'03 BMW E39 530D Touring - MOT survived

Some cracking work there. My rear brake hoses are similarly bad.

Thanks! The improvements are all adding up... It's turning into quite a nice car. I'm looking at the cosmetic work you're doing to yours though and thinking I need to start looking at similar. Not sure if I want to go down the M-Sport route or not... Would like some 17" wheels, but also don't want the decrease in ride quality.

This is actually all being posted in hindsight - we spent two weeks in Scotland and got back last Friday. Definitely had a lot of fun and the applecross pass was a must

I'm not going to do a full write up for the trip, but it was excellent. Here is a rough outline with some RR suitable pictures - because nobody else will want to see pictures of scenery + barge!

We spent a few days in the Cairngorms driving and biking, camping near Aviemore.



Spent a fair amount of time driving the snow roads with stunning views. I'd always thought the Cairngorms would be more craggy than they actually are - They're more akin to the Brecon Beacons on Steroids I think.



This was just past Balmoral... we stopped at a little eco cafe not far from Balmoral - before we realised how close to it we were - and suddenly found ourselves surrounded by very proper English accents and a car park full of black L405 Range Rovers which felt very out of place. The coffee, hot chocolate and cakes were excellent though. While we were there someone pulled up in an excellent car for the local roads though:



Odd to think I have the same engine in the MX5... albeit missing a turbo or two! It made excellent noises.

Next we headed up to Inverness, doing a loop around Loch Ness on the way (the small road on the East side is FAR better for views than the main road on the left side) and doing the NC500 anti-clockwise, stopping at Golspie on the first day for the Wildcat mountain biking trail for some awesome views and a bit of sunburn - as well as an excellent technical rocky decent on the bikes.

First night of the NC500 was camping at Dornach with amazing white sands blue sea beaches - not what I'd been expecting to be honest. 





Second night was up to John o Groats and Dunscaby Head. The campsite at JoG is excellent, you pitch up a few meters from the sea







The next day was on to Dunnet Head- the actual most Northerly part of the UK (JoG is the furthest point from Lands End). Not much to see there, but some nice pictures slightly further down the coast around Dunnet Beach.







Once you get past JoG the road becomes primarily single track with lots of potholes - I swear I'll never complain about roads in the Midlands again! Not that I really used to.... but at times I wondered if I really would want to do this in a car with stiff suspension and a low ride height. There were also lots of campers to get stuck behind. On the singltrack sections, there are lots of passing places, and they're actually very well placed - for the whole trip I think I only had to reverse three times to let other cars past.




The third night was at Sango Sands, with some rather stunning views from the tent! Shame about the motorhomes though....




This is the beach that the campsite overlooks...




From here on in, the scenery just gets better and better.








 


Bumped into EVO doing a road trip in a much younger, probably slightly quicker 5 series!











And a rather entertaining panorama that google managed to put together from three photos that weren't supposed to be a panorama at all!










The next night was spent at Applecross, just managed to book the camp site in time - lots of people were being turned away.







Up the North side of Applecross pass the following morning:



That was steeeeep - I'm impressed the handbrake held it!




It felt like I spent more time dodging potholes than anything else over the Applecross pass, then met this little beauty at the top... Honestly not sure I'd particularly enjoy that road in the elise - between the potholes, stopping constantly to let people past and going slow behind all the campers, there's not much space to enjoy the driving. The driver enthusiastically told me that it was the ideal car for the road though, so he was enjoying! Maybe I'm getting old and grumpy.



And back down the other side. The view really was spectacular.







This was more or less the end of the NC500, as instead of heading back to Inverness we headed over the bridge to Skye and spent a few days exploring there, before heading back South East to Peebles and Glentress for a few days of excellent biking around Glentress and Innerleithen - and swapping the tent and roll matt for a glamping pod with a mattress - which after 13 nights camping, generally at a different campsite each night, was very very welcome!




Overall we did a bit over 2,500 miles in the two weeks, and to my relief the car behaved pretty much perfectly. Now that I've spent a decent amount of time sitting in them, I've found the seats to be perfectly comfortable once I'd found the right position for them which is nice. Ride wise, up and down the motorways the car is very pleasant. The last minute pre trip work has fixed the last of the proper suspension clonks, but the car does have a bit of a shake on broken road surfaces... A shake is often caused by too much fore-aft movement in a wheel, so I'm going to have to take a look at the rear lower control arm bushes I think. Rough roads also bring a few cabin rattles to the fore, but none I wasn't already aware of - they just got on my nerves a bit more than normal!

The only new discovery about the car was reversing up a steep hill - the shake and noise with the engine under load in reverse is dreadful, and rather embarrassing! My first guess is engine mounts, as they're being loaded in the opposite direction to normal driving, and under higher load than during engine braking.

At one point on the trip - just before we hit all the singletrack - it was reporting a trip average of 45.5MPG too, which was the highest to date. Steep single track roads quickly brought this down again though, ending the trip at a pretty decent 43.4mpg. Not bad for a 3 liter 2 tonne barge. 

Overall, an absolutely excellent trip.

I have just enjoyed reading your thread from the start - many thanks for sharing and looks like the barge is in safe and capable hands 👍

Off to plan my NC500 trip now 😁

Bookmarked.

Very nice beemer. I had a 525d saloon and a 530d touring, Both manual cars. By far the most trouble I had was with the touring. I had to do most of the things you have done with your car on both but on the touring the suspension and split rear hatch were the pains. There is a module underneath the touring spare wheel on the floor that gets knackered with water ingress, it cost me many 100s to fix and is the cause of many false dash lights and running issues. Unbolt it and raise it up as it will save you problems with false alarms and battery problems. Great choice of car though.

You need to do Golfie. We were there the weekend.

Trails are easy to find and its way better than inners and Glentress. We also did Thornilee which is what you may be thinking. Yair is a little bit further down the road as well.

I've been negligent - no updates in 6 months! My enthusiasm for working on cars outside definitely wanes over winter, and the BMW has more or less been working as I've racked up almost 15k miles in the first year with it.

The one piece of work that couldn't wait for better weather was the DMF that was getting very rattly going into January to the point that I was getting quite worried it would let go on me. A new LUK DMF and Clutch Kit (and Mayle transmission mounts while in the area) were bought and thrown in the direction of my local garage. £200 later the powertrain lash was improved, the car was much smoother on acceleration and the rattle was gone. I've got the old DMF to disassemble and satisfy my curiosity at some point...

Now that the weather's improved I've started cracking on again.

First job of the year was a quick change of the tailgate struts as the old ones were only just holding up the tailgate and it was very heavy to open. Ordered a new set of Stabilus (OEM I believe) struts for it and set about changing them. Unlike a lot of cars, the struts on the E39 are tucked away between the roof skin and the headlining, so totally hidden once fitted. It also gives them very little leverage on the tailgate as they're connected less than 10cm away from the hinge point, and as a result have to be very beefy!

Old vs new main strut:



They're fitted at the hinge here:


And there are two per side, the smaller inner strut is for the glass section of the split tailgate, and the outer strut I showed above is for the main tailgate. They disappear into the little space between the roof and headlining with a ball and socket joint at the back. My boroscope proved very useful for lining everything up and removing/refitting the struts.




A wide crowbar (with protection around the end) seemed to be the easiest way to manage it... The first side took me about 30min, the next side about 10 once I'd worked out how to do it!




Nice liveability upgrade - although the tailgate now tries to decapitate you on the way up! Helpful with a

On to slightly more important matters - The turbo is still very audible, and the engine mounts still clunky! A new turbo is punishingly expensive, a reconditioned one is >£400, a non-Cheap turbo core is around £160 and a chinese ebay turbo core is about £70! I went with a Melett turbo core which seem to have a good reputation, and I've not pulled a turbo apart before so seems more interesting!

The  turbo isn't hard to get to, piping and plastics off, then in a really nice touch from BMW there are removeable bungs in the airbox, a clip out heat shield underneath it, and the turbo-manifold bolts are very easily accessible:







A little bit of gymnastics required to get it out of the engine bay between the air conditioning lines, but it did squeeze out. I was a little worried at this point, because the turbo spun quite nicely by hand, none of the notchyness I thought I'd felt before, no obvious play and it had good clearance to the housings. It's definitely noisy though!




It came apart with a bit of persuasion from a hammer, and to my surprise the VNT vanes are all free, happy and unclogged:



I cleaned everything up a bit, then tested that the VNT actuator was working with a little vacuum pump:



All good there, no leaks. I also tested the vacuum solenoid that controls it on a power supply - clicked away happily.

Old and new turbo cores:



It was at this point I realised I'd ordered the wrong core, as the compressor wheel was about .5mm too large to fit into the compressor housing. When ordering I hadn't looked at the suffix on my turbo's part number and just ordered a core for a GT2556V turbo as generally fitted to an e39 not realising there were so many variants!

While waiting for the new one to arrive I pulled apart the rest of the high pressure intake tract - from the lack of power, and a few oily spots, I've always assumed I have a bit of a boost leak, but I've never found anything obvious from just feeling around the pipework. The intercooler pops out very easily after unclipping the fan shroud and pushing it up out of the way:




Definitely needs a cleanout, and may have a pinhole or two judging by the oil... Compressed air made quick work of clearing out the fins, and I washed out the innards with water and degreaser, then filled it with water and let it sit overnight to see how leaky it might be.



There were no 'big' leaks, but over about 24 hours the water level dropped about an inch and there was a damp patch under the right hand side of the intercooler. I couldn't locate the leak, and it's certainly small - for now I'll live with it. Swapping out the intercooler in the future would probably take 10min once the undertrays were off, so not a big job. All the rest of the pipework was in good condition, no leaks to report.

I also finally did the engine mounts while waiting. Getting access to the turbo has also given very good access to the right hand engine mount:



That came out easily, didn't look in bad condition, but I needed to raise the engine a further 10mm to get the new one in place, so it had collapsed a fair amount. The other side was easier to get to but harder to take photos of. Once off however, it was clearly the worse of the two!



Completely and utterly shot. Two new Meyle mounts were fitted, and I replaced the totally perished vacuum lines to them with motorsport silicone 3mm hose:



Nice to have that out the way.

With a new core that actually fitted, I started putting the turbo back together:




At this point I completely underestimated the importance of setting up the end stops on the VNT actuator correctly. I had a google, didn't find much BMW related (turns out all the good info is on VAG forums) and proceeded to set the end stops to just within the physical limits of the adjuster arm.... and started putting the car back together:




Went for a first test drive... and the car went straight into limp mode, MIL on, zero power. I could just about hear the turbo for short bursts and that was it. Bummer.

Back for some troubleshooting... everything seemed connected, and the error codes weren't much help, simply reporting low flow on the EGR system. Tested the output of the VNT actuator:



Yep, that looks good... (Also, it rolled over the 175k miles milestone in limp mode :/ )

Now I went down a google rabbit hole of setting up the VNT end stops and it was quickly apparent that was my issue. When rebuilding the turbo I had wondered how it managed the boost pressure without a wastegate - it turns out that the VNT vanes, when at 90° to the turbine wheel, effectively dump the exhaust gas and removing boost pressure. At their other end stop, they angle the gasses hitting the turbine, but also provide a very narrow aperture for the gas to pass through, increasing it's speed - however if the grub screw end stop isn't set correctly, they can block too much gas, build up back pressure until the ECU starts opening them, then blast the compressor wheel with all this back pressure and cause immediate overboost... Which seems to be exactly what I'd done. I was lucky to not cause any damage, the ECU saw it and entered limp mode - VNT vanes fully open. Explains my symptoms.

Getting to this adjuster with the turbo in place wasn't easy. The 8mm nut on the grubscrew could be accessed with a long ratchet extension from underneath, but the hex head in the grub screw was impossible to get an allen key to. I ended up turning it with a lump of bluetack on the end of a stiff bit of wire, then just about managed to hold the grub screw secure enough to nip up the locknut.



I could only see what I was doing through the boroscope... the grub screw started with 5 threads visible, I tried to set it to 7, but after doing up the locknut ended up with 9... A larger minimum opening reduces the boost available at lower RPM, but doesn't do any harm in the way that a smaller opening can. Ideally should be set up by measuring the gap in the VNT vanes, but I wanted to avoid removing and disassembling the turbo again!

Test drive number two and the car is far happier! There is more power available than with the previous turbo, whine has totally disappeared, and the car is far less smokey than it has been previously! I'm sure I can get a little more boost out off it by adjusting the VNT stop back a little, so may well try that in the future.

The new engine mounts have also made an incredible difference to the ride. The front end has lost a lot of it's harshness, feels actually quite plush over smoother roads, and far less clunky over broken roads. The difference is almost as big as swapping the shocks! As ever, improve one area and new issues become more visible... the back suspension is now feeling rather harsh compared to the front!

That all done and car happy, about 30 miles of test drive done, I went to work up the A46 the next day...

Couple o things from early on in the topic... with external torx bolts you can use an ordinary 12-point socket. Unless it's something super-tight it's normally fine. I've even used a 12-point socket on e16 head bolts before.

Secondly, struggling with the air suspension pumping up when you're trying to work on it... you can open the airline if you can find a fitting somewhere. Pretty easy to do. Just make sure it isn't a 'single use' fitting and one that's easy to open and close. You can completely deflate both airbags if you find a common t-junction fitting.

Well ok then...

I was a couple of junctions up the A46, middle lane, behaving itself perfectly, when the instrument cluster popped up that 'Fuel Injection System' message and engine power disappeared. Clutch in, RPM dropped to zero and I coasted to the hard shoulder. First time a car has ever died on me on a dual carriageway. I was lucky in a way as if it had happened  a minute earlier there's very little hard shoulder, as it was I managed to get onto the off ramp for Kenilworth/Leamington.

To add insult to injury this was the first day of car sharing with a new colleague at work. Her partner had to come and rescue her while I waited for recovery! 

My wait wasn't too bad though, Auto Aid picked me up in just over an hour - very friendly recovery guy to boot.




With the BMW safely back on my drive - and a chat with a couple of neighbours laughing at my unreliable cars (Although to be fair, this is only the second time in 8 years I've had a lift home in a recovery truck, and the first time was because I drove the 944 through a rather large puddle - I call that user error!) I swapped into the MX5 - which I'd only just fixed over the weekend and hadn't test driven yet - and managed to get to work a few hours late.

That evening I started on the diagnosis. I hadn't touched the fuel injection system, but it had to be something that I'd done to it. Working turbo putting more stress on the injectors? - Unlikely!

Code read to start - This is with a BMW specific USB-OBD connector (That works with INPA), but an app called DeepOBD on my phone that is far easier to use than INPA and has better translations!


D40M57A1 (Diesel Electronics):
Error code: 0480
DDE: Electric fan, Fault currently not present, Activation, open or short circuit to ground,
Activation, open or short circuit to ground
Environmental conditions:
- Frequency: 2
- Logistics counter: 40

D40M57A1 (Diesel Electronics):
Error code: 0400
DDE: Exhaust-gas recirculation or exhaust-gas recirculation controller, Fault currently not present,
Positive control deviation/air mass too low, Positive control deviation/air mass too low
Environmental conditions:
- Frequency: 2
- Logistics counter: 40

D40M57A1 (Diesel Electronics):
Error code: 0100
DDE: Mass air flow sensor, Fault currently not present, Signal, open or short circuit to ground,

Environmental conditions:
- Frequency: 3
- SAE diagnostic trouble code: P0103
- Logistics counter: 40

D40M57A1 (Diesel Electronics):
Error code: 3505
DDE: Glow-plug system, Fault currently not present, Glow preheating system - glow plugs or
glow-duration relay, Glow preheating system - glow plugs or glow-duration relay
Environmental conditions:
- Frequency: 1
- Logistics counter: 40

IHKA39_5 (Automatic heating/air conditioning):
Error code: 0032
Zuheizer

ZIS (Multi Information Display):
Error code: 0003
Keine gueltige Statusrueckmeldung TELEFON

ZUHEIZ (Independent/auxiliary heating):
Error code: 0003
STH: Circulating pump, Open or short circuit to battery voltage
Environmental conditions:
- Frequency: 255

Most of those are regulars - the new ones are related to the EGR and the MAF, neither of which have anything to do with the injection system. The Injection system error message no longer comes up either, it just cranks away and doesn't hint at starting. First off I checked everything I'd touched doing the turbo and engine mounts - everything looked good. Then checking all the fuses... nothing out of place in the accessible fuse boxes, which lead me to google, and to an extra hidden fuse box tucked away behind the DDE (engine controller) in a waterproof box below the passenger air intake in the engine bay.





The upside down 30A fuse (Called EF2) is blown, and there is a dead short to ground on it. According to forums EF2 is responsible for the Injectors, Fuel Pump - and a load of petrol specific bits, I didn't find a description for a diesel car (I should have tried to find a wiring diagram at this point, ah well). Explains the no start at least.

I unplugged all  injectors and the low pressure fuel pump, checking the short to ground as I went - it didn't disappear and all the injectors and fuel pump looked fine to the multimeter.... This lead me to thinking that I may have crushed and damaged a wiring harness when I jacked up the engine to change the engine mounts, but I was loosing the light so left it for the evening.

Next evening I dismantled the engine bay a little more and tried to find anything I may have crushed... and couldn't find any likely candidates, then all of a sudden, the short circuit on the power rail had disappeared! darn- I've no idea what's changed.

Going back carefully over all the wiring I've disturbed in my investigations I finally found it. It seems that EF2 also manages power to all of the vacuum solenoids around the engine bay, including the one that controls the VNT actuator on the turbo. When I'd reassembled everything, I'd managed to route the control wire for this on the wrong side of one of the air intake pipes, which resulted in it falling against the EGR pipe. As the engine got hot enough up the A46 it melted the harness and gave me a nice short to ground.



That will do it. 

There's enough slack in the harness, so I cut out the melty bit, soldered the wires and covered it all with some adhesive lined heat shrink.



With that fixed and routed well away from the EGR pipe, I plugged everything back in, checked the fusebox with the multimeter - no more short circuit, popped a new fuse in, and the engine fired straight up.

To give it a proper test, we headed up to the Yorkshire Dales for a weekend of camping/biking - and the car behaved perfectly



On the way home we topped up the tank before hitting the M6 (£70 for 1/2 a tank, ouch), then went straight into a 50mph average zone for about an hour. I'd reset the average MPG count with the new tank...



Almost 59mpg, sweet!. After a weeks commuting this is now back down to 48mpg, as against the 42 it was reporting pre-turbo change... Fingers crossed

Thanks! Yes, with the torx bolts I realised that even the 6 sided sockets I had in my toolkit actually worked fine... Any excuse to expand my tool collection though... 

I hadn't looked at the air system at all when I was replacing those ball joints - the connections to the airbags themselves are nice reusable push fits (if a little tedious to get to) so easy to deflate. I've also now got the INPA software which will quickly deflate them if needed. Two new airbags are on my list of things to do so I'll be revisiting them soon.


Thanks - it was in the end, the only difficulty was finding it. I could definitely have a debate with BMW electrical engineers about hanging lots of non-essential things spread around the engine bay (vacuum solenoids) off the same fuse that is responsible for essential items such as fuel pump and Injectors. Surely essential systems should be limited to as few harness splices and systems as possible, and non essential systems should have their own fuse. This issue could have take out all of the vacuum systems and safely put the car in limp mode rather than the back of a recovery truck - all the vacuum actuators fail to their safe state.

I actually have one such ex BMW electrical engineer sitting opposite me right now, but he's protesting his innocence!