[F30Nomad]

Hello, about 1 week ago while driving on the highway I got an engine light. The code was 130F11 “Exhaust camshaft: signal implausible”. I cleared the code and drove home. Once I got home I flashed the car back to stock which enabled the cold start. When I started the car, the was a good amount of smoke so I turned it off. After doing some research the most common issue for smoke seemed to be the valve cover and pcv, I replaced my valve cover and there was still slight smoke coming out, I just assumed it’s burning off any remaining oil and drove around the block. As I was arriving back home the car started to misfire on cylinder 2. At this point I had the car towed to a local mechanic in San Diego called DrivenSD. They said the smoke went away but the cam sensor indicates there’s most likely an issue with the camshaft and quoted me $1900 to inspect the cams and timing. I had them do a compression and leak down test to see if the engine is even wroth saving.

The shop told me this:
“We completed the compression and leak-down tests that you requested. The results of those tests are as follows.
Compression readings:
1 - 180
2 - 105
3 - 210
4 - 220
5 - 210
6 -210

Leak down is around 2% which is fine. We also put a bore scope into the cylinders and there was nothing abnormal found there. The results of those tests confirm our suspicions that there is something wrong with the camshafts. That next teardown step is still what we are suggesting. That being said.... the $1,900 quote did include checking timing and if we get the cover off and discover something right away (such as a broken camshaft - which is kind of what we expect to find... there would be no need to check the timing and we would obviously not charge you to do that... which would bring the next step down closer to $1,500 rather than the $1,900... but, if there is no visible defect.... we'd have to check timing and dig deeper). Let me know how you'd like to proceed.”

Are camshaft issues common on the b58?
I’ve had this car for 3 months, 1 month tuned with bm3 ots stage 2. I bought it from BMW of Escondido as a used car, they told me they inspected it but when I pulled the injectors to do the valve cover, I’ve never seen such dirty injectors.

I don’t know weather to take it to a different shop, bite the bullet and pay the $1900, then pay more then likely another 1-2 grand to have the issue resolved, or buy a used engine off eBay that has a year warranty and swap it.

Any advice?

[SpencerC_6MT]

I have very little experience with DrivenSD, though they seem nice on the phone. Personally, I send my car and family's cars to Independent Motorcars for any work I don't want to handle myself. Chris's prices are great and he doesn't milk you for labor hours. You may want to give him a call and ask what he'd charge, but it seems to me you should just bite the bullet and have Driven SD do the work. $0.02

[BMWILUVU]

How does a broken forged camshaft affect only cylinder 2? As far as compession, all of the cylinders should be within a tolerance of one another. Not sure how you are getting 105 on #2 but leakdown is ok that doesn't make sense to me. The compression test tells you somethings wrong and the leakdown pinpoints it. They're saying there's a problem but its nowhere which I suppose is good maybe the compression test was not done right. Camshaft issues are rare on B58s, I think if I were you I would change the camshaft position sensor before going the other routes but others can chime in.

[morritse]

My shop saw a b58 with a broken valve spring retainer or something like that.

[yupetc]

Low compression with Cylinder 2 can be an assortment of issues, but as long as your camshaft is still in one piece and rotating just fine, it shouldn't be the issue at all.

If this were my situation, I'd look at these things:

- Look at Injector #2, see if the seal has been compromised because if so, the chamber during compression and combustion stroke can be seeping air out of the injector hole. This did happen to my car on cylinder #6 and I ended up repairing that hole with a repair kit, it's very similar to doing a time-sert job. The repair kit eventually gave up and I ended up with a full wash-out on that hole to the point the injector tip broke and started leaking gasoline all over. Anyway, I changed out a new head and got the issue resolved. All of this because when I did the rebuild, I missed putting on the injector coupler on that injector. *EDIT: adding that this is on my N55 motor, not B58. So it may not apply. But if an injector has been worked on before, a bad installation job can be the cause of wash-out issue. Keep that in mind.
- Another suspicion will be the valves in cylinder 2, you could have a burnt exhaust valve or a small chip off to where air is leaking upon closure. This happened in one of my Mini's and all I had to do is remove the head, put another valve in, and we're back on the road again. Of course I also took all the valves out and cleaned them, pretty much a full rebuild. Other possibilities which are less probable is if you have heavy carbon build up on your intake valves, and a good solid gunk got mushed right on the valve seat to the point it affects the valve closure. Valve stem seal out of place could also play into less air directed into the chamber for combustion.
- Lastly and if the above aren't found to be any issues, I'd look at the piston side of things. Could be a mildly compromised crown landing to where it affects the ring lands. And when you mention white smoke, my first instinct was a rod bearing because when I had my rod bearing failure, I did have white smoke for the full 4-5 minutes of driving, then it completely seized on me. When I took the motor apart, I find the bearing shells being welded onto the rod journals.

Anyway, don't peg me as being too pessimistic, but when compression reading goes to shit, I normally just use a cherry-pick hoist and haul the motor out of the bay and start tearing it down and have a thorough look. In your case, if you're afraid of spending thousands only to "maybe" find out what's wrong with it, just go ahead and source another motor and replace it. Save the old motor in the garage on an engine stand and slowly take it apart to find out what's wrong with it, maybe if the block is still good, you can rebuild it and leave it there as your next spare. I have a N55 and a B48 spare in my garage right now; these will serve our F56 Mini, E90 and F15 cars in case of a mishap. And my cars are quite fully modded for power.

[F30Nomad]

Here is a sound clip of the car starting. The strange part is how the leakdown test was good but there’s compression loss on c2 and c1. I’m going to lift the valve cover tomorrow and take some detailed pictures, and do a wet compression check myself. I don’t think it’s a piston ring because the car is no longer smoking.

https://streamable.com/h8imx2

[F30Nomad]

I think I found the issue, one of the cam retainer screws snapped off, when I did the valve cover it was in place and the cam issue was present, maybe it was loose and eventually snapped. Going to try an easy out kit to try to remove the broken screw. The question now is if the camshaft is warped or was just loose.

https://ibb.co/P5zCMyS

[Duncan140i]

Friend had similar issue. Cam was broken under cap. Hard to diagnose as it was still functioning and break was hidden under first inspection.

[B58 parts]

Originally Posted by F30Nomad

I think I found the issue, one of the cam retainer screws snapped off, when I did the valve cover it was in place and the cam issue was present, maybe it was loose and eventually snapped. Going to try an easy out kit to try to remove the broken screw. The question now is if the camshaft is warped or was just loose.

https://ibb.co/P5zCMyS

How would that happen?

Concerning thread

Did you money shift it or something or have a backfire? Just re read noticed it's a new to you car. I wonder if the prior owner "put it back to stock ".. so who knows

I never knew cams were hollow either

[WUKONS]

Originally Posted by YuminNuman

How would that happen?

Joking here, but probably antilag and flame map combined.

[eluded]

Looks like cylinder number two has checked out

[F30Nomad]

Update. Car is running perfect.
I got the broken bolt out in about 5 seconds using a impact drill and a $7 easy out kit from Harbor Freight.

Installed 2 new bolts, these can be special ordered from the dealership for $4 a piece, then made sure the rest of the camshaft was torqued down.

I also checked timing by putting cylinder one to tdc and looking at the vanos gears. Super glad I didn’t spend 1900 for someone to do a few hours of simple work.

After that I reinstalled the valve cover, installed all new injectors and ngk plugs, cleared the codes with bootmod and the car rips like before.

I guess I got super lucky because I found a Facebook post about a similar issue, except their camshaft broke due spinning freely.

I wonder how common this issue actually is, when buying the bolts and looking at ISTA they have 2 strengths, 8.8(9.6nm) which was in my car so I continued to use it, and 10.2(11.8nm).

Broken camshaft due to bolt breaking and cam spinning freely:
https://m.facebook.com/wgmotorworks/...82083218500209

Broken camshaft post on the forums:
https://f30.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=1902711

And Duncan140i’s response showing a broken camshaft.

[yupetc]

Originally Posted by F30Nomad

Update. Car is running perfect.
I got the broken bolt out in about 5 seconds using a impact drill and a $7 easy out kit from Harbor Freight.

Installed 2 new bolts, these can be special ordered from the dealership for $4 a piece, then made sure the rest of the camshaft was torqued down.

I also checked timing by putting cylinder one to tdc and looking at the vanos gears. Super glad I didn’t spend 1900 for someone to do a few hours of simple work.

After that I reinstalled the valve cover, installed all new injectors and ngk plugs, cleared the codes with bootmod and the car rips like before.

I guess I got super lucky because I found a Facebook post about a similar issue, except their camshaft broke due spinning freely.

I wonder how common this issue actually is, when buying the bolts and looking at ISTA they have 2 strengths, 8.8(9.6nm) which was in my car so I continued to use it, and 10.2(11.8nm).

Broken camshaft due to bolt breaking and cam spinning freely:
https://m.facebook.com/wgmotorworks/...82083218500209

Broken camshaft post on the forums:
https://f30.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=1902711

And Duncan140i’s response showing a broken camshaft.

Glad you're able to sort it out.

Checking on the pictures, you may want to look at the camshaft journals and the journal cap's contact surfaces. If it's really grooved up by debris, you may have to consider smoothing it out and apply some MicroSlick Cerakote or change to a new cap.

*EDIT* (removed my previous statement about using N52 camshafts, I later realize we're on the B58 discussion here).

[cfm56d7b]

Originally Posted by F30Nomad

Update. Car is running perfect.
I got the broken bolt out in about 5 seconds using a impact drill and a $7 easy out kit from Harbor Freight.

Installed 2 new bolts, these can be special ordered from the dealership for $4 a piece, then made sure the rest of the camshaft was torqued down.

I also checked timing by putting cylinder one to tdc and looking at the vanos gears. Super glad I didn’t spend 1900 for someone to do a few hours of simple work.

After that I reinstalled the valve cover, installed all new injectors and ngk plugs, cleared the codes with bootmod and the car rips like before.

I guess I got super lucky because I found a Facebook post about a similar issue, except their camshaft broke due spinning freely.

I wonder how common this issue actually is, when buying the bolts and looking at ISTA they have 2 strengths, 8.8(9.6nm) which was in my car so I continued to use it, and 10.2(11.8nm).

Broken camshaft due to bolt breaking and cam spinning freely:
https://m.facebook.com/wgmotorworks/...82083218500209

Broken camshaft post on the forums:
https://f30.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=1902711

And Duncan140i’s response showing a broken camshaft.

The most favorable outcome at the lowest possible price. Thanks for sharing!

[AlpineVt]

We have the same issue with a 2017 340xi with only 54k miles, however the cam journal was damaged and we had to get a used head. We are trying to sort the vanos central valves now as they are a different diameter in the used head than the originals.
Did you find the bolt head, or did it drop into the engine?

[B58]

Someone I know that worked for a BMW dealer mentioned that they saw a broken camshaft on a early 2015-2016 7-Series.