Well I finally bit the bullet and installed new exhaust cam ledges and seals in my 07 with 70k miles. Been fighting intermittent vanos issues for a few years now and avoided the issue because I knew it would be a timely and costly repair. I traced it down to the exhaust cam ledge because it would only throw 2A87, even after swapping vanos solenoids from intake to exhaust side. I decided only to update the hook rings from steel to Teflon on the intake side since I was 90% the way there while doing the exhaust side. I don't take my cars anywhere for work. I have tons of tools and work on cars on the side; building engines, installing performance parts, tuning and general maintenance for friends and family.
To complete the job I purchased a new exhaust cam ledge, 4 seals, tty hardware, valve cover gasket, timing chain tensioner and 1 vanos solenoid(going to buy the other after looking at how closely a new solenoid follows commanded). This job isn't for the faint of heart. There are no keyways or markings on the cams/gears/head like I'm used to. These are interference engines, so that makes this job even more stressful. I had to rely on the cam alignment tool set to properly align everything. It took about 4 evenings to complete and the car seems great after the service. It actually seemed to clear up a cold start misfire I've been having which I thought was an injector starting to fail.
Screenshot of the cam requested and actual position before the fix:
After the fix:
While doing the fix I cleaned the solenoids and swapped side to side. Vanos performance was better but not perfect so I tried a new solenoid on the intake side to see if the control was any better. As you can see from the screenshot above the intake requested vs actual is nearly the same line, which is awesome. I'm ordering another vanos solenoid today and will install it on the exhaust side next week.
I had a bunch of photos on my phone but they're to big to attach here.
Any questions or comments let me know.