Since November, my wife and I have been scratching our heads and giving ourselves headaches about our 2001 BMW 525iT. The stately wagon that we purchased from the Bishop seemingly overnight developed an unquenchable thirst for oil. Then it began misfiring on multiple cylinders. It got so bad that it burned a quart every 50 miles. Mechanics told me to prepare for an engine rebuild, but my wife and I didn’t need to go that far. I revived my wife’s car by beating the crap out of it and by replacing one little part almost everyone overlooked.
Last month, The Autopian’s full-time staff decided to rate our BMWs based on how much we regret buying them. Toward the bottom of the list, representing the most regret was Lewin Day’s basket case diesel 2008 BMW 320D and Sheryl’s wounded 5 Series, which smoked so bad you could have said it was a diesel. I bought my wife’s E39 in late 2020 from the Bishop, drove it around for a little bit, and then tossed Sheryl the keys. The BMW has been her most prized possession ever since.
Sheryl then proceeded to put about 30,000 miles on the car in less than a year. She made sure to keep up on oil changes and repaired little bits here and there as she went along. Sheryl also added small customizations to make the car her own, going as far as importing European market trim from Germany.
Then it all fell apart, as old German cars do…
What Happened
During my stint of ownership, I took note that the engine burned through about a quart of oil every 1,500 miles or so. That’s fine and manageable, so I instructed Sheryl to check her oil with regularity. The oil burn never got worse as she drove the car all over Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri.
Over this time, my wife replaced the car’s ignition coils and spark plugs. Other maintenance items included new brakes all around and new side mirror glass. When I bought the car from the Bishop, the ABS and traction control didn’t work either. Bishop replaced multiple wheel sensors without any luck. I figured out the issue to be an ABS module failure and that it was just blaming the innocent wheel sensors for its own wrongdoing. So, I had that part replaced, which turned off the so-called trifecta warning lights for the first time in several years.
These lights were so annoying!
The vehicle purred like a kitten and was officially in better condition than when I picked it up from the Bishop. Sure, we couldn’t fix the rocker rust, but this black wagon looked mean and drove with a purpose. We had it running so fine it even got over 30 mpg at extra-legal speeds.
Then late October rolled around and something changed about the car. Suddenly, fuel economy went into the toilet and oil consumption was best described as epic. I measured oil burn to be as much as a quart every 50 miles. My mechanic friends and even readers here suggested that there could have been a blown head gasket. But the car’s fluids never mixed and aside from the oil, they never changed their levels either. Yet the thick clouds of oily smoke billowing out of the tailpipe suggested the car was using oil worse than a two-stroke motorcycle.
Sadly, the BMW was Sheryl’s only car and she didn’t want to drive my cars, so she had no choice but to keep dumping oil in. She’s a lawyer and she will very quickly tell you “my BMW broke down” is not a valid excuse for not making it to court.
By November, things started getting dire as the M54 2.5 six signaled its displeasure with its existence and stopped running on one, sometimes two of its six cylinders. The misfires were constant and shook the car harder than a Harley-Davidson’s V-twin. From November forward, there was never a time when the car didn’t misfire.
While I know everything about Smarts and am gaining a great deal of knowledge about Volkswagens, BMWs are still relatively new to me. My experience and research with other cars pointed me to a bad Positive Crankcase Ventilation (PCV) valve. Let’s take a quick detour …
Not all of the gases produced by your engine leave via the exhaust pipe. Some blow-by gases slip past the piston rings and make it into the engine’s crankcase. The PCV valve has the important job of extracting those gases and re-routing them into the intake tract so that your engine can burn them. Reportedly, the PCV system as we know it was introduced in the 1960s as an emissions control. However, its origins date back to World War II when PCV systems kept engines sealed when trucks forded deep water.
Anyway, when your PCV fails the gases will likely find themselves unable to escape your crankcase. Those gases have to go somewhere and they’ll take the path of least resistance, slipping past the rings and seals to be burned by the engine. That alone is bad, but some mechanics also say that you’ll get sludge out of the other end, too, and that’s not good for your engine.
When Smarts get bad PCV valves, they tend to smoke, but they don’t burn a quart every 50 miles. Still, replacing a PCV valve is usually an easy and quick way to battle smoking problems. Note that I said “usually” there. See, while I could replace the PCV valve in a Volkswagen in 10 minutes or less, BMW’s gotta be weird with it.
BMW calls its system the Crankcase Ventilation system or CCV, and the end result is the same as PCV. The difference is that this isn’t a 10-minute job. Some searching revealed that someone with experience could do it in four hours. Amateurs would take longer if not a whole day. Additional troubleshooting revealed oil-fouled spark plugs. That’s not surprising considering all of the oil consumption. New plugs got fouled quickly, so that wasn’t going to make a difference.
Seeing as fixing this would be a big time and monetary investment, I wanted to be sure I was making the correct fix. Thankfully, I have a lot of certified mechanics as friends, so I started sending the car to them for first and second opinions. Most of them told Sheryl and me to prepare for an engine rebuild. While they all recognized that a failed CCV could cause smoking, none of them believed it would cause smoking and oil burn to the level they saw.
I mean, burning a quart every 50 miles means the oil is just slipping through every possible crack. One of our friends was adamant about a blown head gasket. Clearly, something else was going wrong in addition to the CCV.
The misfiring then got worse, forcing Sheryl to park the car. She then bought the Scion iQ which remains her daily driver today. I continued gathering mechanic friend opinions and all of them gave me bad news. I then tried a local shop and they concluded that they could fix the damage for $3,000 or so.
Eventually, Sheryl decided that repairing the rust for $5,000 and then paying another 3 large to fix the engine wasn’t worth it. You could get a rust-free E39 from the south for less than that! In April, she instructed me to take pictures of her car to prepare it for sale.
The Comeback
That day, I took the BMW out for my first spin in several months. Now, my wife and I have very different driving styles. I tend to redline every car I have on pretty much every drive. I love the exhilaration of using up everything my engine has to offer. Besides, the vast majority of the mechanics I’ve known over the years have told me that using up the tachometer helps the car “blow the cobwebs out,” so to speak. You and I also know of this as the slang term “Italian Tune Up.”
On the other hand, my wife drives for fuel economy. When she drives the BMW the tachometer usually stays on the lower end of the rev range. She rarely ever makes the car boogie.
Now, there has long been a lot of back and forth out there about the “Italian Tune Up.” Some say that working out your engine can blow out carbon deposits while others say it’s an old mechanic’s tale. It sounds like the most reasonable explanation comes from Engineering Explained.
Jason Fenske concludes that the proposed carbon-cleaning benefits of an Italian Tune Up are real, but you may have to really beat on the engine to see the benefits and it may not work for other engines.
Either way, when I hopped into the BMW I decided to give it one last thrash before sending it to a new home. Upon exiting my neighborhood, I put the pedal down. Four cylinders were reporting for duty and after an initial surge, the vehicle belched out enough thick oily smoke to compete with a steam locomotive. I then continued to keep my foot down throughout my final drive, making that injured car work. I wasn’t trying to fix anything! I was just trying to have one last gasp of fun.
20 or so minutes after I got my fill, I pulled into a parking lot to remove Sheryl’s stickers and to take pictures. When I was finished, I shut down the engine. The car’s battery showed no signs of life earlier in the day, so I wanted to see if it was brought back enough to start the car. Thankfully, the battery seemed to have been injured, but it wasn’t down for the count. It fired up the engine with gusto. Then, something unexpected happened. The constant misfire was gone. All six cylinders were firing without issue.
I called Sheryl and she was perhaps even more surprised than I was. She told me the car had been misfiring without a break since November. What changed? Well, this was the first time I drove her BMW since October, but that’s it. All I did was beat on the car, something she never does.
I decided to drive her car 50 miles. Sure enough, the misfiring didn’t come back. The car never stumbled, choked, or showed any signs that it’s been misfiring for months. Even the fat clouds of smoke that previously came out of the exhaust pipe were smaller poofs. It was clearly still burning a ton of oil, but it didn’t seem as bad anymore. The car didn’t even need a quart after my 50-mile drive.
Later, I pulled the plugs and they looked normal. Sure enough, stretching the engine’s legs seemed to have kept the combustion chamber cleaner. I’m still not entirely sure what happened, but my attempt to sell the car gave us a renewed determination to fix the vehicle.
For our next act, we contacted a BMW specialist friend and told him everything. Before we could even finish telling him what was going on he said we should replace that CCV. He was so confident that he didn’t even want to see the car.
So, fine, Sheryl bought an aftermarket CCV replacement kit. I contacted my trusty mobile mechanic, Jack at JET Mobile Auto Service. Yesterday, he replaced the CCV, commenting that the old one suffered from an internal failure. Sure enough, the old CCV was filled with gunk and was well past its prime. The manufacturing date on the old CCV suggests it was replaced about a decade ago. So this isn’t the original CCV, but it’s definitely old.
When I have more time I want to drill this thing out and see what the insides look like. For now, I’m just happy that replacing the CCV cured the car’s smoking issues. Seriously, I flogged the car hard down the road and not once did it let out any smoke. Today, Sheryl’s taking the car downstate and has reported no issues of any kind.
The car is even better than before, too. We had the catalytic converters replaced by a local muffler shop. Now, the car doesn’t have a check engine light on at all. Sheryl also reports that fuel economy has shot up to 40 mpg, but she will be sure to stretch the car’s legs more often than she did before. The Bishop tells us the dashboard hasn’t been this free of warning lights for over a decade.
The icing on the cake is a wild coincidence. Remember the car’s terrible rust? Just the other day I went to my mini warehouse to move motorcycles around when I noticed a few changes with the pickup truck customization shop right next door. It’s now under new ownership and is actively advertising rust repair. Sheryl and I thought sure, we might as well try. The business proprietor inspected the car and thinks he can rebuild the rockers with hand-formed steel for just $1,000. We’ll be on the hook for finding a rust-free tailgate, but $1,000 is way cheaper than any other quote we got.
The difference between him and those other shops? He runs a customization shop, not a body shop. So there’s no insurance work to get in the way. Is it a return of the $1,000 rust repairs that Bishop and I used to know of? We’ll find out.
Smooth Sailing, For Now
This car’s been through one heck of a ride. I was only hours from listing it for sale for Sheryl, now the car is mechanically fine. Hopefully, we’ll finally vanquish the rust, too. The best part? The smoke was extinguished for just $400. That’s parts and labor! The catalytic converters were $1,200 all-in. That’s $1,600 to fix what actual mechanics told us would cost thousands. It also took Jack about 4 hours to replace the CCV. It probably would have taken Sheryl and me far longer. I like to think of time as being like money, so $400 to save me from a ton of work feels like a good investment to me.
I suppose I have a couple of takeaways from this story. The first is that you should always consider more than just one opinion. Had we stuck to the idea that the engine needed a rebuild, we would have either unnecessarily paid the price or sold the vehicle. The reality was that the fix was much easier. Getting that third opinion was a game-changer.
My second takeaway is that it’s fine to trust yourself. I thought the CCV was a problem early on. Almost all of the symptoms were there. But, I began to fear that I’d waste time and money fixing something that wasn’t actually the problem.
Either way, I’m so happy to see my wife smile about her car again. She no longer regrets anything and will keep this BMW for as long as she can. As a bonus, having the Scion iQ around means she can drive the BMW for fun and not always for work. All of that is great. Long live Wanda the BMW!
This is such a win! I’d love to know about the rust-repair place. I’m not exactly close (I’m in the city), but I’m not that far, either, and my SE-R has some rust that appeared in a rocker a few years ago thanks, most likely, to a sunroof drain, that I’d love to be able to economically fix.
Mercedes Benz too, it seems. I have a Metris that uses their M274 turbo four in a longitudinal layout, since it’s rear wheel drive. Changing the PCV involves having to lift the engine up and completely remove an engine mount and it’s still a fight. So…. guess who paid $2k for a professional to do that whole mess.
Whenever you buy a used B M Trouble You, there are two things to always replace: PCV valve and “Variable Nockenwellensteuerung (Knock-en-vellen-schtie-eh-roong), better known as VANOS. Work on German cars enough and you’ll learn how to pronounce those words.
If owners replaced these every 50,000 miles, that would eliminate most of their problems.
Get her some new shoes with some lead insoles. 🙂
I’m glad to hear a story that confirms my implicit suspicion that stomping the accelerator once in a while isn’t a bad thing in a middle-aged car.
Hooray!!!! Yeah having worked in a shop I can say we mechanics have a bad tendency to assume the worst, but it’s often cause once you get burned making an unsuccessful repair once it’s hard to want to do it again
Shotgun diagnostics, or as I call it, troubleshooting with my wallet. I don’t get why a mechanic can’t keep some parts on hand to see if it works before charging the customer. If you get the same cars with the same problems often, it shouldn’t be a big investment.
One of the more interesting anecdotes about the Italian tuneup involves Maserati involving the MC Shift transmission. Apparently they fail – a lot – but it turns out the best way to make sure the replacement wouldn’t fail was to hammer the snot out of the replacement early so the clutches seated properly and then there were at least fewer problems. Driving it gently caused issues.
On the other hand, I am very certain my Fiesta ST has absolutely no carbon buildup problems…
Congrats on getting your wife’s car running again. It is a beautiful car. I have a love/hate relationship with German cars. I like how they drive but hate the unnecessary complex repair work. Seriously, Japanese and Korean cars are significantly easier to work on with fewer oddball issues . (2017 RAV4 PCV location not withstanding)
I did the Italian Tune-Up with some Seafoam on a 195k 2007 Hyundai Elantra a few years ago and it seems to have helped a little, but honestly it was in pretty good shape to begin with. Still runs to redline at 267k!
For sale btw…
Is it…uh…ok to…um…perform the Italian Tune Up on a daily basis?
Asking for a friend.
If you’re not redlining it every time you drive, can you say it is the right car?
I guess I have the right car. 🙂
Ah, yes, the Italian tuneup, that is, the Italian job, as long as it doesn’t involve jumping some 60 feet between rooftops: https://doubleapex.co.za/wp-content/uploads/The-Italian-Job.jpg
(Of these three stunt Minis that made the jump, one broke some suspension system components, one “broke its engine” [likely due to broken motor mounts], and one actually survived intact.) Rather a shame that more people are now familiar with the rooftop-jump-less 2003 American remake than with the 1969 British original film, not to mention the fact that they’re missing out on the line “You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”
Anyway, what a serendipitous fix! Best wishes for Sheryl, especially after reading the comments about what she has to deal in the course of her career and especially since she has great taste in cars, that 2001 BMW 525iT longroof is just one of the best looking 21st-century BMWs out there.
the original with Michael Caine and the Minis was infinitely better – and not just because I belonged to a Mini Club at the time. A bunch of us showed up at a drive-in and drove people nuts by honking those annoying little horns (located on the turn signal stalk) whenever applause was warranted – especially when the guy was only supposed to “blow the bloody doors off”. The tunnel scene was great, too. I still own a Mini – a ’67 Traveler (station wagon).
Great story. Btw, the airbag light is likely from a bad connector under the seat.
I knew* it was the PCV. The M54 is notorious for this, there was a recall at some point.
*I knew after you said it was a small part, but still.
Her ONLY car? Like you don’t have about two dozen of them that you just cataloged for us a couple of days ago, most of which could be loaned to her?
Or is it a stick thing? That she doesn’t drive them?
“Your Honor, the defense request a brief recess to flog their whip in accordance with good ownership practices as well as continued dependability in transportation to and from this Honorable Court.”
“Granted. We’ll take 15 minutes to hoon this bitch up and turn the tires into smoke. Don’t come back until you’ve been sideways, and in accordance with courtroom decorum, make sure you wipe up any spilled dabs of oppo.”
I’d like to submit this evidence as COTD material.
Seconded
> recess to flog their whip
> hoon this bitch up
I loled v hard
*Sadly, the BMW was Sheryl’s only car, so she had no choice but to keep dumping oil in. She’s a lawyer and she will very quickly tell you “my BMW broke down” is not a valid excuse for not making it to court.*
It… It’s not? Are all of my lawyer stereotypes incorrect?
This pretty much sums up why I’ve sworn off most Euro cars. I replaced the PCV in my wife’s odyssey a few weeks ago. It was $22 from Amazon and took about 4 minutes to replace. Took me longer to locate it than the actual replacement cost. Germans just seem to love making things needlessly complex.
IDK, My GTI took about the same amount of time and money.
I’m so happy you were not only able to fix the mechanical problems, but that you found a way to fix the rust too! I know all too well what it’s like to love a car with a lot of rust.
I seem to recall that one (of many) issues with VW’s direct injection engines was carbon buildup. Apparently, some of the worst cases were in cars that people never drove hard enough to burn off that carbon, with buildup causing issues well under 100k miles. I don’t know if that’s true, but I owned a couple cars with that 2.0T. While I had my issues, carbon buildup was never one of them. I firmly subscribe to the Italian tune up, and a couple times a month I make a point to give my Sportwagen a good workout. Does it actually work? I don’t know, but it’s not going to do any harm, and even in a diesel wagon, it’s fun to wring it out.
Totally understand knowing when to do it yourself and when to pay someone as well. I want to replace the shocks and springs on my Sportwagen. While I did that job solo on the 2009 GTI I had 11 years ago, it is not an experience I care to repeat. The shop that builds our track cars will do the swap for $650, throw in an alignment and getting the rear fenders rolled a bit and it’ll end up being around $1k. Absolutely worth the money to me.
confirmed. My ex had an a4 with the 2.0. About once a month she would complain it drove like crap. I would hold the left paddle to lock it in 1st and just scream it WOT down the road. After a few miles, it have belched out enough smoke, and then start running like a peach. Used Torque to reset the CEL. And do it again in a month. Car was till a POS. So happy when the new owner drove it away.
I don’t think the Italian Tune Up will do a darn thing for the typical Direct Injection carbon buildup in the intake ports. I’ve done the walnut blast on my BMW 2X. Not looking forward to the same task on the 2020 GTI. The TT F-150 has port injection and is used to tow a travel trailer grossing about 75% of the rated load. While I don’t mat the go pedal all the time, I do run it at 4,500 rpm up the hills. (I live in the foothills, there’s always a hill when towing). It also is a genII, so port + DI. 9mpg ought to be washing the port walls well enough. I have also replaced the PCV 2X.
The N54 Bimmer got an aftermarket PCV and a catch can. One time it barely had any oil in it, the next time there was rather more oil in it. The car isn’t currently using a lot of oil, nor is there any noticeable smoke (knock on wood). The PCV will be replaced when the plastic valve cover cracks.
Love this 5 series generation so much that news that one was put back in order ,no matter where in world, makes me happy!
But don’t you have, like, many cars? There wasn at least one spare in a runnable condition?
Yes! But she’s quite a stubborn lady and was determined to make her car work at any cost. She was also concerned with taking my cars to court. My wife has made a lot of enemies, some of whom identify her through her car. Her car gets vandalized, its fuel siphoned out, and tires slashed. It’s wild that we’ve been pulled over before and the cop identified her before she even pulled out an I.D. I hope to never have that much notoriety!
Her fear is that by driving my cars, she’d accidentally put a target on my head.
You should have lent her the bus.. Everybody knows lawyers don’t take the bus.
Heck we should start a crowd funded project to armor the bus as her car. I would volunteer! Battle Wagon
I’m not sure that would fit in the courthouse parking garage. LOL I could only imagine the reactions to that showing up.
It seems like you and your wife deal with far more absolutely shitty people in a year then most others will in their whole life. Keep being a ray of hope for humanity, keep doing the right things, and keep fighting for the underprivileged. The two of you could have long ago turned into people just like the people that hate you, but you have done the opposite. Its hard to keep positive in this world, but doing that and trying to make things better then you found them will work out in the end. Keep on being a great person!
She deals with it more than I do! It comes with the territory with the kinds of law that she practices. Most of her work revolves around keeping people out of jail or trying to keep a roof over someone’s head. There’s a sprinkling of civil rights stuff in there, too. So, she’s made enemies with law enforcement, government officials, and building management companies alike. For sure, the city of Evanston, Illinois is probably the least amused with her. 🙂
And thank you! Honestly, it’s super hard for me to hate anything. I dislike holding grudges, so I even try to make amends with people who have driven me to my lowest lows.
Oh, now I see. God forbid to something happening to you guys. The world needs more people like you and your wife, and definetely less of the people she has to deal with. Hope all the best for both of you!
Good that she was stubborn to make that machine work! One more bimmer saved.
And that she does things for herself. At the beginning of this year I asked my wife if her car’s oil was past due. She told me “that probably not, it was done it in the last service at dealer”.
That was 2021. Glad we sold it a bit later.
America. What a country!
It’s always interesting to read about non-BMW people’s experiences with a BMW, because I would’ve probably replaced the CCV on day 1 of owning that car. I typically do a full cooling system + intake reseal + CCV replacement on any M54-powered vehicle I buy. That takes care of all the issues the M54’s typically have.
Those headlights are a little iffy though, what happened to the original headlights?
You forgot the DISA valve in your list
The headlights are European market. She ordered them from Germany. It’s mentioned in the article.
No, the ones on it currently are eBay. The Euro market headlights look just like the US ones but with clear corners.
Hazed beyond belief. We’ve tried restoring them a bunch of times but the hazing damage goes deep. She found herself at the crossroads of buying new lenses or just buying new headlights. So she bought new headlights. Admittedly, they aren’t my style, but it’s also not my car. 🙂
If you haven’t discarded the old ones yet, get serious. I learned that a slightly lower # grit—and a lot of elbow grease— will bring back almost any headlight. I remove the whole thing and work on it while watching a movie. The key is small steps up in grit # as you work toward the final finish, and then a good sealant/UV protection. I wet-sand at every step because I came to this from fixing piano finishes and that worked best with the least chance of permanent marring.
I’ll be doing my 26yo BMW lights soon. ( ‘soon’ : I discovered a few other things that need my attention first whilst spending quality time under it these last few weeks )
I’d do new lenses… it’s kind of a pain in the ass but the results usually come out pretty nice.
Why must BMW make it so complex? I’ve replaced the valves on a few cars I’ve owned and its been, at most, a $20 part and maybe 20 minutes from getting out tools to them being away again. OK, so Ford made it a pain with the 4.6l 3 valves but I’ve avoided those so far.
Also glad its running properly and you’ve found someone who will take care of the rust. Or at least the worst of the visible rust that makes it look ratty.
Happy wife, happy life!
That’s great news on all accounts. The Italian tuneup is real and I’ll die on that hill. I also agree that my time is worth something. I’m technically capable of doing anything I want to my car with my aviation maintenance background (and YouTube certification), but if I have a choice between spending a Saturday under a car covered in coolant and transmission fluid, or paying someone $500 to do it quicker than I can, I’m gonna pay the $500 and spend that time playing with my kids, or maybe just taking a nap.
I needed the power steering line replaced in a ridgeline. I could have and it likely would have taken me 8 hours. Got my shop to do it, it took the kid 6 hours, and most of the skin off his knuckles. Somethings are worth paying for.
They’re such good cars; I’m glad it is on the mend!
I just replaced my CCV. Only took 30ish minutes and digging into the more inventive depth of my vocabulary.
-of course, it helped that the motor was upside-down on a stand at the time 😉
You had me in the first half! 🙂
As soon as you explained the symptoms, my mind went to PCV too. I think I have BMW Stockholm Syndrome.
We all do.
Amen!