E39 540i crank no start following timing chain replacement

[Mach540]

I suppose another possibility is that nitty gritty pieces of gunk got got washed into the cylinder, and found its way to the ring grooves, and just maybe rested on the tops and bottoms of all 16 compression rings. That might not let them seal with the piston grooves thereby allowing blow by. Heh, interesting conversation anyways.
Edit:

That just brought to mind an even more likely possibility.
The ring grooves themselves are already full of carbon, and the brake cleaner started to break those deposits apart. A ready supply of seal stealing nitty gritty gunk!

[Jay M.]

My compression numbers are all still 60-90 PSI after 3 applications of oil to the cylinders in the last 24 hours. This is with the throttle body removed. Loosing hope in this battle as I have no desire to do a full engine teardown and paying someone to do it will cost more than I paid for this car.

Anyway I'll put it back together and give it a crank, maybe the gauge is wrong

[philly98540]

Oh man sorry for you. Hope it's the gauge!

[Jay M.]

Miraculously, the car started up almost immediately following an overnight bore wash treatment.

Equally unsurprising at this point, the car refuses to start a second time. I didn't run the car for very long after it started as there was no intake air filter or main cooling fan attatched (Can you tell I'm not very optimistic anymore?). In light of this startup I'm now even more confused.

[TheAngryBear]

Can you check the tops of the cylinders? I wouldn't be surprised if you have some remaining cleaner/ overfuel causing bore wash. Try an overnight soak and then a start with everything connected. Then keep it running until engine temp is stable etc. Basically keep it running to get the oil circulating and over everything. Might want to have your scanner connected to watch performance and temps.

Did you have any weird revs or issues when it started?


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[TheAngryBear]

RE: injection signals
I tried three different starts and using my creator 310 had injection signals of 49.8, 51.8 and 51.5 ms during the crank. This rapidly went to 7-8 ms upon start and stayed for idle.

So I suspect your signal is "fine" just out of range for normal idle.


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[TheAngryBear]

Thinking this through I have a theory on what happened.
Jay did the guide procedure correctly. Unknown is how long it took but I am assuming more than 3 days (I took about 2 days and while I had other issues his experience was not among them so I suspect a longer job time). In this time the oil coating on the seals/pistons/cylinders became extremely thin. Not enough to prevent start but enough that when the coolant went all over and the engine shut down the gas had washed the cylinders. This created the first no start. The brake clean then further washed out the cylinders creating the super lack of compression. Throttle body codes and rectification allowed it to reach "maximum washout" levels. Compression was measured and reported. Overnight soak worked (evidenced by start) but without a continued run again washed the cylinders.

Sound plausible? Jay, can you confirm my timeframes or say how long you did the guides in?

So another overnight soak should allow a start. Then run it to temp and get all the oil circulating and covering everything. Say 30 mins to be "sure"? Then I would do an oil change. Not sure how much the overall oil is impacted but to be on the safe side of things...


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[Mach540]

Miraculously, the car started up almost immediately following an overnight bore wash treatment.

Equally unsurprising at this point, the car refuses to start a second time. I didn't run the car for very long after it started as there was no intake air filter or main cooling fan attatched (Can you tell I'm not very optimistic anymore?). In light of this startup I'm now even more confused.

Congratulations......... I guess........... maybe not.
Some good news anyways.

Not that it matters at this point, but you are perfectly safe running the car with no air filter. Lots of engines have no filters whatsoever, and work just fine. Snowmobiles, motorcycles, race cars, etc...... Similarly, you can safely run an engine even without coolant for a minute or two with no problem, so not having a cooling fan is no reason to fret. (But I definitely understand the apprehension to do so.)

Anyhow... good luck. I'm sure it will get up and running tomorrow.

[geargrinder]

Thinking this through I have a theory on what happened.

Isnt that theory pretty much what I have been saying over and over? Can you hear the words that are coming out of my mouth?

Agree the momentary start confirms the borewash and agree prob just didn't run long enough to get rings resealed. No air filter is a non issue unless its running in the open desert in a sandstorm. No mechanical fan is no issue either as long as the aux is still there and working, and even if no fan at all, you can still run it watching temp gauge or better yet KTMP in the cluster and shutdown if you get worried.

[Mach540]

No air filter is a non issue unless its running in the open desert in a sandstorm. No mechanical fan is no issue either as long as the aux is still there and working, and even if no fan at all, you can still run it watching temp gauge or better yet KTMP in the cluster and shutdown if you get worried.

Isnt that pretty much what I just said? Can you hear the words that are coming out of my mouth?

[TheAngryBear]

Isnt that theory pretty much what I have been saying over and over? Can you hear the words that are coming out of my mouth?

Isnt that pretty much what I just said? Can you hear the words that are coming out of my mouth?

Which one of y'all kicked me?????

So as we are in agreement: how long does it take for the oil to thin enough for a washout? I must have had 10 starts for less than 1 min when I did my guides. No washout. So I am going to guess: three weekends, about 15 days with valve covers off.


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[Mach540]

Sorry, I'm still not convinced with the validity of the whole bore wash theory. Just does not make logical sense to me, and there are a lot of other unknowns that I would have to see myself to rule them out. And I've seen many, many engines that have sat for years and years, yet still have full compression and start right up. I'm tempted to take a lawn mower or chainsaw, and carb clean the hell out if it to see if I can replicate anything close to "bore wash."

[Jay M.]

For the timeframe of this job, I had the car disassembled and the new parts installed on the second day of working. This was labor day weekend. Then I snapped a bolt on one of the timing chain tensioners, despite using a torque wrench, on a Saturday night. (I realized that my brand new Dewalt wrench has an extremely quiet click on lower torque values that are within the advertised range -- I don't recommend that wrench) It was a holiday weekend so I had to wait till the next weekend to get parts and finish re-assembly and start the car for the first time. Covers were off for about 2 weeks then. I've spent the rest of September dealing with the no-start issue. Lets just say I'm fortunate that I live close to work and I'm an avid cyclist, otherwise I would long have given up or washed my hands of this headache. Such is the "stockholm syndrome" of falling in love with these cars...

In terms of the health of the oil, it is pretty smelly and undoubtedly full of fuel at this point. I will repeat my bore wash treatment again and get it running for at least half an hour. Once I can be sure that the car will start reliably without throwing more codes I'll be replacing the oil.

[JimLev]

As GG and Mach said don't worry too much about no mechanical fan.
Turn the cabin heat up to 90 with the blower on high, that and the aux fan running you'll be fine.
Use two quick squirts of starter fluid, throw the brake cleaner away.

[TheAngryBear]

Oh god, I had that happen with the torque wrench on the transmission during a filter change. Not a good feeling to say the least...
And yes, you do have the e39 bug to be this patient and thorough.


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[geargrinder]

Isnt that pretty much what I just said? Can you hear the words that are coming out of my mouth?

Heh heh yeh we simulposted last night (or you posted just as i was typing...)

Sorry, I'm still not convinced with the validity of the whole bore wash theory. Just does not make logical sense to me, and there are a lot of other unknowns that I would have to see myself to rule them out. And I've seen many, many engines that have sat for years and years, yet still have full compression and start right up. I'm tempted to take a lawn mower or chainsaw, and carb clean the hell out if it to see if I can replicate anything close to "bore wash."

Brother I understand, but it's a thing, trust me.


Its known but rare on most 'old skool' engines.


It's a real thing (as I've said also 1000 times) with M54's.
I hear your disbelief but you're welcome to go check out dozens of E46 M54 no-start threads that cover it. It's happened on M54's in E39's too of course its just that there's loads more E46 M54s out there....

I think it the increased tendency has something to do with specific ring design. Probably related to alusil bores and the special rings required for them I imagine although am completely speculating.


Here's a bavauto tech note on it.

https://blog.bavauto.com/17656/it-ha...king-no-start/

I hadn't read that in a while but glancing again it would actually validate the situation here and the theories you guys had (I'll admit I wasn't thinking about that so much) that the brake clean solved out some 'gunk' and might have stuck up the rings. Indeed sounds like that often happens on these older motors.

throw the brake cleaner away.

Or at least put it on the shelf with "for use on brake jobs only".


For whatever reason guys seem to think brakeclean is an all purpose cleaner solvent and you should use it for anything and everything. Not really a great idea, contains some real nasties. If you weld with some residue lying around it can create phosgene which is crazy crazy toxic gas that can cause permanent injury in moments. Of course I use the stuff too but I tend to keep it for, uh, brake work, and limited use as solvent when absolutely necessary otherwise. I don't think its real plastic / rubber safe either which is another reason to not use it as an "all purpose degreaser engine cleaner!" like a lotta dudes do.

[Jay M.]

The saga continues... got it running and up to temperature tonight. All the oil burning off in the cylinders was absolutely fumigating my detached garage. Once it was warmed up I stabbed the throttle repeatedly up to redline to try and free up all the junk in the cylinders. Between my trips outside of the garage to escape the smoke, I checked the airflow on the intake with my hand, and promptly choked the car (like a moron). It was up to temp, idling smoothly, but NATURALLY... it wont re-start.

I was still burning some oil off, probably was running for about 15 minutes. I'll do this overnight dance one more time and make sure I don't choke the damn car this time.

[JimLev]

Before you start it again can you look inside the intake manifold and see how much oil you have puddling in the bottom of it?
If it's a lot see if you can wipe some of it out.

[Jay M.]

A thought -- I've read that 2-5% fuel dilution can cause engine performance issues. This is only 150mL of injected fuel into a ~7.5L system. This was likely exceeded during the past month. I'm going to also change out the oil before re-trying as I could have some viscosity / lubrication issues that are preventing re-start.

The other possibility is that I have an oil delivery issue, but I think this would be a freak coincidence and I doubt the engine would settle and run as smoothly as it did after warming up...

[StRaNgEdAyS]

I'm wondering if it's a component that's failing due to heat soak after the engine runs and stops?

Absinthe makes the tart grow fonder

[geargrinder]

A thought -- I've read that 2-5% fuel dilution can cause engine performance issues. This is only 150mL of injected fuel into a ~7.5L system. This was likely exceeded during the past month. I'm going to also change out the oil before re-trying as I could have some viscosity / lubrication issues that are preventing re-start.

Really good suggestion. Definitely do that... Another idea...

If you do have gunked up rings, you might try a ring-soak snake-oil type product in the cyls also.
Products like: Rislone, GM Top Engine Cleaner, something like that... or if you can't find those, more easily available - Marvel Mystery Oil or Seafoam. Or you could try a homebrew of ATF mixed w/ naphtha and/or acetone which is kinda homebrew MMO.
Squirt it in, turn the motor over a few times to get it coated on the 'high sides', let it soak overnight...

Ideally if I were you I might change the oil while I'm letting that soak, re-fire the motor, run the fresh oil change for a short time, then do another change in short order. You could prob get away with not changing the filter the 2nd time. I might also use a cheaper high quality disposable dino oil - Pennzoil yellow or Valvoline white 10-40 probably, whatevers on sale but still SN rated..

Also you seem to be a real fan of redlining the motor no-load (you mentioned you thought that was a great idea during the initial fire up). I usually consider no-load redline not really the best idea, tho theoretically no it shouldn't really harm anything , but for sure there's no real advantage/benefit to it. If I do want to raise RPM's to increase water pump RPM or just test throttle response I generally just go 50-60%. For your burn-off needs that'd be more than enough throttle/RPM to get the job done.

[Jay M.]

Really good suggestion. Definitely do that... Another idea...

I swapped my polluted oil with some 'fresh' oil (read: the full synthetic from my last oil change that I haven't recycled yet) to test this hypothesis. I'm going to add aforementioned snake oil to this oil before doing a change with new oil hopefully very soon.

Ran the car for 45 minutes. I added much less oil this time for the bore wash treatment (5ml / cyl), and didn't re-oil again immediately before startup. Much less smoke. I ran the car until I couldn't see any more oil burning out of the tailpipe... shut it down... and it RE STARTS! Confirmed with 5 startups. Another problem resolved, and on to the next one...

The car isn't idling all that well and is throwing camshaft adaptation value errors. I watched the INPA analog outputs through different RPMS and it doesn't look like the VANOS is operating whatsoever. None of the analog values pertaining to VANOS were changing as I brought it through the revs.

Here are the relevant errors:

34 Camshaft control bank 2
Error freq: 1
Logistic counter: 40

Engine speed: 560 rpm
Engine temp: 104.25 C
wnwi2_u: -1.00 Grad KW
tanwrhf_1_A: 60.01 % TV

Error currently availible
Adaptation value impact not plausible current
Adapatation value impact not plausible inital
SCATT-active

33 Camshaft Control
Error freq: 1
Logistic counter: 40

Engine speed: 600 rpm
Engine temp: 104.25 C
wnwi1_u: -20 Grad KW
tanwrhf_0_A: 60.01 % TV

Error currently availible
Adaptation value impact not plausible current
Adapatation value impact not plausible inital
SCATT-active

I tried reconnecting the sensor and clearing the adaptation values but the errors would return for each startup.

Here is a screen grab of INPA analog values pertaining to VANOS. These weren't changing as I was changing throttle input:

errors_10-4.PNG

Is my bank one sensor busted? I'm not getting the error code for the sensor itself, but the data its producing seems suspicious.

Chasing the problems around until I'm back on the road again...

[StRaNgEdAyS]

Excellent to see it starts now!

Absinthe makes the tart grow fonder

[JimLev]

Your bank 1 trigger wheel isn't reading what the DME is looking for. When you first start the engine both banks get tested. If either bank doesn't report the correct reading back to the DME both vanos solenoids get disabled.
If your positive the static timing (cam to crank) are correct and the vanos o-rings were done properly, then the trigger wheel is probably off just a little bit.
Have you taken it out for a drive yet? How does it run?

[Jay M.]

I would take it out for a drive, but now it wont re start again... this thing is unreal.

CEL appeared, (P0011, P0021) on my cheap code reader. Seems there may be a timing issue after all. I'm going to check the impulse wheels are in the right spot since I think I can do that only taking off the valve covers. I'm not sure how they could be off since I installed them with the cams locked, alignment tools installed, and to the proper torque spec but who knows.