Welcome back everybody. Mark with exotic car play place. Thanks for joining the
channel again. today we're gonna talk about how can you live with the most
unreliable 5 Series car on the planet. that just happens to be the car behind
me the illustrious E60 m5 with the S85 v10 motor. so how do you live with
that car? first of all I'm gonna review with you some of the dirty facts on some
of the reliability concerns with these cars, and then I'm gonna talk to you
about how do you manage that. so you can enjoy long life with this car, you can
really enjoy all of its benefits, and not have to face a lot of the negative side
of the car ownership. so here we have the illustrious E60. I've of course not
a cheap car to maintain mainly due to the fact that this was a very, very
expensive car when it was new which retailed for about a hundred and
thirty-five thousand dollars when it was new. so that's why that expense carries
through even though it's an older car. now you can get these down as cheap as
about twelve fifteen thousand dollar.s it is still based on that hundred and
thirty thousand dollar MSRP price tag which essentially is into the next
stratospheric level of maintenance costs and purchase price so you're going to
expect higher elevated maintenance costs and reliability concerns in a lot of
cases as more premium cars tend to have more complexity and obviously have more
risk and maintenance related issues so let's get moving let's talk about some
of the factors on this car right here brakes cross-drilled brakes look at that
very expensive to replace not a real issue although the later cars actually
had an up sized version of these brakes which worked better but these are
definitely more than adequate for the task that's in itself not a big deal
when we look around here generally speaking the car is quite well quite
easy to maintain you know the body lines aren't that
sharp the ride height is quite high so you don't have to worry too much about
curbing the car all that much it's actually quite quite high okay so that's
not a big deal in itself now let's review some of the issues that you're
gonna find with this car so I'm gonna pop the hood to get started
so now we're looking under the hood of this beautiful East 60 m5 and let's talk
about some of the issues that you're gonna find with this car number one
vanos right here they're tucked away to underneath this little cover vanos and
the related vanos to the high-pressure lines that are associated with the vanos
and the vanos pump and the lines are all part and parcel to an issue that is
fairly consistent with these cars the pump the pressure lines and the vanos
mechanical components here which alter the cam timing based on the engine rpm
and whatnot so that is one major failure point on these cars or three if you will
number one the lines have been known to burst very very calm in fact the pump
has been known to pop and not work or leak or just fail outright and thus
creating a condition where obviously I'll have fault codes in the car won't
run anymore as well as these vanos parts here the mechanical components start
rattling and making noise so you'll get that's a telltale the vanos here starts
to rattle around and kind of make a little bit of clinky noise and you'll
start to know that there's an issue in here but again those are three failure
parts now you know the vanos runs off the engine oil - right
so that in itself is why engine oil is so important in this car so when we
always talk about the oil changes in these things it's pretty easy to say we
all know that this thing has rod bearings and we'll get to that but the
rod bearing issues come largely to the fact that you have clears tolerance
issues within the bearings and the rod journals and a high viscosity level of
oil but that oil is also required in the vanos and so it's not as simple as
changing your oil viscosity style type manufacturer brand whatever that can
actually have an impact on your vanno system which utilizes your engine oil
and so that's why you know it's pretty easy to answer the question go with the
thinner oil but it does have an impact on your pump and your pressure lines
here for the vanos now those vanos systems they can vary like failure rate
on those can vary depending on the mileage it can vary to a large degree
some lasts a long time and others fail at you know 30,000 miles 50,000 miles
80,000 there's there seems to be sort of an inconsistent amount of failure or
failure rate on the vaneau system now another thing that you're going to find
here now under these beautiful intake plenum
so you also have the idle actuators throttle actuator business in there but
what happens with those because they are poorly constructed and again it's one of
those design flaws by BMW where the internal gears there's tiny little tiny
little teeth on the gears within the actuators that are made of plastic and
those plastics with times start to wear away or they shear under certain load
and then boof they miss some gears and next thing you know you have a throttle
actuator failure and then you have to replace one now there's two there's one
on either side one per bank and of course at you know the tune of two three
thousand dollars it becomes a very expensive proposition is there any
solution for that not really other than the fact that there are guys now
aftermarket taking those in as a trade they rebuild them with metal gears which
they guarantee a much much extended life out of them but again that's the
aftermarket that's not Factory you take your car to the dealership you say your
throttle actuator goes they're gonna put in a brand new replace it with a factory
plastic piece which again has a limited lifespan that is kind of an issue so
that's another failure point now when we talk about the engine and I sort of
looted to it earlier was the rod bearing so underneath the bottom end of the
engine here is where the rod bearings exist because you have the crankshaft
and the rod bearings at the very bottom and what will start to happen is you
might start hearing rod knock noises you'll heart it possibly start to hear
things at the bottom end but a lot of times it's not visible and a lot of
times you don't get rod knocked but in virtually almost all East 60 or the SAT
five engines you will see an accelerated rod bearing issue now does it mean
they're all gonna fail catastrophically and well no not not really in a lot of
cases they don't fail at all in most cases they don't fail at all but there
have been catastrophic failures now there are solutions to that and I've
mentioned in other videos of mine so the rod bearings are a problem but the rod
bearing can be largely solved by the use of frequent oil changes very very
extended warm-up periods which is to ensure that your rod bearings get enough
oil between them before you really start putting load on the engine so you want
to have a good warm engine before you drive it hard for sure which is going to
positive impact on not only the rod bearings but again the vaneau system
which we alluded to earlier oil has to be warmed up critical warmup procedure
on these cars will positively impact you know the longevity of your rod bearings
as well as the vaneau system so those are two major things the rod bearings
and the vanos now there's another thing is you can't see here but we'll just
talk about it at a distance is the SMG transmission and that's buried
underneath of course but we're gonna go in here and you could tell us as an SMG
you can get the e60 m5 in one of two ways you could either get it like this
with the SMG transmission which is a 7-speed automated manual gearbox or you
get in a 6-speed manual this is not a 6-speed manual so therefore this is the
SMG 3 transmission transmission itself the core base tranny is good it's the
hydraulic system that is weak that's the SMG system that can be weak you get you
get actuator problems you can have a lot of issues around and obviously the SMG
and as a whole has definitely many more failure modes than a regular standard
transmission so how do you fix that well other than driving it properly things
that you can avoid doing to it and that is abusive driving so the launch control
is the most abusive thing that you can do for the SMG transmission and as a
result you probably don't want to do that that also has a negative impact on
the rear differential which is tucked in underneath of course so the proper oil
changes of course right now they recommend 1060 of course as factory
which some are gonna argue is way too heavy 550 is what some people like to
use I question the other whether that is totally adequate for the dyno system but
maybe it's fine I haven't really tested that theory yet for now I'm using a 1060
more importantly than just the oil though proper warm-up so these are the
things that are going to help you keep this thing running long and healthy
proper oil changes with the proper specification of synthetic oil and
frequently change and when I say frequently the hell with what the dealer
is telling you at 18,000 kilometers when you do a reset to this and it tells you
all you're good for another 18,000 kilometers or whatever that is 12,000
miles forget it that's gonna kill this thing
so what you want to do is I don't even push this any more than about 3,000
miles or 5,000 kilometers I don't even go that far but that's if I were to use
this lots in the summer I would go that far
don't go any more than that so that's a major thing to help improve the life of
the rod bearing issue and the engine itself of course the other thing that
you can do is preventative maintenance of courses get the blackstone oils
laboratory testing that's another thing which I've highlighted in some of my
videos in the past that's another option as a preventive measure I would
recommend it it's a good way to trend the condition of your bottom end another
thing you can do to save some of the electronics is make sure you're running
a good solid battery that your battery isn't weak when you're not driving the
car Lots put it on a battery tender that's going to save some of the
electronics electronics do not like to run on too low of voltage that can
create burnout conditions that can create failures in some of the modules
and whatnot good healthy battery another thing is the transmission SMG system
will operate it within the normal tolerances don't put it in a race mode
unless you're really ready to go racing it's better to drive it in mid-level
speed or possibly you know you can set it up for s5 for sure no problem there
which is the way I prefer it but the hard shifts and launch controls save
that for the track or save that for special occasions the abuse constant
abuse on the tranny will take its toll on the differential on transmission
possibly the SMG failures as well will start to hit you as well so those are
the big things that's how you can avoid premature failures on this car some
things you just can't avoid are some of the big expenses around standard
maintenance items like brakes and tires all of that is gonna cost a lot more
money but if you do those little things that I just talked about the rest of the
car sort of just lasts you don't abuse it you maintain it properly lots of oil
changes it doesn't hurt keep doing those frequent oil changes just don't abuse it
drive it have fun spirited drives take care of the thing lots and lots of
maintenance those are the items that'll hurt you so if you take care of them
they'll take care of you so I really hope you enjoyed that video guys I'd
love to see you come back in the next one
because this is all East 60 content I know a lot of you guys have been asking
for this so as a result please come back to the next one guys love to see you
give it a thumbs like comment below if you agree or
disagree and most importantly again subscribe to the channel don't forget to
hit that notifications bell that's gonna let you know when the next video pops up
love to see in the next one see you that bye bye