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Oh dear...

So this morning, I was driving in to work and I notice a sound that was not normal for the car. At first I thought it was someone else's car but as I pulled in to a petrol station it was following me.

It was there as I was revving the engine gently and moving away. I'll get the car booked in but I'm dreading it's the head gasket. Car has a FBMWSH and is on 91k

Any ideas?

Cheers T1b

Head gasket Doubtful , when was last documented valve clearance done ? Though even if it was due it wouldn't suddenly go noisier overnight .
Id drive it straight to the garage if it was mine .

I'll find out but I think it was the last service early this year was an Inspection II.

As per pistonheads thread, when is the last time you had an Inspection II and oil change? And is there a misfire, meaning the tappet noise could be an injector problem?

I'd suspect vanos over head gasket but a compression and leak down test will confirm. Quite a few companies around now that can service the VANOS competently for not massive money so it's not really the worry that it once was.

Is the tappet noise there also on idle or only on higher revs?

I don't wanna be all doom and gloom but a mate had that happen to his Z4M coupe and it turned out that a valve follower had been destroyed. It was never really identified how it happened. I believe he needed a new camshaft (in addition to replaced followers of course)

Mangozac wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2017 10:14 am I don't wanna be all doom and gloom but a mate had that happen to his Z4M coupe and it turned out that a valve follower had been destroyed. It was never really identified how it happened. I believe he needed a new camshaft (in addition to replaced followers of course)

I had a loud tappety noise that turned out to be this

zmaster007 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2017 11:59 am I had a loud tappety noise that turned out to be this

Were you ever able to work out the root cause?

It will be cams and followers....

Vanos failure is rare on the S54,although they can break the hubs and drives.


Headgasket on the S54 usually gives signs of pinking and pre ignition.....They blow between cylinders so dont lose and oil or water..

Hope it doesn't bust the wallet to much

Yeh, best tell tale sign of HG gasket failure when driving is bad pinking when accelerating at low revs (1000 rpm or so). I'm not convinced valve train failure is more common than Vanos though - I would have said other way around from my 7 years of ownership and on the M3Cutters forum. Both pretty rare events in truth though.

Right, the last time it was in was last year and it had an Inspection II 2015 so it's due one. I have done a video and currently looking at decent local indies as I've seen horror stories from main dealers with costs north of 4k.....

Last oil change would be last year. It has always gone to a main dealer.

It is however the dreaded marbles in a can sound while idle and rising in frequency with revs.

I'll pop the video into this once I work out how to upload it!

https://youtu.be/Re2J4Di1QDs

Cheers T1b

I couldn't embed the video sorry about the link

It can also be something minor like blowby at an exhaust manifold gasket or sparkplug.
Not all tappet noised result in huge repair bills. Lets hope for the best. Be sure to get a good mechanic.

edit: but the noise does sound mechanic on the video (which is bad ), although sound on a video is very hard to interpret.