M44 Warped Head Questions...

[Eric]

So, I overheated it on a 3 degree (Fahrenheit) day in January due to low coolant, only drove it about 4 miles in the red, then put it aside (no garage), and have finally got the head off.

Head is bowed - further from the gasket surface in the middle (between cylinders 2 and 3) than at the ends. Maximum is 0.16mm when measured lengthwise, 0.20mm when measured diagonally (with a surface plate and depth gauge), does not seem twisted.

Also, the valve cover surface has a matching contour, and is 0.10mm out on the exhaust side, 0.03mm out on the intake side.

A family friend, who has an extensive machine shop and does meticulous BMW restorations says that the head should be pressed before it is decked, or the cam bearings will be out of line and cause problems down the road.

Does this sound right to you guys? Any good ideas / suggestions in general?

This head has about 60,000 miles on it and otherwise looks great.

Thanks,

- Eric

[cooljess76]

Always trust the machinists, they know more than we do and it's their business. Not sure why people think it's okay to drive in the red, even if it's just for a couple miles. It's a difference of buying a gallon of coolant and spending 15 minutes bleeding the system vs. $2000 in repairs and being without a car for weeks. Lesson learned, hope everything works out for you.

Make sure to have your buddy measure the amount of material removed, you may need to use a thicker head gasket to compensate so your compression won't go up too high or cause any valve clearance issues.

[Eric]

CoolJess -

Not to be argumentative, but at 3°F, having to scrape the frost of of the inside of the windshield with my fingernails, not dressed for a 2 mile walk back home against an ocean wind, a short drive in the red did not seem like the worst option.

The real issue, as I posted bitterly a long time ago, is that there was absolutely NO mention of the coolant air bleed in the owners' manual, and, in fact, the bleed screw was airbrushed out of the coolant filler photo. The bleed screw itself had tiny lettering in black on a black background in German, and its purpose was not in any way obvious - I though it was a radiator fastener.
If I had known I had to bleed air from the system, I would have done so, but, knowing I had a slow radiator leak, I just topped it off every month or so and thought nothing of it.

I regret that I allowed the coolant to airlock out of the head, and will certainly not allow it to happen again, but the few hundred dollars it will cost me to fix it is, as far as I am concerned, BMW'a responsibility, and not mine. I have had many other cars over the past thirty years, including traditional American cars, a Volkswagen Scirocco, and a Porsche 911, have overheated a few, and have never had significant problems after traveling a handful of miles on a hot engine.

Sorry for the rant, but I am still PO'd at BMW for actually going through the trouble to REMOVE the sir bleed from their owners' manual. This would NEVER have happened had I known about bleeding the air.

Thanks for the advice, though, I appreciate it. I'll have to see if our friend has time to do the work for me (rather have it done by someone I know....).

- Eric

[Altitude]

I am sorry to hear about your cooling system mishap Eric.

And I know what you mean, and I would have probably done some the same exact thing that you did in your situation because I have done so in the past with no dire consequences like a warped cylinder head.

And I too have owned many different autos like Ford, Chevy, VW, Toyota, Honda, BMW (2000cs, 2000tilux, 2002tii), Porsche 914 (air cooled though) and many more that I have driven many a mile in the “red zone” without ever warping a cylinder head. I have many cooling failure stories that I could go on about but, most notably tied for the worst, I had to drive over 70+ miles on a 95 degree plus day in Utah with my 1977 VW Rabbit bouncing mostly in and out of the red zone, and stopping only occasionally just to throw some water only in it, which was in short supply and I had no cylinder head or engine block damage, I mention the Rabbit because of your Scirocco, yours was probably newer though.

I think that the older cars like 1960’s thru 1980’s and maybe the 1990’s it was no big deal to bust a hose or something and just toss some water in and keep going until you could get it home to fix it. These newer engines are definitely not engineered to operate without the proper antifreeze mixture under pressure to raise the boiling point of the coolant, overheat it just once and you cook your engine. But even with that trade off I do like the newer engine technology, quieter, more reliable, soother power and requires much less maintenance than let’s say my old 1969 Mustang.

There sure are a lot of articles and posts about this exact same cooling system weak spot with all late model BMW’s, this does not deter me from considering to put one in my stable, but I do think more so on BMW’s you really need to keep the cooling system in top notch condition and if there is any sign of overheating stop the engine now.

Check out this web page for an interesting read about a "dyed in the wool" Bimmer enthusiast Gordon Haines and his little $10,000 cooling system faux pas on his 1997 740i.


$10,000 radiator fix

Gordon Haines 325ix registry home page

[Eric]

Well. Altitude, that was quite a read!

My experience was very similar, which is, I suppose, reassuring.

I knew I had had a radiator leak for over a year - a 1-2" puddle would sometimes form under the right side of the radiator after a drive, and the coolant would sometimes be a bit low. As long as I added a little bit every month or 2, I never had a problem, and the temperature gauge remained glued to the center mark, summer and winter. The heat was always slow to come on, and blew cold at idle from when I got the car (at 60,000 miles), but I assumed that was a BMW quirk and never worried about it.

Then one evening, I was snowblowng the driveway, and I moved the BMW to do its spot, and left it running with the lights on, so I could see what I was doing. When I got back to it 20 minutes later, it was in the red. I was surprised. I parked it, turned it off, and later topped up the coolant.
What I think had happened was that the radiator leak had accelerated, but I couldn't see it on the winter roads, and the coolant was low.

The next day, I left for work before 7 (in the dark), it was 3°F out, and the heat was slow to come on. Then the temperature gauge started rising. It got into the red after 2 miles, and I found a place and stopped (hard to pull over where the road is edged by four foot snow banks). I let it cool down until it read normal, as my personal parts slowly froze (no heat, remember), and the inside of the windows iced up.

Finally, I started up and drove home. The gauge entered the red after about half a mile, and stayed there for the next mile and a half.

Later that day, I did some online research and found out about the air bleeder. I bled the air when I got home, and all seemed well, except for that problem he described, of the cooling system being pressurized, even when cold, and more coolant leakage than there should have been (about a gallon over 35 miles). Also, the coolant smelled like exhaust.

Compression, when checked, was low in cylinders 2 and 3, so I assumed a head gasket and parked the car until spring, and here I am now with a warped head, and an annoyed disposition, because I would certainly have bled the system and even bought a new radiator for a measly $150.00 had I know about any of this before.

Oh, well, live and learn.

Oh, by the way, the Scirocco was a 1981, with Euro G cam and open exhaust - lots of fun for little money.

Have a great rest of your Independence Day,

- Eric

[Altitude]

Eric you have every right to have an annoyed disposition about this. I know when your personal parts start to freeze, so does your brain and all you can think about it getting warm!

In my opinion it is pretty sad that BMW, which is billed as “the ultimate driving machine” and a beacon of German engineering uses “cheap recycled plastic crap” on vital components like the cooling system, at the very least they should use better “plastic crap” like Toyota, Honda, Ford and a long list of other car manufactures. And if that is too advanced for BMW, they should go back to brass and copper, at least those old radiators lasted 20+ years before they corroded away. What good is a minor weight savings if they fail, costing the owner major $$$ to repair.

I just replaced the original radiator on of my 1993 Honda Accord with 195k miles. I am the original owner of this car and have done very little to no maintenance to this car, and like the Energizer Bunny it just keeps going and going.

My Accord had recently developed a very small seepage over the past year or so along a gasket on top of the radiator end piece where the plastic is connected to the aluminum core cooling fins, anyway, no big deal, just a very small annoying drip in my garage. That radiator did not drastically fail or have some plastic connecter break off and leave me stranded, remember, this is a 16-year-old radiator. And BMW recommends that you replace their radiator every 60,000 miles (at least on the E38, I do not know about the other models) but that’s crazy!

I have some other friends that are on their second, and third radiators in their BMW’s, and their cars are just 2 to 6 years old with much lower mileage than mine? Something is definitely wrong here.

I do remember another time driving in tandem in 2006 with my 1993 Accord and a friends 2003 E39 530i with just 64,000 miles on it (note a 10 year newer car with just a third of the mileage of my car) and we were about 275 miles west of Denver when a geyser shot out from under his hood, a broken plastic connector on the radiator was to blame, I was following and I got a free car wash of antifreeze. The 530i lost almost all the antifreeze in a just a few seconds, it sort of looked like a James Bond movie smoke screen behind the car. We immediately park the car on the side of the road and had to spend the night in Grand Junction and do a roadside fix the next day. And yup, you guessed it a warped head on a 3 year old car. That, my friend, is what I consider bad engineering.

Disclaimer: I am not BMW bashing, I do like BMW’s, but they do have a few problem areas that we are discussing. I know discussions like this can get pretty heated and a lot of people will take this as a personal attack against themselves and their character, it is not, it is merely an open discussion about our opinions and experiences on an inanimate object that gets us from point “A” to point “B”.

Yeah wasn’t the first generation of the Rabbit and Scirocco just great! Fun to drive, peppy little cars. I had my Rabbit up until just 6 months ago and it still ran just super, and I was still getting 35 city, 42 highway!

Hope you had a wonderful 4th.

Steve

[cooljess76]

LMFAO. You guys should trade your Bimmers in for domestic cars of the same era/age/mileage. Oh wait, there's none left on the road, they're all in the junkyard! Seriously though, the fact that you actually blame BMW for your 10-14 year old neglected cars breaking down just cracks me up. You drove your car with a known radiator leak for over a year! You assumed that a heating problem was just a "BMW quirk"??? Of course the owners manual isn't going to go into detail and teach you how to bleed the cooling system. You're supposed to bring the car to a BMW authorized technician for service.

Anyone who works on their own cars should at the very least own a Haynes manual if not a Bentley or shop manual. Ever heard of Pelicanparts.com? Bimmerforums.com? 318ti.org? A simple search of "heater only blows cold air" or a quick glance through the Haynes manual would have pointed you towards bleeding the system. The bleed screw is right under your nose as soon as you pop the hood. Heck, when you were filling the radiator all those times, you never even wondered "hmmm whats this extra plug on the top of my expansion tank?" Perhaps you're not the type of person that should be working on your own car. It's over 10 years old, things break if you don't take care of them. That being said, here's my story:

I bought my '97 318ti on ebay from a guy in Michigan. During the drive back home to California, I notice the heater no longer blows hot air. This was a problem because it was snowing and the roads were covered with solid ice. I notice the gauge creeping up to the 3/4 mark. I immediately pull over and coast off the highway into a gas station. Let the engine cool for about half an hour, buy a gallon of antifreeze and fill the radiator. It took most of the gallon, so I knew there was a problem since I checked the fluids before leaving the sellers house. No visible leaks, no oil in the coolant, no coolant in the oil, no smoke. I suspected a cracked radiator perhaps in an area which wasn't visible from a first glance. The engine was completely cooled, needle in the blue when I left the gas station. I asked the attendant where the nearest auto parts store was. Less than 5 miles down the road. Just as I'm entering the Advanced autoparts parking lot, the needle starts creeping up again. I shut it down and coast into the nearest spot. Neither time did the gauge ever make it to 3/4. It's 6 in the morning, the place doesn't open for another two or three hours. Walk across the street and have a few cups of coffee. Store opens, I purchase another gallon of coolant, a Haynes manual and a small tool kit. Thumb through the Haynes manual... BINGO! Bleed the system, top it off and drive 1500 miles problem free with nice hot air keeping me warm. I did have to top off the coolant a couple more times during the trip, but each time I bled the system.

Now I know what you're thinking. I'm an a-hole, who cares about my stupid story... Well here's the deal, once home in California, I found a hairline crack in my radiator. Did I replace it? Heck no! I drove with a cracked radiator for over a year too! LOL! I'm not gonna lie, I even stopped buying coolant. I filled that b!tch with straight tap water! But I made sure to bleed it EVERY TIME!!! After a year or so, the leak got so bad that I was adding a gallon of water every day! People swore up and down that I had a blown headgasket. The car drove fine, no oil/coolant mix, no smoke, plenty of power, smooth idle. I knew it was just a cracked radiator. So finally after a year of driving like that, my mom bought me a new radiator for my birthday. She asked me what I wanted, to which I replied "nothing". Then she asked what I needed, to which I replied "radiator". I replaced the water pump, thermostat, belts, plugs, and filters when I did the radiator. Flushed the engine out with a high pressure sprayer, luckily no rust came out. Filled her up with fresh coolant and she never leaked again.

So you and I were sorta in the same boat. The difference was that I didn't assume it was a "quirk". I didn't ignore the problem. Instead, I bought a book and learned a little about my car. That's the end of my lecture man, what you do with your car is your business. I do wish you the best, hope the bill isn't too high. I only came here to give you some helpful advice, but apparently you've already developed a negative opinion about BMW's. You can go through life blaming other people for your mistakes and/or problems, but you won't get far. If you'd see your mistakes as an opportunity to learn something, perhaps that 2 grand that you're getting ready to spend on repairs could have been used towards mods like a new set of wheels, suspension or even a paint job.

Good Luck.

[Eric]

CoolJess,

I hear ya', and I respect the fact that you had the presence of mind to look up your cooling problem right away in a shop manual. My heat was fine unless I ran the car parked for a while, which I didn't see as a problem, since I don't generally do that. As I say, the gauge never went above halfway, except for that one time. Still, mentioning in their owners' manual the need to bleed air from the system after filling, rather than airbrushing the air bleed screw out of the picture, might have been a better choice for them.

To illustrate my experience with other brands' durability (and ability to avoid the junk yard), read on...

My 1990 GMC pickup has 275,000 miles on it, never misses a beat, drove it all winter after the Bimmer failed. Total purchase price: $600.00.
edit: just changed an inner front wheel bearing - $12 plus $3 for the seal, 1/2 hour job, no special tools. They'll last 100,000 miles if the truck does...

I drove my 1970 Chevelle SS for ten years as my only car, then put it a garage for 10 years and didn't touch it, now it's sitting out in the driveway of my current place - if I put the jumper cables on it and pour some gas down the carb, it'll start and drive anywhere. It's had a slow radiator leak the whole time. Total purchase price: $550.00.

My 1981 Scirocco had over 200,000 miles on it, used a quart of oil every 2 weeks, once got stuck in a flood (floated - I knew because the steering stopped making the car change direction). After the water went down, I went back to the car, pulled the plugs, cranked it to blow the water out, it started right up, and I drove it home. Changed the oil and drove it for another couple of years, only sold it because I moved to a new state, had too many cars and too little time, and the gas station said it wouldn't pass inspection (bulls&@t). Total purchase price: $1,100.00.

My 1972 Skylark Convertible had 135,000 miles on it, used a quart of oil with every gas fill-up. I drove it cross-country and back, only sold it after a guy pulled a U-turn in front of me without signaling, I hit him, then got disgusted and didn't feel like fixing the fender. Total purchase price: $525.00.

I left my 1970 911E Targa for extended periods, then would drive it for a few months. I'd pull the jets (6 main and 6 idle), blow the varnish out of 'em, start her up, and go - never a problem. Total purchase price: $6,000.00.

I bought my 1998 BMW 318ti M-Technic at 60,000 miles and five years old from a coworker, who was an obsessive guy and had bought it as a CPO, and dealer-maintained it (kept all the records). The motor spun a big-end bearing at less than 70,000 miles. As far as I know, it had always had proper oil changes and was never raced or driven abusively (first and second owners had it under factory warranty). It had NO rod knocks or other bad noises when I got it, and I KNOW I didn't abuse it. Because I was very busy at the time, and needed to use it, I paid someone else to fix it (I never do that). $6,000 for a new engine (BMW-rebuilt long block), cheaper than a new crank plus complete disassembly to clean out the debris. I also had to replace both front wheel bearings (sealed, can't be lubricated) within the first few months, around 65,000 miles. Head warped at 132,000 mies (about 60,000 miles on the new engine) after problems discussed here. I've never heard of having to read the shop manual or consult the internet in order to know how to properly top off the radiator, which, as far as I know, is a routine gas-station attendant task ("Check the oil, sir?").
In addition, at this point, after the engine is fixed, I still have four rotors that will need replacing, at least one slightly bent rim (haven't hit any bad bumps or curbs), the power steering rack is shot, and the driver's window falls off the track if it's rolled all the way down, with absolutely no apparent problem when I take it apart and all breakable parts having been replaced twice. I've had to replace the A/C condenser twice (along with the receiver, of course). The fog lights are both broken, because they're so close to the ground and are magnets for rocks and road debris - wouldn't you expect a group of top-notch German engineers to make them with plastic covers or metal grilles to protect them and make them last longer, since road debris is a foreseeable circumstance when driving? Also, the oil drain plug is held on with JB Weld because I took it to an oil change place and they overtightened it, causing a crack that goes straight back into the pan (NOT stripping the threads, which would be easy to fix) - do they require that all oil changes be done by a dealer, and the plug always tightened with a torque wrench? And if so, is that reasonable? Certain parts of any car can be reasonably expected to undergo some abuse over the course of their lives, and the ability to withstand that abuse should be designed in if the car is to be any good at all. Designing for "perfect conditions" is poor design in my book, and in most other people's as well. Total purchase price: $8,000.00, plus $6,000.00 for a new engine, plus ?? for this repair, plus all the time I've put into it, for a car that was purchased as a "driver," not a "project."

The fact is, I have had a "bad customer experience" with BMW. I enjoy driving the car, when it works, but it has not been worth the time and money spent for a small, 4-cylinder hatchback.

Would I buy another BMW? Possibly, if the price was right. But more than likely, if I get another German car, it will be a Mercedes or a Porsche, because this is ridiculous.

- Eric