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Thread: Rod Bearing Failure M62B44

  1. #1
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    Rod Bearing Failure M62B44

    Not your typical "My M62 makes terrible noises!" thread I'm afraid, although I would like nothing more than to be proven wrong! At this point, I'm 95+% sure I'm dealing with a rod bearing failure. Won't know until I pick up an engine support brace and drop the subframe to pull the upper oil pan. But with the noise I heard, and the chunks of metal in the lower pan and specs flowing out of the filter... There can be little doubt.

    Not so much upset the engine failed at 211,000 miles with how I've used it, I've put on 120k myself over the last 10+ years including several thousand miles of track days plus general shenanigans. What really REALLY sucks is the freaking timing. Just completed the timing chain / guides, as well as power steering hoses and new reservoir. Got everything back together to find I still had a massive oil leak. Traced that to the rear main seal which had just been done with the clutch a couple years ago. Pulled transmission, replaced rear seal, and was completely leak free for the first time in many, many years. Drove it a week or so, and the starter goes out. Rebuild that (posted a thread on it a couple days ago) and drive the car 10miles to work yesterday, SUPER tame drive as I had our new puppy in the back seat, and get off my exit to a TERRIBLE noise. Limp the last mile or so to work and park it. Fortunately I store my trailer at work so I just trailered it back home last night behind one of our work pickups. Total elapsed time between parking it to undergo the timing chain (which I started not because of noise, but because oil was leaking from everywhere), all of the stuff inbetween, and today? Many months of work, but I didn't even get through a single tank of gas! ARGH! If the damn lower end was going to let go, 400 miles sooner would have been nice FFS.

    Is what it is, but wow, that's a nut punch. Can't think of how anything I did could have been a cause or contributor either unless I somehow managed to disrupt proper oil pressure with derbies or improper installation of a guide or the OSV I replaced while in there but I don't see how.

    Here's the knock at idle. I've had collapsed lifters before, this isn't that.


    Here's the fine glitter in the oil when I pulled up the filter. Keep in mind this was brand new Mobil1 0w40 ~400 miles ago.


    And, last but CERTAINLY not least... I dropped the lower oil pan, which had been 100% clean when I put it on after the timing job, with nasty looking oil and copper colored chunks of what i assume to be rod bearing material. Need to find some kind of strainer to run that oil through and filter out all the crap that's settled, this is just the stuff visible on the high part of the pan :-(

    2017-07-12 21.16.53.jpg

    This is where you all chime in and say "You may have had this car 10 years, but these engines are noisy and it's all in your head! It's just a collapsed lifter/general engine noise/VANOS (N/A on the M62B44)! Those copper chunks are just break in material from the timing job (despite none of the timing components having such material)" Right guys? RIGHT?! *crickets*


    Will no doubt be posting more. I'm holding out some hope that the crank and rods are still in spec and I can get away with doing rod bearings. Getting into the pistons, rings, Alusil cylinder walls etc I suspect will be a larger project than I'm willing to undertake, but open to ideas.

  2. #2
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    I believe you about it being rod bearings... all the symptoms point to it. The sound in the video sounds like what my M5 sounded like with bad rod bearings (the knocking was more audible when I revved the engine but it sounded just like yours).

    Metal shavings almost certainly indicate rod bearing failure, especially since it can't be from the chain guides (which are new). If you have any doubt, send an oil sample to Blackstone Labs and they'll tell you if it's copper and lead— those are usually the metals you'll see with failed rod bearings.

    Luckily for you, the M62/S62 crank is fairly durable and you didn't drive the car very long with the noise, so there's a good chance that your crank and crank journals are okay. You might have spun a bearing but it's not the end of the world.

    I used an $80 Harbor Freight engine brace to support the engine when I did the rod bearings on my M5, it worked pretty well. I had 3 spun bearings and almost all of them were down to the copper, but the crank and journals looked fine so after plastigauging all the clearances to make sure everything was in spec I put everything back together with new rod bearings and new con rod bolts. Fortunately for you, the M62 rod bearings and con rod bolts are cheaper than the S62 ones... I spent like $700 doing the rod bearings on my M5.

    As for why your bearings failed, it's honestly a bit of a crapshoot. You said you put a few thousand track miles on the engine, which certainly does put more stress on the bottom end, but in most cases it's a little debris that makes it way into the rod bearings and wreaks havoc. It's pretty random... there are lots of guys that track their cars with no issues, and then there are cars that never get tracked and have the rod bearings fail.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

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    Is a lightly used replacement engine a better choice?


    Ed in San Jose '97 540i 6 speed aspensilber over aubergine leather. Build date 3/97. Golden Gate Chapter BMW CCA Nr 62319.

  4. #4
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    A lightly used engine is something I need to start looking for either way. Heck, I'd even take one with an exploded timing chain if it was cheap. Big caveat is it can't have piston damage. I could put my heads and timing gear over to it, and likely would anyway because it's new and fresh.

    I do intend to check to the best of my ability the rod / crank for ovaling. From what the guys on M5 board are saying about the S62 (which I would assume would be as if not more durable components) if the rod gets down to the copper and knocks loudly, the rod and crank will almost certainly be out of round. Mine is clearly to the copper, and quite possibly rod on crank contact by the chunks of copper in the pan. I stopped by my machine shop today, and they said virtually the exact same. If Danny is right, I'd be a happy camper, but I'm not holding my breath.

    The oil looks really bad too with areas of sludgy goo (beyond just the metal fleck) and the oil level was down to minimum so I'm concerned I have other stuff going on the more I think about it. This engine didn't normally use oil, and I know I had it at the full mark. Frankly, I'm pretty sure I had to top it off more than I thought, but just chalked it up to having a more complete drain of oil than usual having the pan dropped. No reason for the oil to look that bad, I didn't have that kind of crap to clean out of the pan when it had 200k to accumulate, let alone just this past 400 miles. It's possible the rod failure was a symptom of a bigger problem, there will be a lot to check. Or maybe I've been reading too many threads about disasters today, which is absolutely the case, but does not mean my concerns are not warranted.
    Last edited by qcdstick; 07-13-2017 at 08:39 PM.

  5. #5
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    A lot of people were doubting me on M5Board but I put that S62 back together and beat on it for a while with no problems, and last I checked it's still running and driving just fine with the current owner.

    That being said, if you care about absolute reliability and longevity I'd just swap the block. 200k is a pretty good long life out of an M62 that's 20 years old.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

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    Danny, you were definitely a hero for that M5 bearing job, in spite of the doubters. But, after all, you are only in double digits on the TCG jobs, right?
    gmak: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. A journey with my new-to-me 2000 540i

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    Doesn't sound like rod bearing(s) to me. Cadence is wrong, some ticking says valve train to me.
    Are you able to post another vid? If so give it a light rev. Rod knocks will make a distinct noise on the over-run.
    Good luck

    If you can leave two black stripes from the exit of one corner to the braking zone of the next, you have enough horsepower. - Mark Donohue

  8. #8
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    Sorry for your issue. Does the M62 oil pump get starved when tracking the car hard?

    In for updates on rod bearings.
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  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by philly98540 View Post
    Sorry for your issue. Does the M62 oil pump get starved when tracking the car hard?

    In for updates on rod bearings.
    Not that I've seen, although it certainly is possible in a long sweeper with sustained lateral G loads. Can't honestly say I'm watching the cluster at that point, but should the oil pressure go low should have made the audible "DING" which I would have heard. From what I understand, that would only happen if the pressure dropped below what is normal PSI at idle and not mean for sure normal high pressure is being maintained at RPM. One would think though if the pickup grabbed air it would trip it pretty fast.

    You do get fuel starvation kicking in at around 1/3 tank or a little better on a LH carousel.

    In any case, I haven't tracked the car in 9 months, so everything went downhill on normal driving. Besides, bombing a normal cloverleaf interchange probably puts sustained lateral G's over a longer period of time than most any turn on a racetrack, and I'm certainly known to do that at every opportunity and I would wager I'm hardly alone in that. Don't think the tracking it should have had an immediate impact on the oil pump, besides more of the miles being at higher RPMs possibly accelerating the wear per mile average.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by gmak View Post
    Danny, you were definitely a hero for that M5 bearing job, in spite of the doubters. But, after all, you are only in double digits on the TCG jobs, right?
    Yeah, I'm at 10 TCG jobs, 1 rod bearing job, 2 driveshaft replacements, and 1 transfer case rebuild/replacement. All in like 2 years.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  11. #11
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    Verdict is in. Multiple rod bearing failure. #5 was the source of the giant knock and I'm guessing the bearing is all but gone, #2 and #8 had play as well.



    I'll get to pulling the rod caps and document the bearing condition cylinder by cylinder soon. #2 bore shows significant scoring (to my untrained eye). The other cylinders that I could see without rotating the engine looked perfectly smooth and shiny. I have a buddy coming by with a boreoscope tomorrow and will try and get pictures through the spark plug holes and also from the bottom for each cylinder to know the condition of each cylinder wall top to bottom. Don't think it will matter though, because with the condition of #2 the block is probably coffee table material. After pulling the rod caps and bearings, I'll probably put the underside back together and prepare to pull the engine out the top for a full tear down (mostly just for fun).
    Last edited by qcdstick; 07-18-2017 at 10:06 PM. Reason: Fixed mix-labled cylinders.

  12. #12
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    Holey smokes!
    Perhaps because of the recorded sound it sounded way to sharp(and fast) to my ears for it to be a rod. Then again I've never seen one THAT loose that hadn't come apart.
    Amazing that it was in one piece.
    What was the scenario leading up to this? It must have given some warning, no?
    That one will make a nice door stop now

    If you can leave two black stripes from the exit of one corner to the braking zone of the next, you have enough horsepower. - Mark Donohue

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    Were there any warning signs before it happened?

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    Not a lot of warning, no. In hindsight there were some earlier signs I didn't pick up on. I remember hearing a very faint knock or rattle lifting off while shifting gears, audible only at low speed due to wind noise, that gave me pause after pulling off the interstate. If I had the radio on I wouldn't even have heard it. This was my earliest warning even with the benefit of hindsight. Came in the middle of a two hour round trip drive to pick up our new puppy, and just after having done both the timing chains and rear main seal, so naturally I assumed any new noise was related to something I had done rather than an unrelated development in the engine. In another situation having not just done all that, It may have caused me to pull over. Not sure if the knock would have been audible at idle when warm, it wasn't on cold startup. Only noticed it a couple times, but almost all my miles around this time were two lane highway or interstate so a few hundred miles with little opportunity to hear it.

    I also struggled with stalling when the revs dropped to idle since I put things back together from the timing job, once it idled it idled fine but often wouldn't catch the falling revs before stalling. Initially I cross wired the ICV and the TPS (same plug, same area, different color) which of course caused it to not idle at all, never will know if that somehow damaged the ICV or if the idle issue was unrelated. I couldn't find a vacuum leak. I also have a lightweight JB Racing aluminum flywheel which was not helping the situation, but I seldom had issues the 10k miles I had on that setup previously so that wasn't the root cause, but certainly didn't help. Maybe it was oil pressure related? I'll probably never know for sure.

    In any case, they day I REALLY knew there was a problem, was on a 15 mile drive in to work, all interstate and highway. I thought I heard a bit of something at highway speed, but wasn't sure. When I pulled off my exit, I heard the banging (as in the video) and knew I had a major, major problem. Limped a mile to work at low rpm and trailered it home to what you see here. Was probably failing for a while, and really cut loose last week on that drive to work. Startup was normal, but I thought I noticed some smoke in my mirror backing out the garage (in hindsight, the rings were probably already damaged).

    It's a bit of a chicken / egg scenario... Did the failing rod bearing cause low oil pressure (and subsequent rod and ring damage)? Or did a failing oil pump over time cause wear in various places, and the major rod failure was the icing on the cake? I'm leaning heavily to the oil pump being the root cause. The bearing went fast, and I'm pretty sure I had ring damage before the rod got REALLY bad, and I surely would have noticed if I burned a quart and a half of oil in that short drive to work (Oil level upon parking the car was just below the low mark, had been full a few hundred miles earlier). Proper oil pressure instrumentation (WTF BMW?!) would have saved me from all of this mess.

  15. #15
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    Pictures. I only have the rod caps and bearings pulled off the front 4 cylinders (1, 2, 5, and 6). #5 was the forward most rod, and the one with the HUGE knock. Surprisingly, both bearings were still present, I expected them to be completely gone with as much play was in the rod. They were of course a small fraction of their former selves. Here is a comparison between the still tight #1 rod bearing and the totally f'd #5 bearing that share the same part of the crankshaft:

    20170716_095608.jpg

    Not sure the composition of these, the bits in the pan were copper colored, and you can see copper in the worn parts of the other bearings. No copper was visible on the really bad bearing, I suspect it has a copper colored core that broke off and fell to the pan leaving only the outer shell left. I may cut one of the other bearings, or file it down to get a section of what they look like. Later on I will get pictures of each of them, just haven't gotten that far yet.


    As for the crank, it's just as screwed as the rod bearing. I don't even need to mic it, the damage is clearly visible even in a picture.

    2017-07-16 10.29.44.jpg

    Top half is #5, bottom half is #1. If you look on the left side, you can see how much of a hammering the crank took vs the far right side where the small ridge between each rod journal is almost nil. You can see the rod was moving around sideways as well.

    Here is another shot of the general surface wear of #1 and #5 rods:

    20170716_102957.jpg

    Now, a couple bore-o-scope pictures from the #5 cylinder wall, as viewed from the top through the spark plug hole. You can see in this first picture heavy scoring of the cylinder wall. This much I expected based on what I saw below. The interesting bit is the carbon buildup on the head of the piston itself. You can only see part of it in this picture, but there is a crescent shaped arc along the edge of the piston where the carbon buildup has been cleaned off. As well as what appears to be some oil.

    WIN_20170716_09_24_16_Pro.jpg

    Only explanation I can think of for this is the ring seal failed completely, allowing combustion gasses to fly by the piston, cleaning the surface carbon off along the area of the seal failure. I'm no expert, just my theory.


    Here's another shot of the cylinder wall from the scope

    WIN_20170716_09_35_17_Pro.jpg

    I don't even remember which cylinder this is. I could have gone on and scoped each cylinder, but there was no point. This engine is done, and needs to come out of my car, so I may as well break it down and take pictures when it's easier to do.

  16. #16
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    Damn thats bad. I bet there was a failure in the oiling system. Oil pump or something. Maybe save the good parts for the replacement motor?
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  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by philly98540 View Post
    Damn thats bad. I bet there was a failure in the oiling system. Oil pump or something. Maybe save the good parts for the replacement motor?
    Well, if it was a pump failure, I wonder how good anything still is. Obviously the bolt on stuff like the timing parts I just put on will go onto whatever I find for a new motor. But I would have to look the heads over really good to make sure nothing wore down up there. I'm sure the valves would be good, but the the cams and caps could have worn. I guess it will be easy enough to inspect, I may have a pair of good heads.

  18. #18
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    Yeah, I meant the timing guides and stuff you just put on, if they are still good.

    Take a look at your oil pump and associated bits. Be interested to know if there was an issue there that started the failure.
    98 540i 6, 525 whp, 120 mph 1/4, V3 Si S/C'er @16 psi, W/A I/C, Water/Meth, Supersprint Headers, HJS Cats, 3" Custom Exhaust, UUC Twin Disc, Wavetrac LSD, GC Coil Overs, Monoball TA, AEM FP, Aeromotive FPR, AEM Failsafe AFR/Boost, Style 65's w/275's, M5 Steering Box, Eibach Sways, M3 Shifter, Evans Coolant, 85 Deg Stat, PWM Fan, 10" Subs, B.A. speakers, Grom Aux/BT, Still Rolling as my DD!

  19. #19
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    Any idea how to inspect the oil pump? It's on my floor assembled but I've never had one apart before to even know what it should look like or have for tolerances

  20. #20
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    Look for scratches or grooves on the rotor tips. Attachment 605249 Here is a good used one.

  21. #21
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    Edit, well, I have an album, but apparently I can't figure out any way to link to it without the stupid forum putting astricks through all the useful parts of the URL. WTF? Tried direct link to google album and tinyurl redirect with same result. Maybe PM me if you want all the pictures of all the bearings I guess. I took close ups of each pair of bearings on both sides and from different angles. The ones I attached are pretty high res if you zoom in, so they tell quite a lot.

    I'll share just 5 of them here. #5 cylinder was the one that imploded, #2 and #8 had play as well. What is interesting is the bearings for #2 and #8 don't look much if any worse than #7, #4, or #6. #3 and #1 are slightly better, but still terrible. Clearly they ran without sufficient oil for some time, and with no warning from the car's gauge cluster.

    Outer faces of the bearings. These showed considerably less wear than the inner faces which ran on the crank, which is logical
    1-8-1.jpg

    Inner faces. These pictures are pretty high resolution so you should be able to zoom in and see some fair detail on any of the bearings. You can clearly see how pancaked #5 bearings became from the audible knocking.
    1-8-2.jpg

    #2 bearings close up. This bearing had play by hand
    2-3.jpg

    #8 bearings close up. This bearing also had play by hand
    8-3.jpg

    #6 bearing looks like crap also, but had no play pushing on the rod by hand. I guess I expected the cylinders with no play to look better, they really don't (much).
    6-3.jpg

    I think this is all pretty clear evidence that this all went downhill rather fast, which points to the oil pump. Going to put my subframe back together so I can set the car on the ground again, hope to get around to tearing down the oil pump in the next few days. Thank you wagons ho for the good pictures! I doubt mine looks quite so good :-)
    Last edited by qcdstick; 07-18-2017 at 10:06 PM. Reason: Trying to get the stupid album URL to work

  22. #22
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    Ooof that's a mess! Must have been loSS of oil pressure. Maybe the bulb is out on the low oil pressure dummy light? Or the oil pressure switch is defective. Iirc a warning will also show on the cluster display, so I'm thinking bad switch.

    The oil pump mounting bolts are known to come loose on the m62. Also, did you confirm the oil pickup screen was totally clean when you did the guides?
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  23. #23
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    maybe you got debri in the oil during the recent work
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  24. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by philly98540 View Post
    Ooof that's a mess! Must have been loSS of oil pressure. Maybe the bulb is out on the low oil pressure dummy light? Or the oil pressure switch is defective. Iirc a warning will also show on the cluster display, so I'm thinking bad switch.

    The oil pump mounting bolts are known to come loose on the m62. Also, did you confirm the oil pickup screen was totally clean when you did the guides?
    Oil pressure bulb and switch work just fine. Light + cluster warning came on... AFTER coming off the interstate to a racket and RPM settling to near idle. No warning at RPM when the damage was being done. From what I've read, the switch is simple on off pressure switch, not a proper PSI gauge. So the car won't throw any warning until the oil pressure drops below what it should be at idle, which is not enough pressure for driving.

    First thing I did when I dropped the lower pan was check the pump mount bolts, they were good and tight.

    Oil screen looked good when i did the timing chain. Only derbies in the pan after the rod failure look to be related to the bearing, filter just has small metal silver flecks. Any hypothetical derbies from the timing job would have had to made it past the pickup screen to block the oil passsages in the crank and cause the rod bearing failures. So even if some part of the system somehow picked up a chunk of crap from the timing job and blocked off some passage, I still don't see how it could be the cause of this failure. A single bank up top, or partial bank? Sure, it's possible in theory (although I was careful to not leave anything). Doesn't make sense here.
    Last edited by qcdstick; 07-19-2017 at 10:02 AM.

  25. #25
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    Well, this isn't what I'm expecting to find. I may not know what I'm looking at, but this looks pretty decent no?

    2017-07-19 21.50.54.jpg

    2017-07-19 21.55.57.jpg

    2017-07-19 21.55.40.jpg

    2017-07-19 22.02.56.jpg

    2017-07-19 22.03.13.jpg

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