E63 2007 Coupe Limp Mode, "Service Engine Soon"

[E6307ZV]

Hey! I own a BMW 6 Series 07 with the infamous N54 motor. I am no stranger to troubleshooting or working on cars/mechanical work in general. However, I am very unfamiliar with this car and the buyer has supplied with some information but it is not enough to really understand the full picture with my broken engine mounts because there are some unusual/suspicious thing I am looking for information about.

This afternoon, I moved my car from the automatic drive mode to MS (you can see that on the control display in the center of the dash- that should be obvious if you own this car) and when I was accelerating off the on ramp to the left lane on the highway my car was going from second gear to third and when it shifted into third at about 5k rpm, oil temperature between midline and zero, no overheating messages, the engine went clunk and I became extremally worried. Afterwards, the car went into limp mode, would not accelerate over 40-45 MPH and had no power. I parked the car, turned it off, let it cool down, restarted the car and the limp mode went away. This issue happened twice today and it only occurs when the car feels like it "opens up" and starts accelerating faster than normally.

Another bad sign was the service engine light appeared on my cluster right after that happened which was gut wrenching because I thought the only issue with the engine were the mounts. Bad engine mounts I assume can lead to worse problems in the future. However, I am not sure what type of issues my problem will cause in the future and I simply want to diagnose the issue, find causes, and replace those parts in the best and least issue prone manner.

My questions are: If bad engine mounts can cause this issue with the car entering limp mode when it accelerates to 5k RPM in third gear (to my knowledge, the person who scanned the car that I bought it from showed me a photo the only issues that show up are the front speed sensors)? I know that is incredibly vague but I have a very small amount of knowledge of how this car work which is why I am trying to search for information but information seems very scare. And second, where can I find "cheap" and accurate BMW service tech data for how to replace my bad engine mounts? I have a decent idea of how I can go about it. But I haven't looked at the car very closely to find precisely where the engine mounts and processes for lifting the engine, removing accessories etc.

If anyone has experience, knowledge or information I would love to learn from you. I have more work to do on this car and I am looking forward to restoring it. So, please share.

[Timm]

INPA is extremely cheap, available from Amazon and Ebay - it is perfect for finding this sort of problem. And a SES light will leave a good trail of error codes!

[limes]

Are you sure it's the N54 engine? I wasn't aware that the E63 came with that. What is the model? 630i? Anyway regardless of what the model is you need to scan for codes so you can troubleshoot. Inpa is all well and good, but in this day and age I highly recommend Protool as it has far more features and is much easier to setup and use. Grab yourself one of the MHD universal wifi adapters, and then buy the Protool diagnostic license. Then scan your car and let us know what codes come up. The ones you want will likely be under the DME section.

[E6307ZV]

- - - Updated - - -

INPA is extremely cheap, available from Amazon and Ebay - it is perfect for finding this sort of problem. And a SES light will leave a good trail of error codes!

Hey Timm! Thank you for replying. To get the incorrect motor out of the way, it is a n62 V8- which you already know. Anyways, I downloaded INPA and watched your videos.

I looked at my DME error data and I found combustion misfires on 8 cylinders. Underneath analogue value 3, at idle the car's O2-sensor add. bank1 value is -2.2 and 02-sensor add. bank2 value is -1.92. This seems high since the car is at idle and small adjustments are done to keep the oxygen lean/richness in-check. The car's idle was varying quite a bit and fell down to 500 rmp from a 770ish rpm when the car settled down. Perhaps this could be related to the Mul. values but I feel like that is very unlikely since the mul. values don't kick until the car is being driver. Tmw, I am going to run the car for longer to see if the Mul. values stabilize at zero or not.

Something unusual is the engine roughness values aren't very high while the car is at idle. I was hoping this would be a tell-tail but unfortunately no sauce. The engine roughness values should be "high" for one cylinder if it is causes the flywheel to spin faster when that cylinder detonates than the others every revolution. I didn't see that any cylinder were showing any issues. which leads me to think spark plugs aren't an issue (although I will replace them anyways). But, since all of the cylinders are misfiring, I'm going to assume this is why I don't see any variance (other than when I press the throttle). Tomorrow I am going to cruise with the car to see if anything stands out.

Next thing I checked was camshaft adaptions, the adaption output banks look good except for the number 2 bank which are slightly higher than the number1 side. Bank2 output is "2" higher than bank1 and "3.1" higher at the input of bank2 in-respect to bank1. Nothing is above 80; so, my VANOS looks good.


Some physical things I've noticed when I start the car I see a cloud of white smoke out the tail pipe. When the car accelerates it does the same thing. At idle, the car has a small cloud of smoke and you can hear a noticeable "tic" or thunk that happens every time the crank turns. I can count tomorrow to find which cylinder it's coming from.

[E6307ZV]

Hey Timm! Thank you for replying. To get the incorrect motor out of the way, it is a n62 V8- which you already know. Anyways, I downloaded INPA and watched your videos.

I looked at my ECU error data and I found combustion misfires on 8 cylinders. Underneath analogue value 3, at idle the car's O2-sensor add. bank1 value is -2.2 and 02-sensor add. bank2 value is -1.92. This seems high since the car is at idle and small adjustments are done to keep the oxygen lean/richness in-check. Another thing I found odd was the Mul. bank2 and Mul. Bank2 are 1.12 and 1.10. The car's idle was varying quite a bit and fell down to 500 rmp from a 770ish rpm when the car settled down. Perhaps this could be related to the Mul. values but I feel like that is very unlikely since the mul. values don't kick until the car is being driver. Tmw, I am going to run the car for longer to see if the Mul. values stabilize at zero or not.

Something unusual is the engine roughness values aren't very high while the car is at idle. I was hoping this would be a tell-tail but unfortunately no sauce. The engine roughness values should be "high" for one cylinder if it is causes the flywheel to spin faster when that cylinder detonates than the others every revolution. I didn't see that any cylinder were showing any issues. which leads me to think spark plugs aren't an issue (although I will replace them anyways). But, since all of the cylinders are misfiring, I'm going to assume this is why I don't see any variance (other than when I press the throttle). Tomorrow I am going to cruise with the car to see if anything stands out.

Next thing I checked was camshaft adaptions, the adaption output banks look good except for the number 2 bank which are slightly higher than the number1 side. Bank2 output is "2" higher than bank1 and "3.1" higher at the input of bank2 in-respect to bank1. Nothing is above 80; so, my VANOS looks good.


Some physical things I've noticed is the tail pipe at start-up shoots a cloud of white smoke out the tail pipe. When the car accelerates it does the same thing. At idle, the car has a small cloud of smoke and you can hear a noticeable "tic" or thunk that happens every time the crank turns.