My S55 engine failure

[E92inSG]

Some of you will have read about my engine failure in this thread.
https://f80.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=1726570

Back then I didn’t want to go too much into detail as to what happened exactly until I had more information. Well the engine tear down is finally complete and I’d like to share more about the damage that happened and hopefully gain some insight into what actually caused the damage and how to prevent it again in future.

I hope the discussion in this thread can be informational and perhaps more members with failed engines can share more about their own experiences as well


Engine mods:
2015 F80 M3
FBO
BM3 Paul Johnson tune
JB4 WMI (dual GPH12 Prometh nozzles in charge pipes)
100% meth
Carillo conrods
CP Pistons
Pure Stage 2+ turbos
Gintani hub

I purchased the car used, engine had already been built by previous owner. I started a new tune process with Paul Johnson because previous owner had an E30 tune on it with port injection and I wanted to run only pump fuel + meth.

The tune process was fairly smooth and Paul was very responsive throughout the entire process, starting from 23psi boost building up to the final 28-29psi revisions after each log (at least 8-10 revisions to get there). During this time I had also experimented with different WMI nozzle locations, as I had slight issues with uneven fuel trims between banks as pointed out by Paul. The final charge pipe locations seemed to even out the fuel trims the best compared to J-pipe and post intercooler locations.

The engine failure happened during one of my highway logging sessions. I had already done about 4 logs in 3-4th gear up to redline and shifting into 5th. On the final run, the engine started stuttering badly and seems to be misfiring, there was no fault code and I managed to drive the car home. These are my BM3 logs of the actual night of engine damage:

https://www.bootmod3.net/log?id=5ec6...729b509821b4bf
https://www.bootmod3.net/log?id=5ec6...729b511c4e6fda
https://www.bootmod3.net/log?id=5ec6...0b434c28f5b419
https://www.bootmod3.net/log?id=5ec6...0b434cf6b2b340

* one thing to note here is that I suspect that BM3 logs number the cylinders backwards. I’ve seen past logs that all show my #2 pulling timing consistently, and ended up that my #5 cylinder had the most damage. Paul has mentioned he does remember noticing sometime like this before as well on another car. I reached out to PTF about this and they say their parameters are exactly as BMW designed

I’ve to mention that I’m not very technically knowledgeable in engine tuning and what I’ve learnt up to then was purely from Paul’s feedback on tuning parameters. What is important to note what I had requested a track map from Paul specifically something that would be able to sustain extended highway runs at high RPMs. Up to and after the engine failure, Paul has maintained that the map he wrote for me was not an aggressive map and in line with what I had asked for, even after looking over all the past logs.

At this point there have been various assumptions and theories online about other engines being damaged under Paul’s tuning but I will not comment about any of that and will only discuss my own personal experience. Many have said that Paul de-sensitizes the factory knock sensors to run higher ignition advance. I specifically asked Paul about this and he replied that he had not changed any settings on my knock sensors at all.

This was his reply in his own words:

“No we don’t desensitize knock on pump gas tunes. Looking at your plugs it seems that all of your issues happened in only one cylinder. I suspect a fuel injector or meth distribution problem during that particular pull causing a lean condition in that one cylinder resulting in the spark plug heating up and causing pre-ignition (becomes hot like a glow plug). It could have been an injector clog or failure, or methanol cylinder distribution at the time of that particular pull, possibly due to meth momentarily stopping flow or reduced flow resulting in no atomization, possibly tank low resulting in air being pulled into lines under g-forces, etc. The O2 sensors see 3 cylinders at a time 1-3 and 4-6, so if only one cylinder has a fueling issue and the other two on that bank are fine the dme will not know about it or be able to compensate for it. An overall fueling situation the dme can compensate for but if only one particular cylinder goes very lean from the conditions I mention it will not show up as the O2 is reading mixture from 3 cylinders combined. This is how one particular cylinder could under certain conditions get much hotter causing the glow plug pre-ignition I described.
I really try to stay away from the forums and the drama they cause. Everyone has different opinions and theories.
I hope my thoughts on this helps. I’m sure you have see throughout the tuning process that I do my very best follow safe practices to keep the motor healthy. Starting low with the base map and ensuring the logs indicate that everything is running properly and clean before making any increases in a revision. Then only making small increases at one time.”

In order to facilitate a quick return back to the road, I purchased a BRAND NEW S55 engine from UK (BIG shout-out to AP Motorsports for the great help with fast shipping). Once the car was back up and running, we started the tear down process.

Firstly the spark plugs were pulled and #5 had completely melted off.


Dismantling the head showed the following damage:


#4 exhaust port severely misshapen/ melted, some damage to spark plug threads




#5 spark plug seat cracked/ melted, valve seat damage, exhaust port damage


#1-3, 6 looked ok.

Piston slight marked on the top. Block still looked ok. Pistons all looked really black which makes sense, seeing that the engine was previously consuming 1l of oil per 1,000kms. Previous engine builder did not do a great job with the forged pistons install.

Several workshops I spoke to all suggested damage was caused by running too lean in that cylinder, and causing extreme temperatures to be able to melt the cylinder ports. But the actual cause of lean is hard to determine. I have tried to get my fuel injectors bench flow tested to no avail. I’m still looking into it. It could be failed/ clogged fuel injectors, uneven distribution of meth or simply tuning error.

Another theory would be that the engine was already not healthy when I bought it, and my tuning process/ logging pushed it over the edge. This was my thought after looking at how bad condition the cylinder head was in. But of course I can’t prove this either.

So now the engine is junk and I’m parting out for spare parts/ accessories.

I’m currently in the process of Ecutek tuning and setting up a new direct port injected WMI system with Cortex controller.

[TopJimmy]

Sorry to hear things blew. Good to hear you're running again. My plans include a similar setup for tune+meth. I see you're trying to get the fuel injectors tested but that's still in works.

Do you feel that if you had used a port injection setup for the meth that may have avoided the issue?

[E92inSG]

Originally Posted by TopJimmy

Sorry to hear things blew. Good to hear you're running again. My plans include a similar setup for tune+meth. I see you're trying to get the fuel injectors tested but that's still in works.

Do you feel that if you had used a port injection setup for the meth that may have avoided the issue?

It's not easy finding a flow bench to test these injectors.

It's really hard to say if port injection would have avoided this, but it surely is one of the things to tick off on the list of things that could have gone wrong. of course PI meth brings about it's own set of issues, being that if a single nozzle out of 6 failed/ clogged, then big problems again.

but my goal for the ecutek meth tune will not be dependent on meth for fueling, but more for cooling AND octane/ knock supression. If for whatever reason meth stops flowing in any cylinder, i would hope the factory knock sensor would pull back enough timing to avoid catastrophic failure

[Shadow2]

First of all thank you for sharing. This is a great, in depth post-mortem. Very helpful to those of us with similar hardware going down similar paths.
How long had you had the car when this happened? How many miles roughly? On your new build, are you using meth again? PI meth? How are you moving forward with fueling? I'm very interested in EcuTEK but there still doesn't appear to be a solid answer for fueling on this engine, at least until these HPFP options come to market and we can get some real world data about them.

[MisterF80M3]

How much did it cost for a new engine from UK?

[oduli81]

Originally Posted by E92inSG

Some of you will have read about my engine failure in this thread.
https://f80.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=1726570

Back then I didn’t want to go too much into detail as to what happened exactly until I had more information. Well the engine tear down is finally complete and I’d like to share more about the damage that happened and hopefully gain some insight into what actually caused the damage and how to prevent it again in future.

I hope the discussion in this thread can be informational and perhaps more members with failed engines can share more about their own experiences as well


Engine mods:
2015 F80 M3
FBO
BM3 Paul Johnson tune
JB4 WMI (dual GPH12 Prometh nozzles in charge pipes)
100% meth
Carillo conrods
CP Pistons
Pure Stage 2+ turbos
Gintani hub

I purchased the car used, engine had already been built by previous owner. I started a new tune process with Paul Johnson because previous owner had an E30 tune on it with port injection and I wanted to run only pump fuel + meth.

The tune process was fairly smooth and Paul was very responsive throughout the entire process, starting from 23psi boost building up to the final 28-29psi revisions after each log (at least 8-10 revisions to get there). During this time I had also experimented with different WMI nozzle locations, as I had slight issues with uneven fuel trims between banks as pointed out by Paul. The final charge pipe locations seemed to even out the fuel trims the best compared to J-pipe and post intercooler locations.

The engine failure happened during one of my highway logging sessions. I had already done about 4 logs in 3-4th gear up to redline and shifting into 5th. On the final run, the engine started stuttering badly and seems to be misfiring, there was no fault code and I managed to drive the car home. These are my BM3 logs of the actual night of engine damage:

https://www.bootmod3.net/log?id=5ec6...729b509821b4bf
https://www.bootmod3.net/log?id=5ec6...729b511c4e6fda
https://www.bootmod3.net/log?id=5ec6...0b434c28f5b419
https://www.bootmod3.net/log?id=5ec6...0b434cf6b2b340

* one thing to note here is that I suspect that BM3 logs number the cylinders backwards. I’ve seen past logs that all show my #2 pulling timing consistently, and ended up that my #5 cylinder had the most damage. Paul has mentioned he does remember noticing sometime like this before as well on another car. I reached out to PTF about this and they say their parameters are exactly as BMW designed

I’ve to mention that I’m not very technically knowledgeable in engine tuning and what I’ve learnt up to then was purely from Paul’s feedback on tuning parameters. What is important to note what I had requested a track map from Paul specifically something that would be able to sustain extended highway runs at high RPMs. Up to and after the engine failure, Paul has maintained that the map he wrote for me was not an aggressive map and in line with what I had asked for, even after looking over all the past logs.

At this point there have been various assumptions and theories online about other engines being damaged under Paul’s tuning but I will not comment about any of that and will only discuss my own personal experience. Many have said that Paul de-sensitizes the factory knock sensors to run higher ignition advance. I specifically asked Paul about this and he replied that he had not changed any settings on my knock sensors at all.

This was his reply in his own words:

In order to facilitate a quick return back to the road, I purchased a BRAND NEW S55 engine from UK (BIG shout-out to AP Motorsports for the great help with fast shipping). Once the car was back up and running, we started the tear down process.

Firstly the spark plugs were pulled and #5 had completely melted off.


Dismantling the head showed the following damage:


#4 exhaust port severely misshapen/ melted, some damage to spark plug threads




#5 spark plug seat cracked/ melted, valve seat damage, exhaust port damage


#1-3, 6 looked ok.

Piston slight marked on the top. Block still looked ok. Pistons all looked really black which makes sense, seeing that the engine was previously consuming 1l of oil per 1,000kms. Previous engine builder did not do a great job with the forged pistons install.

Several workshops I spoke to all suggested damage was caused by running too lean in that cylinder, and causing extreme temperatures to be able to melt the cylinder ports. But the actual cause of lean is hard to determine. I have tried to get my fuel injectors bench flow tested to no avail. I’m still looking into it. It could be failed/ clogged fuel injectors, uneven distribution of meth or simply tuning error.

Another theory would be that the engine was already not healthy when I bought it, and my tuning process/ logging pushed it over the edge. This was my thought after looking at how bad condition the cylinder head was in. But of course I can’t prove this either.

So now the engine is junk and I’m parting out for spare parts/ accessories.

I’m currently in the process of Ecutek tuning and setting up a new direct port injected WMI system with Cortex controller.

all this headache to go a little faster than stock...

[TurboM]

Man, that sucks. How much power was it making?

Check the turbine as that chunk of the exhaust valve from cylinder #5 could have done some more damage on its way out.

[E92inSG]

Originally Posted by TurboM

Man, that sucks. How much power was it making?

Check the turbine as that chunk of the exhaust valve from cylinder #5 could have done some more damage on its way out.

Turbine was checked and no damage found, luckily

[E92inSG]

Originally Posted by Shadow2

First of all thank you for sharing. This is a great, in depth post-mortem. Very helpful to those of us with similar hardware going down similar paths.
How long had you had the car when this happened? How many miles roughly? On your new build, are you using meth again? PI meth? How are you moving forward with fueling? I'm very interested in EcuTEK but there still doesn't appear to be a solid answer for fueling on this engine, at least until these HPFP options come to market and we can get some real world data about them.

purchased the car used, engine had 49000kms on it when it happened. I will be using meth, but changing up the setup with dual stage direct port injection, in smaller qty and 50/50 meth. Currently dialing in my non-meth map, then will go on to meth map after.

Originally Posted by MisterF80M3

How much did it cost for a new engine from UK?

about usd12k before shipping

Originally Posted by oduli81

all this headache to go a little faster than stock...

yeah tell me about it

[mark5092]

Sure hope you will be using a different tuner for your maps this time!

[1hotrod]

I feel bad, especially when you spend all that time, and money to start all over again

I am just curious, about the safety systems in our F8x series? Shouldn't the knock sensor or one of other temp sensors have retarded the timing when it senses something wrong? It does look like the AFR, air fuel ratio was at 12 across the board which is what everyone tries to tune to.

Would an EGT, exhaust gas temp would have helped? Do we need to get a better fuel injectors, or a dual feed fuel rail, etc..

[MisterF80M3]

Originally Posted by mark5092

Sure hope you will be using a different tuner for your maps this time!

I was planning to use Paul Johnson for an E85 tune also.

[ssgm1x]

How long have u had the car, and what was the previous owners reason for getting rid of the vehicle? Sorry for your troubles bro.

[NickyC]

Sorry to hear this OP, believe me I know how expensive/distressing this can be.

Unless I'm worth so much money one day it doesn't matter, I will NEVER go with a custom built engine again. Twice in my early/mid 20s I spent a considerable amount of money on what were supposed to be bullet proof engines from shops with a high feedback rating. Twice they blew within a year during what was usual use, nothing crazy like on a track or the like. No tuning, no new mods, no new nothing. Yes two blown engines is a small sample size, but considering I was out nearly $30k in both instances I'm done for life.

Stock motor built by people/companies who I know 100% know wtf they're doing. If I grenade a stock motor through bad luck, my search will be for a stock replacement only. Good luck on your new motor.

[FSociety]

Sorry to hear OP, I was also F80Paul tuned in my 17' F80 M3 I got with 10k miles up until the end of my lease 25k miles (Full E85 Tuned and no mods). Not a single hiccup as I drove Full E85 or switched to E30 OTS when I wasn't running his tune.
I had done spark plugs right around 13k miles and then again at 25k miles... Only issues I encountered with the car which was not related to tune but just normal stuff was.

1) Injector stuck open (was running 93 for 2 tanks when it happened)
2) 2 weeks later, 1 coil and 1 spark plug went bad so took car to different dealer ( i had a feeling so car was running stock tune for 2-3 weeks)

I do hear a lot about injectors or coils going randomly 93 or Full E85 it can happen. Which when an injector fails is almost something bad can happen than a coil or spark plug.

I took a look at your logs and I can't see anything LEAN or visibly bad from them. Especially after knowing more than 20 of my friends who are also tuned by Paul. Unfortunately if you got the car used there's a big potential risk that like you said could of been weak/bad to start off and no matter what tune the engine would not react well to it. Again sorry to hear this!

Fast forward my M3, M5, and my X4M still sticking with BM3 and the amazing support in their OTS and the Custom Tuning Datalogging/Map Switching and Tuners like Paul still doing amazing work day in day out.

[The Choosey begger]

Originally Posted by NickyC

Sorry to hear this OP, believe me I know how expensive/distressing this can be.

Unless I'm worth so much money one day it doesn't matter, I will NEVER go with a custom built engine again. Twice in my early/mid 20s I spent a considerable amount of money on what were supposed to be bullet proof engines from shops with a high feedback rating. Twice they blew within a year during what was usual use, nothing crazy like on a track or the like. No tuning, no new mods, no new nothing. Yes two blown engines is a small sample size, but considering I was out nearly $30k in both instances I'm done for life.

Stock motor built by people/companies who I know 100% know wtf they're doing. If I grenade a stock motor through bad luck, my search will be for a stock replacement only. Good luck on your new motor.

I agree

I had a low 11 sec FBO N54 with meth maybe 10 years ago even though i didn't blew the engine, it was like a science project that never stopped, i didn't have time for the drama in the end.

I replaced that car with an E92 M3, kept the engine stock,i had coilovers for autocross. It was a blast!

[davyent]

Originally Posted by E92inSG

Some of you will have read about my engine failure in this thread.
https://f80.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=1726570

Back then I didn’t want to go too much into detail as to what happened exactly until I had more information. Well the engine tear down is finally complete and I’d like to share more about the damage that happened and hopefully gain some insight into what actually caused the damage and how to prevent it again in future.

I hope the discussion in this thread can be informational and perhaps more members with failed engines can share more about their own experiences as well


Engine mods:
2015 F80 M3
FBO
BM3 Paul Johnson tune
JB4 WMI (dual GPH12 Prometh nozzles in charge pipes)
100% meth
Carillo conrods
CP Pistons
Pure Stage 2+ turbos
Gintani hub

I purchased the car used, engine had already been built by previous owner. I started a new tune process with Paul Johnson because previous owner had an E30 tune on it with port injection and I wanted to run only pump fuel + meth.

The tune process was fairly smooth and Paul was very responsive throughout the entire process, starting from 23psi boost building up to the final 28-29psi revisions after each log (at least 8-10 revisions to get there). During this time I had also experimented with different WMI nozzle locations, as I had slight issues with uneven fuel trims between banks as pointed out by Paul. The final charge pipe locations seemed to even out the fuel trims the best compared to J-pipe and post intercooler locations.

The engine failure happened during one of my highway logging sessions. I had already done about 4 logs in 3-4th gear up to redline and shifting into 5th. On the final run, the engine started stuttering badly and seems to be misfiring, there was no fault code and I managed to drive the car home. These are my BM3 logs of the actual night of engine damage:

https://www.bootmod3.net/log?id=5ec6...729b509821b4bf
https://www.bootmod3.net/log?id=5ec6...729b511c4e6fda
https://www.bootmod3.net/log?id=5ec6...0b434c28f5b419
https://www.bootmod3.net/log?id=5ec6...0b434cf6b2b340

* one thing to note here is that I suspect that BM3 logs number the cylinders backwards. I’ve seen past logs that all show my #2 pulling timing consistently, and ended up that my #5 cylinder had the most damage. Paul has mentioned he does remember noticing sometime like this before as well on another car. I reached out to PTF about this and they say their parameters are exactly as BMW designed

I’ve to mention that I’m not very technically knowledgeable in engine tuning and what I’ve learnt up to then was purely from Paul’s feedback on tuning parameters. What is important to note what I had requested a track map from Paul specifically something that would be able to sustain extended highway runs at high RPMs. Up to and after the engine failure, Paul has maintained that the map he wrote for me was not an aggressive map and in line with what I had asked for, even after looking over all the past logs.

At this point there have been various assumptions and theories online about other engines being damaged under Paul’s tuning but I will not comment about any of that and will only discuss my own personal experience. Many have said that Paul de-sensitizes the factory knock sensors to run higher ignition advance. I specifically asked Paul about this and he replied that he had not changed any settings on my knock sensors at all.

This was his reply in his own words:

In order to facilitate a quick return back to the road, I purchased a BRAND NEW S55 engine from UK (BIG shout-out to AP Motorsports for the great help with fast shipping). Once the car was back up and running, we started the tear down process.

Firstly the spark plugs were pulled and #5 had completely melted off.


Dismantling the head showed the following damage:


#4 exhaust port severely misshapen/ melted, some damage to spark plug threads




#5 spark plug seat cracked/ melted, valve seat damage, exhaust port damage


#1-3, 6 looked ok.

Piston slight marked on the top. Block still looked ok. Pistons all looked really black which makes sense, seeing that the engine was previously consuming 1l of oil per 1,000kms. Previous engine builder did not do a great job with the forged pistons install.

Several workshops I spoke to all suggested damage was caused by running too lean in that cylinder, and causing extreme temperatures to be able to melt the cylinder ports. But the actual cause of lean is hard to determine. I have tried to get my fuel injectors bench flow tested to no avail. I’m still looking into it. It could be failed/ clogged fuel injectors, uneven distribution of meth or simply tuning error.

Another theory would be that the engine was already not healthy when I bought it, and my tuning process/ logging pushed it over the edge. This was my thought after looking at how bad condition the cylinder head was in. But of course I can’t prove this either.

So now the engine is junk and I’m parting out for spare parts/ accessories.

I’m currently in the process of Ecutek tuning and setting up a new direct port injected WMI system with Cortex controller.

Dual 12GPH nozzles are an overkill for your set up as your DME will detect the excess fueling and automatically cut / reduce your fuel trims / reducing fuel injection from your injectors. Hence, why you think Injectors weren't functioning well.

Excessive meth injection often causes misfires, sputtering and heat build up.

I would recommend dual 5GPH nozzles instead.

[Info@mad-us.com]

Failed injectors are fairly common