[mjh93sa]

Well, it is true.

[E92Fan]

Originally Posted by Hotcoupe

Great write up Tony as is the norm

Couple of queries:

Is it necessary to remove the entire front end to remove the engine?



Is that software that has been written specifically for your car to take into account the enhanced torque/BHP?

When do you envisage the works to be completed?

Are you worried that BMW may detect the remap?
(Don't answer that one)

Hi Ian

Yes, to remove the engine easily you have to remove the entire front assembly. You can take the engine out of the top, but it's a lot more hassle and takes longer. Far easier to drop the engine and gearbox out together from underneath the car.

The ZF gearbox software hasn't been written specifically for this car, but it is based on the Alpina software parameters with a couple of little modifications to better suit the torque delivery of my car.

Works probably won't be completed till after Christmas, if we're being realistic.

[TurboBimmer]

Wow, amazing thread! Looking forward to meeting you and your beastly car on the Ring next year

[ASR1]

I feel a little reassured about having a non-DI N52 engine in my 330i after seeing those pictures...

Fantastic read.

[dzenno]

Software for transmission, 6AT I assume?

[E92Fan]

Originally Posted by dzenno

Software for transmission, 6AT I assume?

Correct

[Wosby]

Originally Posted by Matt@Camber-Toe

wow. Thats a lot of buildup. Makes me want to get a catch can ASAP. 26k miles of driving (at near stock boost levels) is enough to cause a lot of gunk.

+1 (1,000,000) times. Oil catch can NOW!

[Forcefed3]

Originally Posted by Wosby

1 (1,000,000) times. Oil catch can NOW!

Yea, I have already caught a good bit after 3000 miles.

[Bubbles]

Great thread....looks like my old roasted N54 motor. I had 50k miles running ~14psi on the motor, which was suffering from oil leaks and major carbon build up. Having driven The Ring, there are many tracks in the US that are harder on the car (not the driver). My old 335i was a great ride up until 20k, in which case it was all downhill. Tracked it, oil changed after each track event (due to the heat endured).

Great to see someone actually putting in the time and effort with the N54 motor post-honeymoon.

Good luck with the build.

[onefastman]

Great thread

[jaybird124]

Tony,

As you've stated piston swelling due to heat under high load has been the primary cause of the scoring.
Do you see any evidence with your tear down that supports the concerns people have about fuel dilution caused by DI?

[UdubBadger]

bad ass write up

[AstonMartin]

Aside from those deep scores, sidewalls seem like they experienced some serious wall wash.

What tune have you been running?

[voltron1011]

Wow, I'm really starting to rethink whether or not I want to order a E92 335i.
I'm a regular 'Ring Runner' myself and I think I might be better off springing the extra 10 grand for an M3. It's neither FI nor DI.

[myke354]

tony i know u dont know me but i would love to add some of my .02 cents..

first off a good way a way to stop that carbon from building up would be to run a aftermarket coil per cylinder. this would allow you to burn fuel better there for less carbon would build you would gain a few mpg's and make a few more horses..

second: why not go to a flat face valve to add beck some of the compression??

i have to admit i am so glad someone has had the balls to tear down this motor so on the u have my respect .. i know i have been waiting for it to blow before i tore mine down.

to be honest i would have went a different way with the rebuild and i would have had the block sleeved and i would have ran with a 10.1 piston and and i would of liked to see a piston that would give better flame travel..

did u have the piston coated with teflon and ceramic??
i dont know if u looked into it but i know for a fact that having the combustion chamber , valves and piston top ceramic coated has shown to make more power last longer and on turbo cars spool turbos faster cause u push more hot air out to the turbo and have less heat soak..
and have you looked into having the rods, skirts and bearings WPC treated???

i wish you the best of luck with ur rebuild

[qtrlifecrisis]

great post!

[11N55]

Great read! Looking forward to the rebuild! Best of luck!

[lopealle]

awesome

[m6pwr]

I'm coming in to this thread a bit late, but I do have an interest (I've got an N54 in an '09 Z4). And I have a couple of thoughts that might be of interest re oil and the N54.

The problems associated with direct injection engines (not just the N54 but apparently all di engines) are fairly well known by now. There have been SAE papers on the subject and research is underway by at least one piston ring manufacturer to try to address these problems. And on the BITOG (Bob Is The Oil Guy) forum, a lubricants engineer who regularly attends the 24 Hrs of the Nurburgring race, and meets with race and lubricants engineers there, recently posted rather cryptically that the topic of the hour at the last race was the problems associated with direct injection (which is becoming pretty much the standard in engine design). When I sent him a pm to ask for more information all he would say is that the problems would have to be solved by the engine mfrs, not the lube mfrs. Nice.

The problem is fuel dilution. DI engines operate on much, much higher injection pressures than the "old" port injection engines. In the N54, fuel is injected at 1200-1700 psi, compared to about 45-75 psi in a port injected engine! Pretty amazing. That means higher blow by of fuel past the rings and more "wash down" of the oil film on cylinder walls. The fuel dilution in turn causes two major problems with the oil: viscosity loss (shear back) and significant lowering of the flash point of the oil (more oil vapors form to be sucked up by the CCV system and possibly form deposits in the intake track and valves). The extra heat generated by turbo charging can exacerbate these problems. There is one study I have read about that indicates if the fuel dilution gets bad enough, it can dissolve the tribological film laid down by the anti wear additive ZDDP. Sounds like Doomsday. You have to wonder why aren't BMWs with the N54 disintegrating all over the place. Must be good metallurgy in those motors.

As owners we can't do much about the design of the N54 but we can focus on the oil. I'm not going to recommend any specific oil, but I can say if your concerned like me you probably ought to change the engine oil frequently and do used oil analysis (UOA) at a good lab (flash point measured under ASTM 93/closed cup, and % fuel dilution measured by gas chromatograph) to figure out the oil change interval (OCI). There are no absolute standards or pass/fail marks for these indicators. Each lab seems to have their own standards and I sometimes wonder if some labs have any pass/fail limits at all. I have seen N54 UOAs posted on BITOG where the oil (the BMW 5w30 factory fill) has sheared back to a 20 wt (in as little as 1500 miles OCI) and no warning or negative comment given by the lab at all. In my opinion an oil should never shear back out of grade; and I'd start to be concerned if % fuel dilution exceeds 2%, and flash point goes much below 375 degrees F. I am frankly wary of BMW's 5w30 oil, and the factory OCI of approx 15000 miles is absurd in a motor like the N54. I would use the best grade synthetic (PAO or ester base stock) I could find and afford, preferably one that meets BMW's LL-01 standard and is in the viscosity range recommended for the N54: 5w30, 5w40, 0w30, or 0w40. And I would do regular UOAs until I could figure out how the oil is performing in my particular style of driving. If your N54 is out of warranty, or you don't care about warranty questions, you can go farther afield. Some folks in the lubricants industry think that part of the answer to di is vegetable-based motor oils, or bio-syns, which appear to stand up to fuel dilution better than conventional synthetics. Others mock these lubes as Mazzola/Canola oils. I do know that Fuchs (a leader in synthetic oils since the 1930s) has recently come out with a bio-syn series of synthetics. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name (Fuchs motor oils aren't available in the U.S.).

Tony, when you get your new rat motor finished you might want to try to communicate with John Rowland, the head chemist with Fuchs, through your Fuchs distributor. He is an avid racer and can be quite forthcoming with advice for individuals using his oils. He may be able to give you some ideas on the best oil for your application.

Sorry for taking so much band width. Hope I didn't go over stuff you already know. By the way, I think the N54 is a dynamite motor and I knew all about the di problems (and the HPFP) before I bought the Z4.

[mycoupe]

Originally Posted by myke354

tony i know u dont know me but i would love to add some of my .02 cents..

first off a good way a way to stop that carbon from building up would be to run a aftermarket coil per cylinder. this would allow you to burn fuel better there for less carbon would build you would gain a few mpg's and make a few more horses..

second: why not go to a flat face valve to add beck some of the compression??

i have to admit i am so glad someone has had the balls to tear down this motor so on the u have my respect .. i know i have been waiting for it to blow before i tore mine down.

to be honest i would have went a different way with the rebuild and i would have had the block sleeved and i would have ran with a 10.1 piston and and i would of liked to see a piston that would give better flame travel..

did u have the piston coated with teflon and ceramic??
i dont know if u looked into it but i know for a fact that having the combustion chamber , valves and piston top ceramic coated has shown to make more power last longer and on turbo cars spool turbos faster cause u push more hot air out to the turbo and have less heat soak..
and have you looked into having the rods, skirts and bearings WPC treated???

i wish you the best of luck with ur rebuild

Just some thoughts here on what you stated...

1. Why would running a different coil and burning the fuel better change the fact that it is di and the carbon is built up on the intake side of the valve not on the combustion side? The better solution would be to run a second set of fuel injectors in a spacer between the manifold and head to "wash" them clean.

2. Are you assuming he wants more compression? Because I am pretty sure he stated that he was switching to a lower compression like the Alpina so that he can run more boost and therefore make more reliable and safe power.

3. Our blocks don't need sleeved because they have AluSil sleeves already.

4. The piston has ideal flame travel. Since the motor is DI, the fuel and spark happen directly above the center of the piston maximizing the force it creates by pushing the piston straight down, unlike an FI motor.

5. Not trying to bust your balls, but the answers and reasons to most of what you asked or said you would have done is already covered in either his first post, or his subsequent. Hope this helps you out a bit since he hasn't responded!

[D335I]

Makes me want to change my oil every 3k and plugs every 10k.

Good luck on your rebuild.

[m6pwr]

Originally Posted by maxnix

I think you are forgetting about the old mechanical injection pumps such as the Spica (ALFA Romeo) and Kugelfischer (BMW and Porsche), although both were port injected. The former was an adaptation of a diesel unit that operated at 1300 - 1500 psi, and I cannot recall the operating pressures of the Kugelfischer, but it is much higher than the Bosch electro mechanical injectors that replaced it.

I don't understand how higher line pressure dilutes fuel, but perhaps you meant that the fuel dilutes the cylinder wall lubrication which always occurs, especially in over rich conditions. If your hypothesis is true, one wonders why we don't see the same thing in Diesel engines as the direction injection design is much the same and the cylinder pressures are even higher.

I believe the dilution of the oil comes partly from cylinder wall wash down and partly from blow by. Whatever the mechanism, I've seen higher fuel dilution in my N54 than in any other BMW I've ever done UOAs on (all port injected naturally aspirated), and the phenomenon appears to be an accepted fact as far as I can tell. Maybe I don't know or haven't explained the theory properly. Not sure about diesels but I believe they too have fuel dilution but it may not be so much of a problem because diesel fuel is fuel OIL. I have seen recommended limits for gas dilution in oil of 2% max, but up to 6% max for diesels.