Hack Weld Solder Sculpt: 2001 BMW e46

Triple black BMW 325 Ci, brought back from the brink

My brother-in-law Tim (of WWTD fame) bought this Shwarz 2 black-on-black 2001 BMW 325Ci in Virginia, billed as "non-running, possible blown engine". He was looking for a LS engine swap candidate, and e46 bimmers have a great race-ready chassis, known for excellent suspension and weight distribution (great for an LS engine swap if you can get the electronics/CANBUS/$#%@BMW-DRM figured out, that is). His plans skewed sideways quickly however. After trailering the car back to the garage and putting a battery on it, he quickly discovered that although the car seemed to be poorly maintained by its former owner, the engine passed a compression test and turned over just fine. Not wanting to pull and toss a perfectly good engine or car, he gave it some love, fluids changed, belts, plugs, brake job, clay-blocked the paint, and tidied up the interior. It actually ran pretty good. He threw big front brakes and some M-sport rims on it. Before he could eBay the thing, my wife asked me if we could buy it. Having just given up on and banished to the storage lot her Grand Prix, I agreed. WWTD Tim made a few bucks, we got what I consider to be my first "modern" car project.

"Service Engine Soon"

Chasing gremlins through the BMW M54 - engine left side

The car ran, but had some codes that required attention. I started by chasing down problems and codes relating to dead sensors: dead oxygen sensors, a wonky throttle position sensor, intermittent mass airflow (MAF) sensor. But the calamity came a year later while chasing a vacuum leak that caused the engine to run too lean and knock occasionally. I replaced just a litany of things: the bastard of an oil PCV/seperator gaskets (cracked/wasted- terrible job, like wrestling a basket of snakes), DISA valve (rebuilt, and finally replaced), mass airflow sensor (cleaned, then replaced), upper and lower intake boot (cracked/torn). I chased it back to the valve cover gasket where, while changing, I dropped a valve cover bolt straight down into the engine. I wasn't aware of the fact I did this at first, but the absence of one unit of necessary hardware to reassemble pointed to a bad place. When running the engine, imagined or not, I thought I heard a slight but staccato clack, which caused me to shut her down, roll her backward into the stall, and languish for the next 2 years.

Odyssey of the Bolt

Dropping the front subframe out. What a mess.

I snaked neodymium magnets, cameras, and jillion-lumen lights down into the head. I probed oil return galleys. I bumped the engine, hawking over the valvetrain to see if I could grab a glimpse of the missing bolt. No joy. I supported the engine and tore out the front subframe and steering rack so I could remove the oil pan and windage tray to see if it had fallen all the way down to the bottom of the motor. It hadn't. I did develop a keen sense of where I suspected it was though, and that place was deep down in the head, below the camshaft, between the lifter and the wall of the head. That place was very close to the position from which the bolt originated, and the most likely place I wouldn't be able to inspect or reach without disassembling the head or removing the cam. This presented a problem. When listening to people I deemed to be "real mechanics", I was advised to never do 2 things: disassemble the VANOS/cam timing sprockets, or attempt to remove the overhead cams. It wasn't a job for mere mortals. It was a job for certified BMW engineers, requiring thousands of dollars in special tools from Stuttgart. If attempted by a weekend hack like me it would likely result in broken camshafts or and engine so screwed up that it would never run again. I backed way off. The car sat. In fact all my cars sat. I hung it up for a while, since I thought I had screwed the bimmer up so bad that it was irrecoverable.

Pep Talk, Leading to "Why the Hell Not?"

See? That wasn't so hard!

I've been vacationing in Lac du Flambeau Wisconsin since I was a kid. I go up and meet with some great folks I only see once a year, unwind, listen to the loons warble on the lake, and calm my mind. My buddy Sean is the fire chief for a sizable town in southern Wisconsin, and a great guy with which to discuss stuff both large and small. He just has a refreshing perspective on things. In July 2015 as we were sitting behind his cabin by the campfire, he asked "Chuck, where is your awesome bimmer? That thing is cool! You used to drive it up here." I managed to mumble out "Well I dropped this bolt straight down into its gullet, and it's been screwed up ever since." I told him that I actually hadn't worked on anything in a year because of it. He gave me a puzzled look and said, "So, the car doesn't run, but you're afraid to disassemble the engine because the car might not- run? Now I might be missing something but sounds like you have nothin to lose for trying." It cut right to the source of the stupid thing that makes me freeze: I don't know enough, and am not an expert, therefore I can't begin until I know I can do it perfectly and expertly. Sean's reframing of the situation was so spot on. It just pointed out perfectly how utterly ridiculous my approach has been. And he allowed me to screw it all up. Who cares? It's already screwed up. There's nothing but upside. I decided on that day forward, that I am

Xavier and I getting down on it

allowed to attempt anything even if I am not an expert. I will learn by doing, and I can even screw things up a couple times, learn from it, and keep going. In fact this entire project blog is dedicated to that very premise. After all, "perfect" really is the enemy of "good".

I returned to the garage the next week, bought a pricey but necessary set of BMW VANOS tools, and accomplished the thing that everyone told me to never attempt. I took apart the VANOS. I took apart the cam sprockets. When I got the exhaust cam out, there was that stupid bolt, just lying there. I framed it and hung it on the wall. I performed the 100K mile maintenance, inspected the lifters, cam lobes, cam sprocket chain tensioner, replaced the motor mounts, oil pan gasket, power steering pump, subframe hardware, and adjusted the torque on the oil pump sprocket hardware. We put it all back, and one late summer day, the car roared to life when I turned the key. I think my eyes were closed when I engaged the starter, but angst let way to elation when she lit up.

That whole ordeal lent me a very large dose of confidence, and earned me a BMW-logo-emblazoned lab coat, since I obviously was now amongst the ranks of impossibly awesome BMW engineers. I've kept that car up over the past year and am doing some mild suspension mods to it (rear shock mount gussets, Bilstein adjustable shocks, H&R sport/lowering springs). 2zen2 drives it mainly and daily since A) she was such a good sport when I broke it and B) it's her car. I've moved on to other projects, but the black BMW will always be the one that made me better. It reminds me it's usually ok to not be an expert knowitall, and most times it's ok to just try stuff.