BMW Camshaft Timing and Vanos Unit Installation

Wayne R. Dempsey
Difficulty scale: Adding air to your tires is level one Rebuilding a BMW Motor is level ten

Difficulty Level: 6

This article is one in a series that have been released in conjunction with Wayne's new book, 101 Performance Projects for Your BMW 3 Series. The book contains 272 pages of full color projects detailing everything from performance mods to timing the camshafts. With more than 650+ full-color glossy photos accompanying extensive step-by-step procedures, this book is required reading in any 3 Series owner's collection. The book was released in August 2006, and is available for ordering now. See The Official Book Website for more details.

Need to buy parts for this project? Click here to order!

This technical article is designed to be used in conjunction with other ones in our Technical Library. If you replace your head gasket, you will need to retime your camshafts and re-install the Vanos unit. For the purpose of instruction here, we'll assume that you have your cylinder head installed on the engine block, the crankshaft is locked at Top Dead Center (TDC), and your two camshafts are locked using the BMW camshaft locking tool. This article will guide you through the process of retiming your camshafts, and re-installing the Vanos variable camshaft timing unit. This article departs from our normal format of text and words mingled together. Since there are so many photos associated with this article, I have arranged them in assembly order with captions for each. Read through each caption as a step in the assembly process. We start the procedure by making sure that the engine is at Top Dead Center (TDC). At this point, the TDC pin is installed into the locking position, and is holding the flywheel steady (see Head Gasket Replacement article for more details). The camshafts are locked in place using the camshaft locking tool. This will allow us to properly align and time the camshafts and the Vanos unit.
Figure 1

Shown here is the sprocket for the exhaust camshaft. Prior to mounting it on your engine, verify that the teeth of the gear are not worn or damaged. Also inspect the inner mounting slots to see if there is any wear from being loose at one time.
Figure 2

Figure 3

Install the sprocket onto the exhaust camshaft. Make sure that the mounting holes located on the camshaft flange are visible through the slots in the sprocket, and also make sure that the holes are biased towards the left side of the slots, as is shown by the red arrow. It may require some maneuvering to get the sprocket into it's proper position. Normally, it takes multiple attempts to get it to look exactly like the photo on the left.

Turn your attention now to the lower chain tensioner, which is located on the lower part of the block, on the right side of the car. We will be removing this tensioner and replacing it with a tensioner tool, which will keep the chain tight while we time the cams.
Figure 4

Here is the tensioner tool, which we use in place of the spring-loaded tensioner when timing the camshafts. It's important to use this tool, and not to rely solely on the spring-loaded tensioner - it does not provide enough tension when the car is sitting to accurate time the camshafts. Use the tool, and get the accurate reading that your engine deserves.
Figure 5

Remove the tensioner by placing a socket on the end piece of the tensioner. Do not remove the tensioner block which is attached to the housing (not necessary). When the tensioner comes out, it is spring loaded, so be prepared for it to pop out when you release the tension with your socket and driver.
Figure 6

Here is the tensioner assembly when you remove it. The assembly consists of a plunger, spring, cap, and sealing ring.
Figure 7

Replace the tensioner with the proper tensioning tool. For now, simply tighten the tool so that it is hand tight - we don't need or want the chain tension to be super-tight right now.
Figure 8

With the left sprocket installed, install the center plastic chain guide and torque down the long bolts that hold it in place. Don't over torque (10 Nm) - the first time I did this, the long bolt was brittle and broke off in the cylinder head. I had to take the assembly back apart, fish out the bolt, and then special order a new one (3 days wait).
Figure 9

With the guide in place, reinstall the top chain tensioner. These tensioners sometimes fail, but there really isn't a good method for testing them. I recommend replacement if your engine has at least 80,000 miles on it or so. A little bit of preventative maintenance can go a long way here. Tighten the bolts down to 20 Nm.
Figure 10

This photo shows the tensioner installed and ready to go. Inspect the ramp before you install it to see if there is any significant wear or obvious deformations. The ramp should still be held in place using the two small hex keys that you inserted when you removed it. Do not release the tensioner yet.
Figure 11

Place the camshaft sensor cap onto the intake camshaft. This metal cap serves to trigger the camshaft position sensor, and lets the engine know whether the engine is on an intake or exhaust stroke of it's 4-cycle process. The camshaft position sensor fits into the hole on the right side of this photo (you can make out the small green o-ring to the lower right).
Figure 12

Figure 13

Shown here are the studs for the thrust washer and sprocket. These studs look very similar to the ones that mount the valve cover to the head - don't mix them up. Compare yours carefully to the ones in the photo to make sure that you have the right studs. It is also important to keep in mind that there are two types of Vanos units (early/late). The early units do not have a plate spring, whereas the later ones do. The plate spring fits over the intake camshaft thrust washer, and requires slightly longer studs. This particular car does not have the spring plate. Install the thrust washer onto the intake camshaft. Use the special studs, and install it in the same configuration in which it was removed. In other words, in this photo, you can see the oil stain from the slots that surround the studs. Install this side facing you when you reinstall this thrust washer (copy the photo). Torque the studs to 20 Nm.

Figure 14

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Now, take the two intake sprockets and chain and attach it to the assembly. See the photo for the proper orientation of the two sprockets. The exhaust sprocket should have it's cup facing outwards, and the intake sprocket should have its cup facing inwards. Verify that both sprockets are correctly mounted flush to the surfaces behind them. The intake sprocket is installed with the flat side facing you (the Vanos unit). The collar of the intake sprocket faces and points to the camshaft. Align the two sprockets and the chain so that the slots are centered on both sprockets (see arrows). Here's another view of the intake Vanos sprocket, correctly mounted flush against the thrust washer behind it. Soak all of the sprockets, gears and chains in clean motor oil before you install them - these are sliding parts that need lubrication.

Figure 16

Figure 17

Now, install the thrust washer onto the intake camshaft and tighten the nuts down. It's okay to reuse the old nuts. If you have the Vanos unit with a spring plate, then install it first, before the thrust washer (not shown). Tighten the nuts down to 10Nm. IMPORTANT: With the nuts tight, the inside sprocket should be free to rotate back and forth about 20 degrees, along with the chain. When I assembled this engine, I found that it could not. Some of the bolts and flanges were worn, and I had to order new ones. The Vanos unit requires that this "sandwich" of parts be able to rotate smoothly. Verify this prior to proceding. Install the screws onto the exhaust camshaft. Place them onto the sprocket and tighten them only HAND TIGHT. We will be making adjustments later on, and these bolts only need to be in place to hold the exhaust camshaft in its proper position.

Figure 18

NOTE: From this point on, these are the instructions that you will want to look at if you are simply replacing the Vanos unit.

Here is what your engine should look like now. You have the new camshafts installed, you have the chain and sprockets properly setup, and we're ready to install the Vanos unit.
Figure 20

Shown here is the Vanos unit. It consists of a solenoid, and a hydraulic gear that is activated when oil pressure is released into the unit by the solenoid. It's a rather simple device. The gear on the unit is pushed out by oil pressure and as it moves outward, it rotates the small sliding camshafts sprockets, thus advancing the camshaft timing.
Figure 21

Test the Vanos unit by pulling out the gear plunger all the way. You should be able to simply pull on it with your hand, and it should extend from the housing (see arrow). If the unit still has oil in it at this time, it will make a gurgling noise or two. Push the plunger back into the unit when you are finished.
Figure 22

The BMW service manuals recommend that you place some silicone sealant around the left and right mounting points (alignment pins) for the front Vanos seal. This photo shows the right side (looking at the engine from the front). Repeat for the left side alignment pin.
Figure 23

Install a new seal onto the front of the cylinder head (indicated by the arrow). The seal should be made of a thin metal.
Figure 24

Now comes the tricky part. Rotate the front sprocket/chain assembly all the way clockwise to the right (towards where the air cleaner sits). With the plunger of the Vanos unit pushed all the way back into its housing (important), place the Vanos unit on the cylinder head.
Figure 25

The Vanos unit has inside gears that need to mesh with the ones on the sprocket (see arrow). When you push the Vanos unit onto the cylinder head, it will not want to easily mesh with the gears on the sprocket. Important: the sprocket/chain assembly should still be rotated as far clockwise as possible.
Figure 26

With your fingers, rotate the spline shaft on the Vanos unit, until you can engage one spline of the sprocket. Pushing forward on the Vanos unit, carefully rotate the sprocket/chain assembly counter-clockwise. As you do this, the Vanos unit should slide in towards the cylinder head. Always ensure that the FIRST suitable tooth combination between the sprocket and the Vanos unit engages.
Figure 27

Reinstall the main mounting bolt and the engine lift ring.
Figure 28

After tightening down the Vanos housing, and clean up any squeeze-out from the silicone that you used to help seal the unit to the cylinder head.
Figure 29

With the sprockets properly installed, now pull out the retaining pins and reapply tension to the chain. The tensioner should spring back with some force and tight the chain quickly. If it appears sluggish, or does not spring back, then replace the tensioner before continuing.
Figure 19

Now, tighten down the tensioner tool to 1.3 Nm. This is such an incredibly small amount, that you can simply use a hand-wheel ratchet to tighten the chain very tight. You want to remove all slack in the chain prior to tightening down the exhaust sprocket. Use of the regular spring-loaded tensioner does not place enough tension on the chain to correctly tighten the sprocket.
Figure 32

With the tensioner tool still in place, tighten down the four nuts on the exhaust sprocket (15 Nm). Reinstall the plugs on the outside of the Vanos cover.
Figure 30

Remove your tensioner tool, and replace it with the real tensioner. Make sure that the slot in the end of the tensioner is correctly aligned with the ramp on the inside of the engine. If you make this mistake, it will cause the chain to rattle fiercely and may cause damage to your engine.
Figure 34

Remove the camshaft holding tool from the rear of the engine. Also remove the flywheel locking tool.
Figure 35

You're finished! Your Vanos unit should be installed, the camshafts will be timed properly, and all you have left to do is: Connect Vanos oil line Connect Vanos electrical control line Install valve cover with new seal Reinstall

Figure 36 [click to enlarge]

One of the more common oil leaks on BMW engines is the large, long valve cover gasket. In general, it's pretty easy to

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remove and replace this gasket. This article goes over in detail the procedure to replace the valve cover gasket. Begin by prepping the car. The only thing that you really need to do is to make sure that the car is cold. If you try to remove or install spark plugs in a hot car, then you may encounter problems with the spark plugs gumming up or damaging the relatively delicate threads in the aluminum cylinder head. Just make sure that the car is cold, or at the bare minimum, only slightly warm to the touch. Let's talk about the six cylinder cars first. The first step is to remove the top plastic covers from the engine. These serve no mechanical purpose - they are there only for decoration and to prevent dust and debris from getting into the recesses of the engine. On the six cylinder cars, there are two covers, a long thin one on the top of the car, and a wider one towards the left. Speaking of left, for the purpose of this particular tech article, I will refer to the left side of the engine as being on the left as you are standing in front of the car looking at the engine. The right side would, of course, be opposite to that. For reference, the windshield washer bottle would then be on the left, and the air filter would be on the right. On the two plastic covers, there will be two small, snap-in plugs on the top. Carefully remove these plugs (don't drop them into the engine) with a small screwdriver, prying them up as you grab them (Figure 1). Underneath you will find a nut that holds the cover onto the top of the engine (Figure 2). Remove the four nuts on these two covers, and they should both simply slide up out of the way. Figure 3 shows the engine with the center cover removed. Underneath the left cover, you will see the six spark plug coils that sit on top of each of the plugs (Figure 4). You need to remove each of these carefully, in order to gain access to the plugs. Using a screwdriver, release each connector from each coil. There is a metal retaining ring on the rear of each one that fastens it to the coil (Figure 5). Once you lift up on the retaining clip, then the connector should simply slide out of the coil. Carefully remove all of the connectors from each coil (Figure 6), taking care not to bend the wire harness too much. These wires are stiff, and generally don't take well to being bent in multiple directions. Just be gentle with them. To assist with your maneuvering of the wires, detach the center clip that holds the wires that come from the center channel. This clip is shown in Figure 7. Gently place the wires off to the side and out of the way, without bending them terribly. With the wires detached and placed slightly out of the way, you can now remove each of the six coils. Each coil is fastened to the valve cover using two screws. On two of the coils, there are two small ground straps that connect the coil to the stud on the cylinder head. Take note of these ground straps - they must be installed properly when you are finished, otherwise your car may encounter problems. These two ground straps are shown marked by the greens arrow in

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Figure 8 and Figure 9 (coil already removed in this photo). Remove each of the two nuts that hold each coil to the valve cover. At this point, the coil should be able to be easily pulled right off of the engine (Figure 10). The coil has a small coil pack on one end, and a spring-loaded spark plug connector on the opposite end. Simply remove the coil/plug assembly and place it off to the side. All of the coils are the same, so it doesn't matter which cylinder bank it came off of - unless you are specifically trying to troubleshoot a bad coil fault code that was displayed by the main computer. With the coils removed, you can now remove the top plastic cover on the wire harness box that straddles the intake manifold and the valve cover (Figure 11). The lid on this box simply snaps off. With it removed, you can then reach in so that you can carefully pull the wire harnesses out of the way (Figure 12). At this point, you can start removing the nuts that hold on the valve cover. Take careful note of which ones have ground straps attached (Figure 13), and make sure that you record where they are located so that you can put them back into their proper place when you're reassembling the valve cover. Some of the nuts may be difficult to reach, in particular the one located all the way at the rear of the engine compartment underneath the windshield wipers (Figure 14). A small ratchet comes in handy here. When you have removed all of the nuts (there should be 15 of them), take a rubber mallet and tap the side of the valve cover to loosen it off of its gasket (Figure 15). You should then be able to remove the valve cover. Inspect the valve cover when it comes off. In particular, be careful with the baffle and seal on the inside (Figure 16). This seal does not appear to be available as a separate part (it comes with the valve cover). The good news is that it doesn't really do much - it just seals an air baffle to the valve cover. Also, when you remove the valve cover, make sure that you don't loose any of the rubber grommets (Figure 17), or flat washers that hold them in. If you take your valve cover into your machine shop to be sand blasted, make sure that you assemble all of the bits and pieces back together in their proper order. Especially important are the rubber studs that hold on the top plastic covers (Figure 18), as well as the baffle on the inside of the cover (Figure 16). Prep both the surface of the cylinder head and the valve cover for the new seal by carefully cleaning all remnants of the old seal off of all of the mating surfaces. Be careful not to scratch any surfaces, and also be careful not to drop bits of pieces of the gasket into your engine. The BMW factory manuals recommend adding some sealant to some leak-prone sections of the cylinder head. I chose to use Permatex High-Temp RTV, and it worked very well for sealing these areas. Specifically, the factory recommends

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adding sealant at the interface where the VANOS unit or front mounting timing chain cover meet (Figure 19 and Figure 20). They also recommend a small bit of sealant at the rear of the cover (Figure 21).
Figure 17

Figure 18

With the sealant attached, simply place the new gasket on the cylinder head (Figure 22). Place the two inner gaskets on the spark plugs holes in center of the head (Figure 23). These are the gaskets that leak oil into the spark plug holes (see the Pelican Parts Technical Article on Replacing Your Spark Plugs). Finally, bolt down the cover, and reattach all off the nuts on the cover, making sure that you replace the rubber washers/bumpers under each one. Using a torque wrench, tighten the nuts down to 89 in-lb (10 Nm). Figure 24 shows the finished product. If you haven't replaced your spark plugs, now is a good time to do it. See the spark plug replacement article for more details. Reinstall the coils, reattach the wire harness, and replace the top plastic covers.

Figure 19

Figure 20

Well, there you have it - it's really not too difficult at all. If you would like to see more technical articles like this one, please continue to support Pelican Parts with all your parts needs. If you like what you see here, then please visit our online BMW catalog and help support the collection and creating of new and informative technical articles like this one. Your continued support directly affects the expansion and existence of this site and technical articles like this one. As always, if you have any questions or comments about this helpful article, please drop us a line.

Figure 21

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Figure 24

[click to enlarge]

One basic tuneup procedure for just about any

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car on the road is the replacement of your spark plugs and spark plug wires (where applicable). On the BMW E36 sixcylinder engines, BMW has eliminated the use of spark plug wires by integrating six small spark plug coils that sit on top of each spark plug. While this configuration may be a bit more expensive than the typical single coil, single capacitive discharge box configuration, it makes the car's ignition system more reliable by removing a component that constantly wears out and fails (spark plug wires). It's a pretty cool setup, not commonly found on older cars. As manufacturing components has become increasingly inexpensive, ignition setups like these have become more common. I recommend replacing your spark plugs every 10,000 miles, or about once a year. In reality, you can probably go longer than that, however, you never really quite know how

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long the plugs are going to last, or you may forget to do it if you don't setup a yearly schedule. Needless to say, replacing your spark plugs is one of the easiest tasks to do on your BMW provided you have the proper information, which I will provide here. Begin by prepping the car. The only thing that you really need to do is to make sure that the car is cold. If you try to remove or install spark plugs in a hot car, then you may encounter problems with the spark plugs gumming up or damaging the relatively delicate threads in the aluminum cylinder head. Just make sure that the car is cold, or at the bare minimum, only slightly warm to the touch. Let's talk about the six cylinder cars first. The first step is to remove the top plastic covers from the engine. These serve no mechanical purpose - they are there only for decoration and to prevent dust and debris from

Figure 11

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Figure 14

Figure 15

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Figure 17

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getting into the recesses of the engine. On the six cylinder cars, there are two covers, a long thin one on the top of the car, and a wider one towards the left. Speaking of left, for the purpose of this particular tech article, I will refer to the left side of the engine as being on the left as you are standing in front of the car looking at the engine. The right side would, of course, be opposite to that. For reference, the windshield washer bottle would then be on the left, and the air filter would be on the right. On the two plastic covers, there will be two small, snap-in plugs on the top. Carefully remove these plugs (don't drop them into the engine) with a small screwdriver, prying them up as you grab them (Figure 1). Underneath you will find a nut that holds the cover onto the top of the engine (Figure 2). Remove the four nuts on these two covers, and they should both simply slide up out of the way. Figure 3 shows

Figure 21

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the engine with the center cover removed. Underneath the left cover, you will see the six spark plug coils that sit on top of each of the plugs (Figure 4). You need to remove each of these carefully, in order to gain access to the plugs. Using a screwdriver, release each connector from each coil. There is a metal retaining ring on the rear of each one that fastens it to the coil (Figure 5). Once you lift up on the retaining clip, then the connector should simply slide out of the coil. Carefully remove all of the connectors from each coil (Figure 6), taking care not to bend the wire harness too much. These wires are stiff, and generally don't take well to being bent in multiple directions. Just be gentle with them. To assist with your maneuvering of the wires, detach the center clip that holds the wires that come from the center channel. This clip is shown in Figure 7. Gently

place the wires off to the side and out of the way, without bending them terribly. With the wires detached and placed slightly out of the way, you can now remove each of the six coils. Each coil is fastened to the valve cover using two screws. On two of the coils, there are two small ground straps that connect the coil to the stud on the cylinder head. Take note of these ground straps - they must be installed properly when you are finished, otherwise your car may encounter problems. These two ground straps are shown marked by the greens arrow in Figure 8 and Figure 9 (coil already removed in this photo). Remove each of the two nuts that hold each coil to the valve cover. At this point, the coil should be able to be easily pulled right off of the engine (Figure 10). The coil has a small coil pack on one end, and a spring-loaded spark plug connector on the

opposite end. Simply remove the coil/plug assembly and place it off to the side. All of the coils are the same, so it doesn't matter which cylinder bank it came off of - unless you are specifically trying to troubleshoot a bad coil fault code that was displayed by the main computer. With the coil removed, you should be able to look down the hole and see the spark plug hiding in there. Figure 11 shows what the top of a normal looking spark plug looks like. However, as you remove the plugs, you may discover something peculiar. The way that the ignition system is designed on these BMWs, there is the opportunity for the spark plug holes to completely fill up with oil, if you have a leaky seal on your valve cover. When you pull out the spark plug connector / coil combo, you may find that it is completely submerged in engine oil, as shown in Figure 12 and Figure 13. Looking down the

hole, you may not even be able to see the spark plug because the entire hole is filled up with oil (Figure 14 and Figure 15). While common sense says that this is not a good thing, the reality is that this is actually quite common, and doesn't seem to affect the performance of the car one bit. If you do find this oil in your spark plug holes, I would suggest that you go one step further and replace the valve cover gasket. This replacement procedure is very simple, once you have the coils removed, and should only take you about 20 minutes more, providing you have the actual gasket on hand. If you find oil in your spark plug holes, then you should definitely replace the gasket. If you find that you have oil in your spark plug holes, I suggest that you take some paper towels and attempt to soak up as much of the oil as possible, before removing the spark plug. If you don't get rid of the excess oil, then it will leak

into the cylinder head through the spark plug hole when you remove the spark plug. This will cause your car to run sooty when you first start it up, and it may even foul your brand new spark plugs that you just installed! Spark plug removal is easy you just need the right spark plug wrench. I have one that I love it's a spark plug socket with a rubber insert that catches the plug. In addition, it has a built-in swivel on the attachment end. This is especially useful when trying to remove plugs in hard-toreach places, as they are always located on Porsche engines (BMW engines aren't really that bad with respect to spark plug access). Using a breaker bar, grip the plug and turn it counter-clockwise until it is loose. Then pull out your tool and grab the plug. When the plug comes out, you may want to take a close look at it. The spark plug is really the best way to visually see what is going on inside

your combustion chamber. You need to pull out all of the spark plugs to replace them, so you might as well take a close look at them while theyre out. While todays modern fuels make plugreading much more difficult, you can still glean a lot of information from looking at them. A good, wellbalanced engine will produce a plug that is light brown in color, and dry. If the engine is running too rich, the plug will often be coated with a lot of extra carbon. Keep in mind that the rest of your combustion chamber probably looks the same. An engine running too lean will have a powdery white coating on it, and the outer porcelain ring may have a burned appearance. When reading spark plugs, pay close attention to the white porcelain ring around the plug. This white area will give you an excellent background to inspect the color of the plug, and to help determine how your combustion

chamber looks inside. If the plug is wet with oil, then that indicates that there is significant leakage into the combustion chamber past either the valve guides or the piston rings. This is generally a bad sign, and an indicator that a future compression test may not yield good results. Figure 16 shows an unusual spark plug with all four of its electrode eaten away. I would hazard a guess that this plug was improperly plated from the factory, and as it progressed through it's life, the repeated sparking slowly ate away at the electrodes until they were gone. A plug in this condition would misfire often (if at all), and would generate poor performance for this particular cylinder. Surprisingly enough, none of the rest of the spark plugs in this set exhibited this type of damage. This is what leads me to believe it was defective from the

manufacturer. Figure 17 shows a brand new Bosch Platinum spark plug. While I don't have any specific preference for any specific manufacturer of plug, you should definitely make sure to get the proper ones for your car. Spark plugs have varied over the years as engines have been changed slightly due to smog regulations. The important thing to remember is to get the proper ones for your car (they are scaled by electrode type and also by heat range), otherwise you may encounter odd ignition problems. Spark plugs are cheap I would go with a brand name like Bosch or NGK, choosing to avoid the no-name brands. Make sure that you measure the spark plug gap (if single electrode) with a spark plug gap tool before you install the plugs. Install your new plugs using a torque wrench to measure the amount of torque applied to the plug (Figure 18). This is very important, as it is

easy to over or under-tighten spark plugs. Make sure that the plug is firmly seated in your spark plug socket as it is very easy to insert the plug into the head and have it crossthread. This means that the threads of the spark plug don't mesh properly with the ones in the head, instead choosing to "cut their own path." This damages the threads on the head, and in extreme cases, may destroy the threads in the cylinder head entirely. Trust me - you do not want this to happen. Proceed carefully and cautiously here. Install each plug into the cylinder heads without using any antiseize compound. Torque the spark plugs to 25 Nm (18.4 ft-lbs). While writing "How to Rebuild and Modify Porsche 911 Engines", I discovered that Porsche doesnt recommend the use of anti-seize compound, as detailed in Porsche Technical Bulletin 9102, Group 2, identifier 2870. The bulletin applies retroactively to

all Porsche models and the theory is that the anti-seize tends to act as an electrical insulator between the plug and the cylinder head. This could have detrimental effect on the firing of the spark due to the loss of a good, consistent ground connection. Keeping those findings in mind, I would make the same recommendations for the BMW cars. With the new plugs installed (Figure 19) and properly torqued, you can replace the coils (don't forget the small ground straps shown in Figure 8 and Figure 9) and reattach the coil connectors (Figure 20 and Figure 21). Snap the wires back into their center holders (Figure 7) and replace the top two plastic covers. When you're done, your engine should look back to normal (Figure 22) Changing plugs on the 318 4cylinder cars is a bit different and a bit easier. You remove the spark plug cover in a similar manner

(Figure 23). There should be a handy little blue spark plug wire pull tool under the cover. Use it to remove the plug wires from the ends of the spark plugs (Figure 24). With the wires disconnected, remove and reinstall the plugs in a similar manner to how I described the procedure for the six cylinder cars. You will also want to replace the spark plug wires every 30,000 miles or if they look cracked and worn out. Well, there you have it - it's really not too difficult at all. If you would like to see more technical articles like this one, please continue to support Pelican Parts with all your parts needs. If you like what you see here, then please visit our online BMW catalog and help support the collection and creating of new and informative technical articles like this one. Your continued support directly affects the expansion and existence of this site and technical articles like this one. As always, if you have any

questions or comments about this helpful article, please drop us a line.