Ive had exhaust fumes coming thru the air con for the last couple of weeks unless i have recirc on so decided to have a dig and find the cause. Was hoping for something simple but have found the manifold to be cracked just above the turbo. A pain to get at and see but heres a pic from the reflection of a mirror. Ive circled the crack although not easy to see. looks like a major job to take it off !! although it looks like it could be welded once off. Anyone else ever experience this ? not looking forward to this job and could easily have done without it.

 

hhhmmm that's a real pain for you! I'm impressed you managed to find the crack though - that's usually half the battle diagnosing the fault. Is it making an audio 'blow' or can you not hear anything different?

From the picture it's hard to tell, but is it definitely the manifold itself that is cracked and not some form of heat shielding that covers the manifold? The reason I ask is that there is no 'black soot' escaping from the 'cracked area' like you would expect?

Regarding welding the crack - I've never had any real success with this in the past on other cars. Bottom line is, if it has cracked once, it could well do again in another place - maybe a 'poor cast manifold'. Coupled with the largish amount of work to remove & refit, I reckon a replacement (new would be ideal but costly or second hand, not quite so bad) would be the better way to go IMHO.

Is the car down on performance?

 

Yes i was quite surprised to see the crack. The car has been sounding a little louder around tickover but put that down to the mileage. Was more the fumes that alerted me to a problem, id hoped for a leaking joint though.

The manifold is a welded fabrication, im guessing to save weight over a cast manifold, looks like either stainless steel or inconel, so am quite confident the crack could be tig welded. It is strange why it has cracked though.

There is a some soot around the surrounding area but only a small amount at the bottom of the crack.

 

Must admit, I thought the manifold would be the usual 'cast' type. It certainly doesn't look that way from your picture hence my question about if it has heat shielding around it at that point. In that case you may get away with it being welded!

 

Take care when welding to use a minimum amount of heat.
I had some welding done on my MG manifold, and the thing distorted, and I'll tell you, the E60 one is probably easier to get off than the MG one, 'cos that is a real bitch of a job - and one that I have had to do a few times over the years (due to BL's design, the torque of the engine moves it over enough to make the exhaust manifold bear onto the chassis leg, which causes cracks, hence the welding). With the MG, I ended up bolting the manifold to a spare head and welded it like that, so it couldn't move. Don't suppose you've got a 530d head lying around though!!!!

Mike

 

wow that is a big crack.
I would just change it with a new or 2nd hand 1.
BTW how many miles or km have you done on your car?

 

That sucks Rob, good luck mate

 

interesting, have called dealer for a price on a new manifold and they tell me that bmw central spares are supplying 50 manifolds per month, so looks like a design issue !!

 

great.........

Maybe it will be free then ?

 

Just doing that to my recently acquired 03 E60 530d. Same crack, same symptom, same place. One other thing I noticed was that fuel consumption was awful (14mpg), but performance great. Suspect that some degree of overfuelling was taking place.

I'm fortunate in that the chap i bought the car from is paying for a new exhaust manifold along with a new inlet manifold ( approx ?1K here in Ireland). Also taking the opportunity to do the EGR stat and crank breather. Should be all done Wednesday.

BTW brilliant forum, have learnt so much reading here.