| 10-25-2022, 10:19 PM | #1 |
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Drives: 2015 LSB F80 M3
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Hello all, new to BMW and new to the forum.
I became an F80 owner early this month and couldn't be more excited! It has been a dream car of mine for several years and the accomplishment feels unreal! Spec is to die for as well, low mile individual Laguna Seca Blue over Silverstone leather! I'm mostly posting my story here to help others, as of tomorrow the last of the issues should be fixed and I should have a healthy car. My car sat for the better part of 3-4 years before I took ownership, and in that time it developed the common oil filter housing gasket leak. Meh, I figured it'd be alright to drive the car the ~30ish miles home. Last mile of the journey, belt goes boom, I assume due to dry rot and a mix of the belt being oil soaked. I'll take full responsibility for the belt snapping, I shouldn't have driven it to be honest. Fast forward, I put a new belt on, pull the remains of the old belt out, it didn't look super bad. I thought I had gotten away with the belt not getting into the crank, but I unfortunately became a statistic. Crank chewed the hell out of the belt - decided to drop the pan as well to see if any made it past the crank case - better safe than sorry. Tons of belt in the pan and on the sump screens, also conveniently found out the oil drain plug was over-torqued and brought the threads with it. New oil pan ordered . New pan in, belt removed, new Vargas Turbo Technologies crank seal guard installed so this NEVER happens again, new pulleys, new tensioner, new belts. OFH gasket fixed. Car should be good right!? NOPE! Oil leak from the OFH gasket and the destroyed crank seal leaked directly onto the electric power steering motor. This motor (which conveniently is not sealed and can be taken out by a puddle splashing in the right place) is IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND - BMW seems to only want to sell the entire steering rack assembly for -$4k as well. Found a scrapper on eBay with a low mile motor out of a 2018 car, part numbers don't match (this has been the biggest pain in the ass ever, the part number on the motor from my car seems to be the only one in existence according to all my digging ). New steering motor goes in tomorrow morning and the car should be in good shape. Insanely infuriating (AND EXPENSIVE) chain of events, but I'm hoping I got all my BMW ownership woes out of the way early. I learned a valuable lesson in patience, one that I will not soon forget, but I can't help but be a little mad at BMW for designing motors that confetti belts into the oil pan. I hope my experience can also serve as a tool for other F80 owners, I wouldn't wish this on anyone else! Don't mess around with your accessory belts - replace it often and install a seal guard! |
| 10-26-2022, 07:42 AM | #2 |
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Ugh, welcome to the F80 world and forum OP, very sorry to hear about this. What an incredible series of unfortunate events. You've definitely paid your dues at the outset. Very good lesson with keeping up on belt maintenance (good FCPEuro item). Fingers crossed the EPS motor swap goes OK.
Once everything is sorted, find the nearest track and beat the proverbial snot out of her because 1) she's been bad, and 2) that's what she's made for |
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| 10-26-2022, 09:38 AM | #3 | |
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| 10-26-2022, 11:04 PM | #4 |
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My goodness that is a lousy chain of events. Sorry OP. Glad your getting it sorted soon. I didn't realize the belt issue was present on the S55, thought that was a N55 only thing. Eep. I will remain vigilant.
Lovely spec! |
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| 10-27-2022, 10:17 AM | #6 | |
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