3rd gear hesitation or something...

[Hornung418]

Should I take a day off work and to do this before the meet then since there are so many trying to do theirs? I can probably figure it out on my own, I just rather have one of you BMW guys there when I mess things up and try to put the timing chain on inside out

Oh, and I'm pretty sure the cooling system stuff should take about an hour and a half or so.... not including bleeding the system. I did my buddies 323Ci a few months back after his expansion tank grenaded, and it wasn't too bad.

Timing chain doesn't come off. It stays on the cams. The unit seperates from the head as a whole. The only thing connecting the two are the vanos bolts which are reverse threaded

DROIDstatus. Come at me, bro.

[danewilson77]

^Yup. Read the procedure at the Beisan site and get knowledgeable on the procedure. It will help.

You could knock it out yourself, or do it at the meet. We can support.

[ryankokesh]

If a half-wit like me can do it, you'll have no problem.

[UncleSmitty]

So, a question - does the vanos problem normally cause the same hesitation at full throttle? I ask because I have had similar problems on a previous car, and it ended up being the fuel mixture causing hesitation due to incorrect o2 readings at part throttle. Once at ~80% throttle the car would go into PE mode (power enrich) and used a preset mixture setting instead of the o2 sensor, and the problem went away.

A simple way to check without having to open the hood is to try to duplicate the problem when the car's cold - I'm not 100% sure the e46 is set up the same way, but on my old car the ECU would ignore o2 readings for a short time while the car heats up (and my problem went away then too).

[kpro]

I have no hesitation if accelerating over half throttle maybe its closer to about 60% throttle, I dunno. It does it once warmed up, not really much when cold. But I have a faint but distinct rattle at idle as well. I'm getting about 4-5mpg less than I normally do. After reading the Beisan thing, I'm pretty sure its Vanos.