Has anyone heard of SMG II being responsible 4 blowing motors? Thanks in advance

Has the SMG II technology been responsible for blowing the engine in M3's?

I'm a big proponent of Sequential shift technology and one of the guys on the Corvette boards is saying that www.roadfly.com or something is stating SMG II is causing engines to blow up..

Is this true or is there a different cause?

Thanks.

Just looking for the straight scoop on this.

I think SMG II rules...

BTw..Do you think the dual clutch unit coming from Audi and Porsche will equal the performance of the BMW creation?

Originally posted by JBsC5
Has the SMG II technology been responsible for blowing the engine in M3's?

I'm a big proponent of Sequential shift technology and one of the guys on the Corvette boards is saying that www.roadfly.com or something is stating SMG II is causing engines to blow up..

Is this true or is there a different cause?

Thanks.

Just looking for the straight scoop on this.

I think SMG II rules...

BTw..Do you think the dual clutch unit coming from Audi and Porsche will equal the performance of the BMW creation?

no, the problem is with the engines themselves. SMG II has nothing to do with the failures. It's the same tranny as the manual, with some software and hydraulic-type stuff added on to get it to work.

thanks for the fast reply..

WRONG.

A large number of the blown engines are on SMG cars, but during the time frame of problem cars (late Oct 2001 builds to mid December 2001) SMG first became available. Something like 75+% of the cars came with SMG because many people were waiting for it. So about 3 out of 4 blown engines are in SMG, just because 3 out of 4 cars built then were SMG.

The best guess of fialure rates is about 10% in the problem timeframe and less than 0.1% in all others.

Very cool. Glad to hear it wasn't related to SMG II technology..

Thanks for the honest replies.

I forgot which website it was but it was showing m3 engine failures. Mostly all the engines were smg. I have never heard of bmw engines blowing up until I heard of SMG.

Originally posted by bmwlover
I forgot which website it was but it was showing m3 engine failures. Mostly all the engines were smg. I have never heard of bmw engines blowing up until I heard of SMG.

Read the above post to start.

The engine failure site is

http://members.roadfly.org/jason/m3engines.htm

The summray is:

BMW started delivering E46 M3s to the US in March of 2001. The first reported failures were in July - August of 2001. BMW blamed the owners for overrevving the engines. They also changed the oil from 5W-30 to Castrol TWS 10W-60. Engine failure tracking on the boards started about this time as owners were being hit with a $17,000 repair.

The first SMG cars for the US were built in November 2001 (2002 models). Because of pent up demand approximately 80% of the US cars built in Nov were SMG. Engines were still failing, and BMW was blaming the owners.

This continued until early 2002 when SMG equipped engines started to fail. BMW could no longer blame the driver.

The information collected shows that cars built in a 7 week period around Nov 2001 are very likely to fail. Manual or SMG. The failures are BOTTOM end failures, which are not typically over rev failures.

The best guess is that the failure rate for those 7 week so fproduction is close to 10%. Engines from other time periods do fail, but at a rate of somewhere less than 0.1%.

Engines fail at various times and mileage, but it seems that they do not typiclaly fail before 6 months, but so far there is no upper limit. It also seems that if the engine makes 20,000 miles, it does not seem to fail (not confirmed until more engines get higher mileage). Use does not seem to make a difference. Heavily tracked cars of Nov build have not failed, and very carefully driven cars have failed.

It really seems like a production problem. According to BMW parts listings the bearings were changed around late Sept - early Oct 2001. Since the engines are built a few weeks before the cars, it seems something with this change accelerated the problem. Some surmise that there was a miscommunication and one or more boring machines did not get reset to accommadate the bering change.

BMW changed the bearings back in Nov and the failure rate went way down (with the couple of week lead time on engines).

At this time there have been few 2002 production fialures logged and the latest one a March 2002 build. And since we are 6 months past April builds, at least one failure is to be expected.

Go with a 2001 bmw m3 and your chances are way lower. By the way i saw some posts in that forum with over 30,000 miles

Originally posted by bmwlover
Go with a 2001 bmw m3 and your chances are way lower. By the way i saw some posts in that forum with over 30,000 miles

One car at 30,000. But Euro car, so wonder about the 30,000 miles. Owner would have most likely reported in KMs. 30,000 kilometers = 18,600 miles.

Two in the 20K range, one at 27,400 the other at 24,000.

All others below 20K and most below 10K.

So still, if your 09/01 through 12/01 build car makes 20K miles, you have a very good chance it will be OK.