BMW E90 335i N55 Engine Belts & Pulleys in 20 Minutes or less DIY
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 25 фев 2019
- I managed to change my belts and pulleys myself in less than 20 minutes in the freezing cold while holding a camera in one hand. I paid $160 for the OEM belts and pulley refresh kit. However BMW charges over $1200 for this job with close to $700 in labor time. It was an easy DIY considering not much to nothing is documented on the internet (RUclips and Forum DIYs) for changing the belts and pulleys on the N55 engine in the late years LCI E9x cars. Only tools needed are a 1/2 torx T50 and T60 driver on a 1/2 ratchet and/or long breaker bar.
Хобби
![ian - Fit Check (Feat. VonOff1700) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/sDGWDBg45Dw/mqdefault.jpg)
A few tips for people doing this in the future (I literally just got done with it):
- Use a breaker bar for both the tensioner release *and* to loosen the pulley bolts. I almost rounded out one of the Torx (T-50) bolt heads. The breaker bar allowed me more leverage without twisting sideways.
- You do NOT have to remove the radiator fan, though I'm sure it makes life a lot easier, especially with feeding the new belt on.
- BE CAREFUL with the overflow/reservoir hose! If you feel the need to move it, or remove the radiator fan, the hose is brittle in the middle part. I broke mine and it was $50 to replace.
- DO NOT remove the retaining pin before you get the belt on, like the video suggests. The whole purpose of that pin is so you don't have to release the tensioner while trying to feed the belt.
- If the new belt is seated properly on all wheels/pulleys, it should slide right on the new tensioner without any trouble. Personally, my new belt was not seated right on the bottom/largest wheel (Harmonic balancer/damper). I had to un-feed it from the other wheels, and yank it real hard to get it to pop on right. Then I was able to easily feed the belt on the rest of the wheels.
Hope this helps. Wish I had known this shit before I did the job. Upvote so others can see :)
Thanks for the tips.
Sorry to be offtopic but does anyone know of a way to get back into an Instagram account?
I somehow lost my account password. I appreciate any tricks you can offer me.
@Elliott Ellis instablaster :)
@Ronnie Justin thanks so much for your reply. I got to the site on google and Im trying it out atm.
Looks like it's gonna take quite some time so I will reply here later when my account password hopefully is recovered.
@Ronnie Justin it worked and I now got access to my account again. Im so happy!
Thanks so much you saved my ass :D
This guide was incredibly helpful. I bought the kit from ESC and just did the project myself today in about 2 hours. I used this video as my guide and had zero issues. Thank you for the post
Also, I'm not mechanically inclined. All of my knowledge has came from working on my 335i n55 and my beater 01 Monte Carlo. Anyone can do this if you have the tools and time.
Excellent detailed video my brother, thank you for making and posting it.
Great video - got to be one of the best DIY vids I've seen. Thank you. I was going to get a garage to do this work, but after watching, I have decided to do it myself. I've ordered the kit from ECS, and also a 24" breaker bar and some torx sockets. I'll post back after completing the job :)
Finally got back to San Diego from NZ. Parts and tools were waiting for me, and I did the job this afternoon. Replaced the tensioner, pulleys & belt.
The job was relatively straight forward, but a bit fiddly. I took my time and it took me about 2 hours total. The tricky bits were:
getting the T50 bolts out of the tensioner and pulleys. There was room to fit the socket wrench in place, but after undoing the bolts a bit there was no longer room to get the wrench out! So had to tighten it up a bit a do the last bit by hand. The bolt tightened up again towards the end, and I couldn't get the wrench back in, so used just the T50 socket and 8mm open ended spanner to turn the T50. Took a while but got there. Be careful not to drop the T50 or the 8mm!!!! I didn't, but nearly did and thought through the consequences ... not pretty.
when I popped the plastic covers off to access the T50 bolts on the pulleys, I dropped them and could not recover them. They live on top of the bottom engine cover now, until I remove it one day. The new pulley's came with new covers, and I was able to reuse the second cover from the tensioner assembly on the new one as the two tensioner plastic covers are the same size. If doing this again I would try and find some kind of plastic tray to put below the pulleys and tensioner when removing items, so if they dropped the tray would catch them.
The belt was little tricky to get on, but I found the following advice useful, from here and other similar video:
- feed the belt all except the alternator. Use the T60 and a breakbar to remove the pin and push the tensioner over as far as it will go (moving clockwise). It is then relatively easy to slip the belt over the last pulley. With the holding pin in place, the tensioner would not move clockwise enough to thread the last pulley.
Thanks to all that posted how to videos, and comments - I couldn't have done it without your help!
I'm not sure if it was the tensioner or one of the pulleys making the noise, but it's gone now.
Total cost (including CA tax) was $247.19:
Tensioner, pulley and belt kit from ECS $165.76
ABN 24" Breaker bar & Lexivon torx set $41.71
epauto Torque wrench & mechanics gloves $39.72
plus two hours of time, and bit of sweat and cursing :)
In retrospect, I would recommend also getting a belt tensioner tool - this would be a lot easier to fit in there then a beaker bar, or regular wrench, and gives some additional angle options. I've heard they're about $10-15 from Harbor Freight, Amazon, or the auto parts store.
Do NOT remove the pin holding the tensioner, I got my belt on without even touching the tensioner. Then pulled on the tensioner and removed the pin to tension the belt. Super Easy.
I can confirm this, too. And make sure you really seat the belt on every pulley/wheel. If everything is seated properly, the belt will slide right over the last pulley.
this is gold, just did this in 30 minutes. thanks a lot for the vid!
Thank you for the video! This is the best one I've seen. I'm about to do mine now!
Thank God I found someone who did this! Just got the same car and every 4 seconds I hear 3 squeaks. It is not constant but something is squeaking.
My car just started making this noise your video came in clutch even after 5 years thanks man
Im so glad i found n55 335i content👌🏽
Nice video. It really motivated me to do mine. Took me 1.5 hrs. It seems if u have a automatic there’s a screw underneath that needs to be removed before the fan can come out.
I just did it on my e92 n55 (manual x drive), here are some tips for those who will do this:
1- you can do this without removing the fan, it’s just tight and you will need to get creative with wrenches and ratchets.
2- old dust caps may not fit on new pulleys and my new pulleys were missing dust caps, no big deal to run them without them
3- just get the whole kit from continental and change em all, my squeak was bad and this fixed it
4- if your ratchet doesn’t fit, just put the t50 on the bolt and then use a large adjustable wrench to losen or tighten
5- to get the belt back on, you will need to use the t60 on the tensioner to get some extra slack
Good luck
Just did this project and it is very much Doable without the removing the fan. One thing I was say would be to wear gloves with grips on them since you to screw the pulleys first with your fingers and then with the wrench due to the limited space. Last tip DO NOT REMOVE THE METAL PIN until the belt is in place. I was able to put the belt in place without issue due to the pin.
Thanks for the video! This was one of these few videos that actually recorded the squeaky noise of a wheel bearing gone bad in tensioner or pulley before showing the part swap. I had the same exact squeak going on in a 2011 335i XDrive. Ordered the new tensioner, pulleys, and belt from FCP Euro. I was able to get the tensioner and top pulley out without removing radiator fan. I did have to remove fan for the bottom pulley (prior to fan removal gap too small for breaker bar and torx bit). Belt easy to route with fan off. Squeak gone!!
This was very helpful I have the exact car and that’s what I’m changing perfect 👌🏾
Well done. Just did mine.
Thanks a lot man, my car has the exactly same sound. Will try to change it tmr :)
Darn good DIY bro. Will be trying this on my n55 135i
It was so easy! I'm still perplexed where the BMW Dealership gets their $1200 price tag for this work.
Will this work on n54?
great job!
Great tutorial. Appreciate you
The explanation from BMW is they want to rip off every single BMW owner every single chance they have. There is no other reason to charge that much for this, or most of the other repairs as well. The reason, however, they wanted to put the crankshaft seal, is to keep the engine from eating your belt should it break. It is good to add that seal, because most bimmers don't even have one. Again, BMW should have offered a recall to get this done, but they didn't. Good vid. NOTE: you do NOT need to remove any of those things, as it can be easily done without removing anything, IF you have DCI's. My N54 is exactly the same. Lastly, the idea with the pin is to keep it in place until AFTER you have fed the belt all the way around and it is in place. Then release the pin to retain the belt in position.
Very helpful-thanks for posting
Thanks for posting this, it was helpful. However, even though I also have 2011 e90 with n55 I found that I had virtually no clearance to the belts and pulleys without removing the radiator fan. Not sure if there is a design difference with the M sport model but it wasn’t possible to complete otherwise. That became the biggest pain of this procedure.
Hey Thomas. The M sports have the oil cooler module in the way.
Nice job. There is no way to justify the dealer wallet flush attempt.
Great video, thanks man.
One note: for the n55 135i, the pulley layout is identical but the fan assembly seems a bit closer so I removed the fan to get working space (it’s just 1x T20 screw, a couple plastic clips on the side, and unplugging the electric port). With that out, was able to seat the new belt perfectly 1st try. Thanks!
Good job
Surely if you have oil leak from oil filter housing you would sort that first, before putting nice new belt & pulleys on?
What happened to the torque specs?
Hey man, I've noticed after replacing my belt & tensioner that there is a wobble on the new tensioner pulley resulting in belt moving from side to side a small amount.
OLAF2046 you didn’t need to remove the radiator fan to install the new pulleys?
I just replaced mine today and everything was as easy as this video, the only thing is if you have big hands you’ll have to use your middle finger and thumb on the bottom bolt, other than that, perfecto
Great video. I was wondering whether I should replace my belt on my N54. The top coolant hose (just above belt) where it joins the oil filter housing is slightly weeping. I've noticed little bits of blue crystallized coolant on belt, & belt makes a slight shhhp shhhhp shhhp sound from cold. Goes away when warm.
I was going to replace hose only but wonder if I should do belt as well. Car has only 24k miles though.
Thanks
Yeah replace the belts. It is very easy and relatively cheap!
@@olaf2046 ok, thanks i will get a belt as well. Pulleys should be ok for 9yr old car with 24k miles you think?
Will this work on my n54 335i?
Tottenham beanie? Now your car is going to explode :) YNWA! Good video! LOL
Mine sounds exactly the same.
leave tensioner pin in while installing the belt. that's what the pin is for.
Dam that is correct
F the breaker bar, I cut that belt and made it easier lol. My old tensioner pulley was stripped and I made it worse so a knife made the job easier 🤙
You never explained how to get it over the last pulley and I’ve been having that same problem can you briefly explain how you did it cause I’m stuck
Ever find out?
I got the same noise. Brought mine to a mechanic shop, which replaced both tensioner pulleys and belt. Still had the noise after these, so I brought mine to a dealership for an assessment. They said tensioner pulley should be replaced, and there is oil leak out of the oil filter housing gasket. The quote was close to $1900 ($800 for tensioner pulley part and labor, $1100 for the gasket parts and labor). I paid $160 for the assessment but didn't let them fix. Brought it back to the mechanic shop with this repair quote. They said the crankshaft needs to be replaced. I am still battling over this.
Hugh Kim important - when you did the belts what pulleys did they replace? They should have replaced ALL three pulleys and not just two of them! This noise mainly ONLY comes from the upper tensioner pulley device and to a lesser extent the two lower pulleys will rattle when old. The crank shaft seal makes its own noise and you can test that by turning the engine on and opening the oil cap. If when removing the oil cap with the engine on you hear a loud howling then and ONLY then will the crankshaft seal need replacing. But to hear it you need to get rid of any pulley squeaking first.
Hugh Kim the oil gasket on our cars need replacing anyway between 30,000 and 60,000 miles. While the gasket leaking is bad it is not urgent since the belt replacement and pulley replacement is more urgent to replace because they can rip at anytime and get sucked into the engine. You should start by making sure all pulleys get replaced and not just the two. The crankshaft seal even if it is leaking oil is not urgent but you can replace that before next winter since oil tends to not leak as much in summer months.
@@olaf2046 Thank you for the additional info. Mine is 2012 335i with M package (N55), so our engines should be identical. Honestly, I dropped it off to my salesperson (my buddy), who brought mine to the mechanic shop that he always uses and has special arrangement with in terms of price and such.
Based on what he said, the mechanic shop replaced a tensioner pulley, belt, and cooling hose (leaking) first. Then I get my car back, but there was still the same noise. I brought it back. I was told they replaced another tensioner pulley. What I am understanding and what my buddy confirmed is that there are two pulleys for tensioner.
After looking at your video, I am very confused. The tensioner in your video has two pulleys. One should be the tensioner pulley, and another one attached to it is just a idler pulley? Are both of those pulleys come as an assembly or are they separately purchased? Based on what I heard, these two pulleys are sold separately.
Sounds really fishy. How come a pulley gets bad one after another in a day or a week? this whole thing made me start thinking the mechanic shop either doesn't know what they are doing or has been trying to take me for a ride?
Hugh Kim the upper tensioner pulley unit is one unit with two pulley wheels and a spring. That is what makes the most noise and this is the most expensive part to replace in the kit. The other two pulleys are the deflection pulley wheel and idler pulley wheel but they are often called tensioner pulleys. From the perspective of a cheap shop mechanic If I wanted to save money doing this work I would replace the belts and deflection/idler pulleys since collectively they are cheaper to buy than the actual tensioner pulley unit. Which is what I’m thinking they did. This is not the first time I’ve heard this in regards to the N55/N54 engine. I’m not sure why shops claim the replaced stuff when they don’t.
@@olaf2046 If what you are saying is true (I hope not, but sounds true), I will need to go back to the mechanic shop and go over what they replaced/fixed. The repair list that the dealership provide me makes sense now because the dealership is not fool enough to tell me to replace the tensioner pulley unit, which must have looked new and fresh if it was indeed replaced as the mechanic shop claimed. The shop charged $380 for the first repair (tensioner pulley, belt, cooling hose), which made sense to me if the unit was indeed replaced, and $68 for the second repair (second pulley on the tensioner). They said they didn't charge labor for the second repair because they felt obligated not to charge me more money; $68 seems to be the cost for a deflection pulley. Thank you for your help buddy. It really helped me educate myself on this. Now I can go after the shop and my buddy to tackle this issue.
I thought something broke!!! After he walk away from the car😁😁😄
LOL! Yeah It scared me too!
Did it make any noise when you reved the engine?
Not after I changed the belts and pulleys. If you hear a howling sound after doing this then your oil pressure seal behind around the big main central pulley needs replacing.
Is there any danger of dust etc getting sucked into the intake when you run the engine without putting the air duct back on?
Steven Wong yes if the air box is off but the air duct at the front is fine to have off the car with the engine running
Steven Wong wait Steven do you mean the air box with filter or the front air duct?
@@olaf2046front air duct. E.g @ 20:30 you've got the motor running without the front air duct connected to the filter box. Isn't there a risk of the motor breathing in dirty air?
Steven Wong Yeah Steven. That is fine you see the square box is still connected. That box contains the air filter that filters any air going into the engine. The other air ducts are just plastic engine trim to help direct air flow from the kidney grills to that box. I would not have ran the engine with that box off.
@@olaf2046 ah I see. The filter is still protecting intake. For some reason I thought flow direction was reversed and therefore the air wasn't being filtered before entering !
Hey mate, what were the torque values for the tensioner and idler pullies? Thanks!
Hey Steven. Here you go: www.newtis.info/tisv2/a/en/e90-335xi-lim/repair-manuals/11-engine/11-28-drive-belt-with-tensioning-deflecting-element/Am2J4Uy8
Torque is 38nm for the belt tensioner pulleys and 60nm for the deflector pulleys.
Thanks! Legend!
@@olaf2046 did your ratchet and torque wrench fit in easily to get to the bottom idler pulley? My T50 bit is 3/8" so think I need to use a 3/8" ratchet and torque wrench. If I use a 1/2" ratchet with an adapter it won't clear the fan :(
This exact job was quoted @ $500 for me, parts and labor. But at a BMW/Euro specialist, not a BMW dealer/shop. 1.5 hours for labor ($190 at this place). 1.5 hours is appropriate for ME, but it shouldnt take a shop more than 30 mins to do this job...ridiculous
Nalo yeah if I wasn’t recording and doing this in the cold on a good day this is a 20 minute diy job in your driveway for a beginner amateur guy who has never seen a car engine before. A shop shouldn’t charge more than 1 hour labor for this since a trained tech surrounded by tools and support staff could do this in 10 minutes or less.
1.5 hours labor is reasonable and I'm sure that's what the book time calls for. That is how shops bill and not by exactly how long it takes them.
@@whyzee125 it Takes 10-20mins depending on the tech. So no 1.5 hours is not reasonable because if any tech takes more than 30 mins to do this job it should be on them not the owner of the car. 1 hour is more than twice the amount of time it would take a first-year apprentice to do the job.
I know this is old but anyone have torque specs on pulleys?
It's in the Bently manual. I will check for you but I didn't have a torque wrench and just used judgment to tighten the bolts. 50k miles later and no issues.
@@olaf2046 okay thanks man. Also do I have to use new bolts for or can I just reuse the old ones? I heard they are one time use and I did my tensioner w new bolts just in case just need to tackle the 2 idler pulleys but wasn’t sure if I need to get new ones first. Thanks again!
Hey, how's the car after this work? Any updates?
John Malinao a month later (500 miles of driving) with no issues.
John Malinao definitely change the pulleys when changing the belts vice versa.
@@olaf2046 Thanks, mate!
lol the labor is ridiculous. I got charged like 200$ for labor no more then a 1 hour job.
wtf is the tensioning spec completly left out wtf!!!
We're out Of toilet paper why do you need that information? What is the relevance?
My pulley tensioner bolts are stripped 😭
Yikes! Most local shops can fix that but they would want to do the entire thing and not just get the bolts out. Still it would be cheaper than the Dealership's $1200 fee.
Oh I got lucky. I went and bought a t50 and with it seated all the way it broke loose! The t60 par was completely rounded out though. Lol. I used a crow bar to pop the belt off. I replaced the oil filter housing gasket, starter, pulley tensioner, and the other two pulleys. After getting enough back together to take a test drive....... The charge pipe bursts. smh.....
Here's an "INCREDIBLE TIP".... soak that Serpentine belt and any rubber/seal in "303 Aerospace protectant" for an hour or two inside a reusable plastic tray container and be amazed of how this product incredibly will keep your belts and rubber gaskets seals like new for a lifetime!!! Just soak in 303, wipe with a cloth and install, that's it...
Pfff..... This is not "a bracket", this is the A/C line.... "engine did not explode"... No, it can't since you are not touching the timing chain...
it. was. a. joke. problems much?