time ? Shouldn't the fan turn on when you use A/C ?

waiting for help gents since every mechanic I know wont be able to see my car till next week and I definetly dont wanna take it to the STdEALER !

thanks a lot

Adrian

525d_EU

Hello everyone, i have some updates on the issue I am having.

this morning I went for a drive to try and replicate the issue I had the other day, i plugged in an wifi obd scanner to check the stats of the car live while I was driving it, drove about 20 miles around town ( reset the mile counter prior to start ) for about 1 hour and a half, the temperature of my car didn't go above 78 degrees for about 15 miles tried fiddling with the heating but the highest i got was 80 degrees with the heating off while sitting at a traffic light as soon as I moved the temp. Went back to 78 , while I was on my way home on a steep hill the yemperature went up to 85 degrees and then the car started vibrating slightly and the engine noise started to get louder and louder , I got back home and checked if the fan was spinning but it wasn't so I left the car idling for about 5 minutes and the temperature went up to 97 degrees , so I went for a drive again and it still sounded like a truck+ vibrations, checked again if the fan kicked in at 97 degrees but it didn't move at all.
to sum it up, it took it about an hour and 20 miles of driving to get to 97 degrees ( it didn't increase any further ) it started misbehaving when it hit 85 degrees, it sounds as something is not getting lubricated when it gets warm ( oil/coolant is on max level ) .
I obviously need a new coolant temperature sensor since it took so long to get up to temperature but still that should not cause it to vibrate and sound like that btw , the outside temperature was 10 degrees an my car is also fitted with them funny flaps behind the grill that should help it to reach operational temperature faster ...

Edit: I forgot to mention that during this time my scanner read a consumption of 14 mls/gallon... like wtf... is that even possible on a 525d ??!?

any ideas of what could be causing my issue ?

thanks in advance

525d_EU

Hi everyone, gonna post this update in case someone might be experiencing the stuff I described above, my issue was caused by a mix of different things going wrong :

• oil leak from rocker gasket
• oil leak from vacuum pump
• oil leak from inlet manifold
• failure of crankcase breather
• air filter
• exhaust leak from flexipipe

got everything fixed for a total of 540£
hope this might help somebody.