[Gr3yGhost]

Heya guys, Soo thanks for everyone's amazing help, on this forum. Love working on the car having so much knowledgeable people here!!

Had the dreaded, OFGH leak, and repaired it. Next few days, I noticed a few small drips on my garage floor .. think nothing of it and carry on ... Fast forward 2 days, I hear an odd tapping sound on the way home from work as I'm leaving ... About one block away from the house, the tapping stops, but I realize my power steering had went out.

I get home, park the car to inspect and find a nice surprise

As I'm repairing this mess, I finally get to my crankcase pulley seal, imo it doesn't seem to be damaged, but I just wondered if anyone else wanted to give there two cents, lol. Is the seal/engine good, or dead?

[nicky dj]

What appears to have happened — and this is a known issue with the N54— is that oil leaked on your serpentine belt which causes the belt to shred apart.

You have a potential much bigger issue on your hands that you need to address before you drive the car or you could cause catastrophic damage to your car: when the belt shreds the crank pulley has a tendency to pull the torn belt pieces into your crankshaft. You need to pull off your valve cover and see if you little pieces of belt around your timing chain. Long story short if you don't address this you could cause your engine to seize.

I'm going to attach a thread so you can step-by-step see what you need to do:


DIY: Shredded / Broken Serpentine Belt Repair/Inspect Procedure - E90, E9X 335i N54 https://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1305990

[mweisdorfer]

Originally Posted by nicky dj

What appears to have happened — and this is a known issue with the N54— is that oil leaked on your serpentine belt which causes the belt to shred apart.

You have a potential much bigger issue on your hands that you need to address before you drive the car or you could cause catastrophic damage to your car: when the belt shreds the crank pulley has a tendency to pull the torn belt pieces into your crankshaft. You need to pull off your valve cover and see if you little pieces of belt around your timing chain. Long story short if you don't address this you could cause your engine to seize.

I'm going to attach a thread so you can step-by-step see what you need to do:


DIY: Shredded / Broken Serpentine Belt Repair/Inspect Procedure - E90, E9X 335i N54 https://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1305990

He could drain the oil and put a camera up there or maybe slide into the oil fill hole on top w/ out draining the oil.

[mweisdorfer]

Maybe buy a camera from Amazon that you can hook to your phone and see if pieces of rubber are in the engine.

In any case, you need to get the oxwerkz plate to prevent future issues. Also, start to evaluate the health of your trans & engine mounts. When the engine mounts fail, the power steering pulley will hit the subframe and break/chip the pulley. In turn, this will fray the belt. It will then wrap around the crank pulley, and you will get the same result.

[Gr3yGhost]

Thanks alot, ok great info and ty for the quick replies. Since I'm waiting on the pulley kit from FCP, guess I'll pop off the valve cover and see what I can see, heh..

[feuer]

Always happen after oil leak has been repaired. That engine was leaking for a while. Open the oil pan.

[MightyMouseTech]

Good idea to pull the oil pan off and clean any belt material out of the pan and the oil pickup tube.

[oilcrankinject]

I am starting to rebuild my rod knock motor. My very first belt failure looked like the OPs picture. If I could only figure out how to buy bearings.

[feuer]

Originally Posted by svtfast

I am starting to rebuild my rod knock motor. My very first belt failure looked like the OPs picture. If I could only figure out how to buy bearings.

So you are rebuilding the engine and can't figure out how to buy bearings? Ok!