[Benniese90]

I really need help with this one. It could be several issues or a single issue causing multiple symptoms.

The car is a 2011 335i n55 engine e93 convertible. Stock, no mods.

I have never encountered one like this before. Its quite baffling.

I have a couple of related threads about this car already but I still dont have any answers.

The codes that I currently have are
2d43 valvetronic adjustment range fault range check
2ee0 combustion misfire several cylinders fuel injection deactivation
2ee4 combustion misfiring cylinder 1 fuel injection deactivation
2ef1 combustion misfiring cylinder 5 fuel injection deactivation
2ef4 combustion misfiring cylinder 6 fuel injection deactivation
2ee7 combustion misfiring cylinder 2 fuel injection deactivation

The cars engine has the half engine symbol and it has absolutely no power at all. I cannot drive it. I can start it up and idle it. It idles very very badly and rough. The engine shakes badly, probably due to the cylinders shutting off the injectors. I press the gas pedal and nothing. Upon initial startup sometimes i can press the pedal and the rpms will go up to about 3-4000 rpms. Never more than 4000rpms. If I turn on the ac, it will die from i guess lack of power to turn the ac compressor. If I reset all of the adaptations it seems to respond to the pedal but then quickly reverts to its retarded state. Either way it still never revs more than 4000rpms. The valvetronic motor or eccentric shaft sensor I know one of them is malfunctioning because I cant do any of the relearn procedures for it. Every now and then it makes a rapid fire clicking sound for about 2 seconds but then nothing. If I do the valvetronic startup procedure which is about 10-20 minutes long it will say it completed it successfully but it apparently doesnt because I will see the above code and the normal relearn doesnt work, plus Ista and Inpa both say its bad somehow but im uncertain if its the eccentric shaft actuator or the valvetronic motor itself and am wondering how i can tell which one i need to replace. But my main concern was the actual engine isnt driveable and from what I know, even under a complete VVT failure the engine will still have power and will revert to the throttle body. So im wondering what happened here, can 4 injectors fail all at the same time and all of a sudden? Its strange. The spark plugs dont smell of gas and arent wet so I dont think the injectors are leaking. I will add some pictures to this thread from some Ista readouts that maybe might help someone with a greater mind than mine see something that I dont. On my operational smoothness values, I notice that cylinders 3 and 4 show a negative value but dont know what it means or why its showing that.

It has a new battery, new starter, new alternator, new spark plugs, new coils, new high pressure fuel pump, new low pressure fuel pump and regulator, i have pulled all of the fuel injectors and cleaned them carefully, cleaned the vanos solenoids, it has a new maf sensor, I mean....what can it be?

Any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. If I do fix it and figure it out I will post what fixed it so that hopefully someone can save some time and money if the ever run into this situation.

[TunafishE93]

When did issue start? This is where I would start..

My guess if it started after replacing fuel pump that debris got into system and is clogging injectors...

[anjuna]

reset/clear codes, try again.

Sometimes this happens when you get strong misfires > you are right, it turns off the cylinders due to "misfires"

The fact that the valvetronic code hasn't gone away doesn't mean much - reset/clear the codes

[Benniese90]

The issue started about a month ago. It had been having the infamous cylinder 6 misfire whenever your go over 50 mph or so it would go into limp mode but it was still driveable and had power.

By chasing the cylinder 6 misfire is how it seemed to get worse. Replacing the sparkplugs and coils and all the battery related components. Checking it after every replacement to no improvement.

Then removed the injectors and they were filthy with carbon black build up on every tip really badly. But apparently they were working that way somehow. So carefully I cleaned them with injector cleaner and used a battery to activate the solenoids as i forced water through them to "see" the spray was clear of any clogs or debris from the carbon cleaning. Then replaced teflon seals and reinstalled carefully.

After that is when the current codes all showed with the current issues. The valvetronic never showed a code until after this. Now it seems its completely failed and 4 of the injectors died all at once.

The engine wouldnt even start for about a day. It would just crank and crank. Then when it did begin to start it was so rough and bad like it is now. I assumed from the symptoms and all the forum research on here and from what information i could get from ista and inpa that it was a fuel related issue so replaced pumps but that wasnt it.

I learned Ista just because of this cars issues.

It seems like all of the normal repairs caused something that was already weak to fail completely as the new parts required more from it but im unsure what it is.

I suspect the injectors, the valvetronic actuator, and even the DME.

The DME controls all of this so I suspect the DME because its hard to imagine 4 injectors and a valvetronic to all go at the same time and for the gas pedal to not respond like it is. However, ista and inpa both can read the dme just fine and say that its responding normally.

Is there a way to test any of this to try to pinpoint or eliminate anything?

[Benniese90]

Thanks anjuna. When you reset the codes, they come back right away. For a few seconds before they return, the engine still idles very rough. Ive reset the codes and adaptations more times than I can count.

[AJN55]

I had a very similar issue a few months ago. For me, it turned out to be that a coil went bad. Replaced that coil and it was fine.

[bbnks2]

Originally Posted by Benniese90

I really need help with this one. It could be several issues or a single issue causing multiple symptoms.

The car is a 2011 335i n55 engine e93 convertible. Stock, no mods.

I have never encountered one like this before. Its quite baffling.

I have a couple of related threads about this car already but I still dont have any answers.

The codes that I currently have are
2d43 valvetronic adjustment range fault range check
2ee0 combustion misfire several cylinders fuel injection deactivation
2ee4 combustion misfiring cylinder 1 fuel injection deactivation
2ef1 combustion misfiring cylinder 5 fuel injection deactivation
2ef4 combustion misfiring cylinder 6 fuel injection deactivation
2ee7 combustion misfiring cylinder 2 fuel injection deactivation

The cars engine has the half engine symbol and it has absolutely no power at all. I cannot drive it. I can start it up and idle it. It idles very very badly and rough. The engine shakes badly, probably due to the cylinders shutting off the injectors. I press the gas pedal and nothing. Upon initial startup sometimes i can press the pedal and the rpms will go up to about 3-4000 rpms. Never more than 4000rpms. If I turn on the ac, it will die from i guess lack of power to turn the ac compressor. If I reset all of the adaptations it seems to respond to the pedal but then quickly reverts to its retarded state. Either way it still never revs more than 4000rpms. The valvetronic motor or eccentric shaft sensor I know one of them is malfunctioning because I cant do any of the relearn procedures for it. Every now and then it makes a rapid fire clicking sound for about 2 seconds but then nothing. If I do the valvetronic startup procedure which is about 10-20 minutes long it will say it completed it successfully but it apparently doesnt because I will see the above code and the normal relearn doesnt work, plus Ista and Inpa both say its bad somehow but im uncertain if its the eccentric shaft actuator or the valvetronic motor itself and am wondering how i can tell which one i need to replace. But my main concern was the actual engine isnt driveable and from what I know, even under a complete VVT failure the engine will still have power and will revert to the throttle body. So im wondering what happened here, can 4 injectors fail all at the same time and all of a sudden? Its strange. The spark plugs dont smell of gas and arent wet so I dont think the injectors are leaking. I will add some pictures to this thread from some Ista readouts that maybe might help someone with a greater mind than mine see something that I dont. On my operational smoothness values, I notice that cylinders 3 and 4 show a negative value but dont know what it means or why its showing that.

It has a new battery, new starter, new alternator, new spark plugs, new coils, new high pressure fuel pump, new low pressure fuel pump and regulator, i have pulled all of the fuel injectors and cleaned them carefully, cleaned the vanos solenoids, it has a new maf sensor, I mean....what can it be?

Any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. If I do fix it and figure it out I will post what fixed it so that hopefully someone can save some time and money if the ever run into this situation.

This is 100% the valvetronic actuator (hence the clicking noise). your assumptions about the car being able to drive with bad valvetronic are wrong. Maybe you misunderstood what someone else said. If you somehow get lucky and the valves get stuck 100% open then youre fine and can just unplug the valvetronic. However, most of the time the valves get stuck at LOW LIFT and the car wont even start. you need to manually turn the eccentric shaft to max lift and then the car will drive fine using the throttle body.

It's 99% of the time just the actuator. I can't see how a valvetronic shaft would ever fail but I guess it does happen on rare occasion. Sometimes the DME burns out too though so that is something to look at if the actuator doesnt fix it. I think you get different codes when that happens though.

Pop in a new valvetronic motor. You were already 99% of the way there when you "cleaned the injectors" which was a waste of time.

[Benniese90]

Thanks for the replies.

I did 2 things, I removed and cleaned the vanos solenoids with a non-chlorinated brake cleaner as i activated the solenoids with a battery and then used the same process but with mass air flow sensor cleaner. Reinstalled them.

Then cleared all adaptations and codes and started the car. It still had a very rough running condition and misfiring on 1,5,6,2 cylinders but there was no valvetronic code at all.

The second thing I did was to pull injector #1 and try cleaning it again. As these are the n55 solenoid injectors i activated the injectors with a battery as i cycled injector cleaned through it. I used an air fitting which screws on perfectly to blow the cleaner through the injector as i activated the injectors solenoid with the battery to see the spray. I then repeated this process with actual gasoline and left it about 3/4 full of gasoline. I also added some teflon tape to the sealing area and reinstalled the injector.

Again clearing all adaptations and codes before restarting engine.

Now it was still rough and idle was still at about 500rpms but after about 5-10 seconds it appeared to adapt and it smoothed itself out and the idle went to about 725rpms.

I checked the codes and it now only had cylinder 1 and 6 misfiring with still no valvetronic code. And the throttle would respond when i pressed the gas pedal-rough and slow-but it would respond.

When i rev the rpms, it would go to the half engine symbol and now the codes would again read the same 4 cylinder misfires 1,5,6,2 although still no valvetronic code anymore. Yet after a few seconds it would still run much more smooother now.

I clear codes and adaptations and retry and the same thing everytime. When only 2 cylinders are misfiring i have throttle response but when 4 cylinders misfire then no throttle response. Not sure if this is a safety mechanism to avoid damaging engine when its in this state of massive misfire and injectror deactivation or if this is a symptom or clue to something else.

I have noticed that the valvetronic no longer does that rapid fire sound and now simply you hear it click when opening the door and it definitely sounds as if i can hear it relearning the positions everytime i reset adaptations.

However, that being said, I am still up in the air about the valvetronic being intermittently failing or not.

Needless to say all of my readings have changed in inpa and ista. I will add the new readings to show what they are now when its running smoother.

I am going to install 6 new injectors when they arrive. I hope this fixes it.If not then it very well might be the valvetronic.

Thank you very much for the valvetronic advice and information. Twice its had a crank but no start condition which tends to point to that valvetronic.

[bbnks2]

unplug valvetronic before it gets stuck again.