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Anyone broken their plastic timing chain guide yet ?
Gents,
Anyone with older M272 or perhaps current M276 / M278 , ever had the timing guide plastic parts chipped or cracked ?
I am plastic phobia.
These plastics composite looks the same material as used by different manufacturers.
I plan to replace all in red tick at year 10th. The green ones are all the plastics in the timing system.
Based on M276 3.0 Turbo, probably 100% the same as M276 3.5NA
If you google youtube, BMW has a lot of broken timing system plastic guide, also Ford.
Some ended up in the oil suction snorkle and reduce oil pressure. Good thing BMW has a true oil pressure sensor, unlike our engines witthout
oil pressure sensor and all u can do is pray, or install your own oil pressure sensor + gauge.
Seeing how plastic parts fail and cause major damage is a sad affair.
90C ish oil temperature is unkind to plastic while the plastic itself is being under constant gang-rubbed aka molested by the timing chain .
I personally do not like timing chain, they are not ultra quiet like timing belt.
Even though timing belt life in my time was I limited it to 40,000KM ( 25K miles ) only because I am redline brutal, the replacement is so easy as they
are not oil lubricated system. So for a long term, I save money actually while enjoying the ultra smooth and quiet a timing belt was in many of my previous engines.
BTW....
Since I also will need to replace the 2 most expensive by labor BUT el-cheapo coolant o-rings at main timing cover, this plastic components of the timing system and
the tensioner unit, 3 of them, seems a must do at the same time.
So please share your experience if you have on the plastic guide debris. Thank you.
=================
PS
Here is another PLASTIC component, stupid design luckily our M276 did not employ.
I enjoy looking at engineering blunder like this, to see if our cars shared the same stupidity and hence we can avoid it.
It is the engine oil filter of BMW of certain engine models, which the plastic cap/housing for oil filter.... has the inner plastic insert of the oil filter element as part of the
plastic cap/housing.
Like this : A & B is actually a single unit, clipped together
Above left is a proper A+B. On the side is B ( no label by me ) when came loose.
Supposedly B when changing the oil filter element cartridge, it has to stick to A as a unit ( A+B).
Somehow when B get separated and when oil is black and B is also black plastic, the oil filter element cartridge get thrown into the bin along with B by someone who does
not understand that B is actually part of A, and has to be always there.
Here this guy explains well and video light is good and bright
Forgeting that B insert...... will render the oil filter useless and engine oil filtration will be by-passed and it will be damaging the Vanos ( BMW unique VVT ), or in our MB case if
the little o-ring at our M276 oil filter equivalent B component is lost, our VVT oil solenoid will be clogged and other engine components will suffer more wear.
===============
Good thing our M276 oil filter element has a built-in B component as part of the oil filter itself....sort of.
At the least this dumb-azz plastic material of item B equivalent get replaced at every oil change.
So the plastic oil filter housing cap item A equivalent of our M276 can then be replaced once per 10 years.
This little plug and its o-ring is an important little devil
10-06-2023, 09:43 AM
by someone who does
