E90 M3 Throttle Actuator Gears

[ty20404]

Just wanted to drop in and share some helpful information. Many of you with E90 M3s or E60 M5s know that the throttle actuator failure is a pretty common problem due to the plastic gears inside wearing. Up until this point there have only been a couple of solutions...Buy a whole new unit from the dealer, or get a custom gear set machined.

I was one of the first guinea pigs for Odometer Gears to try out their replacement gears. Unfortunately it won't fix an actuator that has failed and fried it's electronics, however the gears DO work!

My first actuator went out a couple of months ago and no one had a prompt solution so I had to drop $900 on a new actuator. I had swapped it out and been driving the car ever since, but coming off of idle was still jerky and not fluid leading me to believe the other actuator was soon to go. Odometer Gears got some gears to me a few weeks ago, but I just got around to installing them into my failed unit.

I swapped the failed unit with new gears into the car, in place of the unit that was soon to go, and unfortunately got the same codes coming up with the car going into limp mode.

I removed the actuator and placed the circuit-board cover from the unit that had yet to fail on the failed unit with new gears, and boom, the gears work!

No more jerkiness in the 1000-2500 rpm range. Extremely fluid. At this point, I'll just have to drive it a good bit and see what happens as I've only put a few miles on the car since the swap.

Long story short, if you're actuators haven't failed yet, go buy a set from Odometer Gears. Much, much cheaper than replacing the whole unit. Unfortunately it won't fix an actuator that's toast, but you should know when your gears are getting too much slop. Don't wait to fix it or you will spend a lot more money.

I'll be talking with Odometer Gears on possibly figuring out how to replace the MOSFETs in the circuit board that I have that is bad and testing it out. I know I've read a few posts elsewhere about people doing this and having it work, but not for long. Need to figure out how to fix these circuit boards as well as replacing gears.

I'll post updates as I put miles on the car.