I think you need to add in that the car was continued to be driven once the engine started overheating.
...The car has overheated. And overheated to an extent I have not seen in my days of being around countless E39's. Car has about 80k on the dial and has a new radiator. EVERYTHING else as far as the cooling system goes has not been replaced. The shiny new rad did not help its other coolant system brethren in the fight to keep the engine cool. The driver saw the temp hit hot but never decided to pull over since the "temp was fluctuating from medium to hot". (His words)...
Of course, just from the context, I'm sure they show components damaged by driving with the cooling system malfunctioning; but all I see are pretty pieces of metal.
Do YOU see heat-related damage in all those pictures?
Yikes!! I'm going to show these pictures to my wife as reenforcement to my often repeated instructions; "if you ever see the temp guage move off of center, pull over shut it off and call for help".
Anyway, I posted this over there after reading his post:
"My guess is that this engine was starved of cooling liquid for a very prolonged time, evident by the amount of hardened buildup. 80k miles, and radiator replaced: He probably had a leak, did not notice, the liquid level went down, he did not notice... Didn't periodically opened his hood and checked for liquid levels and whatnot. So finally when the radiator gave up his last breath, he had to have it replaced. Do you know what that happened, and if it was with the current customer that the radiator was replaced?
And then the owner continued to drive the car with heated engine. Probably starved of liquid again. Either because of the already partially clogged passages, or a piece of it floating around and randomly blocking circulations as it moves around, or maybe there was still a leak and he allowed the liquid level to go down again. Ask him, he probably never checked liquid level after the radiator was replaced.
If that Honda tech replaced the rad, did he bleed the system correctly? Did he leave air bubbles inside? Who knows.
But all of the above points to cooling liquid starvation.
Meh. I don't think so. If you had a shop and something like that came to you, your first thought would be an utter shock and disbelief. The second thought would be, who can I tell this about that can share my shocking reaction. Well.... You could tell you auntie Sandra, the cook, and she would look at you with a gaze over her face, saying, "uh hum... I have cookies, you want some to take home with you?", Or you are going to tell your other Bimmer obsessed crowd, who would go even more bananas then you. What audience would you choose? :beerchug:
The car will need a new/used/rebuilt engine. The block will not hold the head anymore due to the threads in the block being non existent. Head can not be tq'd down anymore. Usually in a "regular" head gasket job where the block threads are buggered up, you can use helicoils and equivalent ie timeserts.
The timesert kit for this engine is 500 bucks alone and it still does not guarantee if the engine will fire right up and last till the usable life of the car..
So in the upcoming future, We will have an M54 being parted out for any of you folks looking for some parts of this thing. Only thing i would not sell is the block as its just not usable anymore. Im sure the guts can still be worth looking for.
As for drumming up business for the shop, a little extra never hurt anyone but as anyone who has known me on the forums, I love to help and show the e39 world my findings. I was truly in shock and awe.
How did overheating strip the threads in the metal?
Is it that the heat expanded the bolts to such a point the threads stripped?
Or is it that pressure from overheating pushed the head up so far the threads stripped?
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