Subject: Results of Vanos seal repair in 99 528i Author: jman08 : member since April, 2008 : 7 posts Posted on: 2008-04-08 19:06:37

Thought I would tell you guys about my experience having the Vanos Seals repaired on my 99 528i, automatic with 79k miles. Have known about the reported problem with the Vanos unit and Rajaie’s repair kit for some time but had learned to live with it until recently when my car’s idle problem got progressively worse over last year. Decided not to do the repair myself but asked independent mechanic whom I’ve been using to maintain my BMW for several years. Gave him the Beisan Vanos repair kit and several other parts as wanted some preventative maintenance completed at same time. Dropped the car off at his shop and the repairs consisted of replacing the seals, new plugs, fixing small leak of the power steering reservoir hose, new thermostat and housing, water pump replacement, new fuel filter, oil and filter change and replacement of the serpentine belts. Told my mechanic you’d estimated it would take 4 hours to repair Vanos and worked out fine for him.

When I picked up the car asked my mechanic what he found when he took the Vanos apart. He indicated exactly what you guys are reporting. One of the pistons was “flopping around” (his term) and seals totally shot. The second one was almost as bad. Seals were hard as plastic and obviously no longer functioning or holding pressure. Mechanic also said when he was done the car idled exceptionally well and was very smooth and steady. Incidentally although I replaced the plugs the old ones were in fairly good shape so the improvement was not a result of plug replacement.

So what was my experience with car after repair? I actually did the vanos repair to solve the irritating idle problem not to enhance performance. The idle problem is solved and was definitely caused by the Vanos seal failure. What surprised me was a performance improvement I was not expecting. I know this was reported by others but I tend to be very skeptical about performance claims. But this is one you can actually feel. I now have about 400 miles on the car since repair and noticed the improvement right away. From a stop light have better low end torque and acceleration is much smoother. What I like most is when accelerating as car shifts up and rpm drops it has more torque so acceleration is steady. Didn’t realize it before but I had to apply more gas just to keep up with other cars when slowly accelerating from stop light in traffic. This may be why some people are reporting better gas mileage. If you are in stop and go rush hour traffic I could understand why you would have better gas mileage as result of this repair. In steady driving down freeway, probably not.
If you have the idle problem and need to get it repaired this repair is clearly the right financial choice whether you do the repair yourself or pay someone to do it for you. If you buy the Beisan kit it will cost $65 (with shipping) plus 4 hours labor at roughly $400 so for less than $500 you can get it repaired. If you go to a dealer they’ll install a refurb unit which if I was really optimistic they might sell you for $300 plus labor which might be another $200 (another optimistic assumption that a swap out of the Vanos takes less time than a rebuild of unit). So with this ultra conservative estimate you’re still ahead with the Beisan kit. $465 Beisan vs $500 dealer. Actually a more realistic comparison is probably the dealer install would be twice as expensive as the Beisan kit installed by your independent mechanic. But even this ignores the upgraded Viton seals over the Buna seals so the benefit is even greater assuming the Viton seals will last much longer. And everything I’ve read on it suggests they will last longer. You would save much more if you did the repair yourself. So the benefits make this kit a fairly obvious choice in my view. BMW engineered the Vanos unit to give us this performance gain and while they failed to engineer the seals correctly the vanos does work well once repaired so why not fix it and get the performance you paid for?

I’m probably sounding like a salesman for Beisan but I have no connection to them at all. I just think they have provided a great service and sound advice for us E39 owners and deserve a lot of thanks for not only solving the problem but doing it in a cost effective manner. My car is running like new, the idle problem is gone and I have measurable performance improvements I wasn’t expecting. Thanks Rajaie!

• Results of Vanos seal repair in 99 528i - jman08 2008-04-08 19:06:37 (1585 views)
  • Re: Results of Vanos seal repair in 99 528i - cheng330xi 2010-02-04 22:05:22 (81 views)
  • Thanks for the great feedback and kind support! (nt) - Rajaie 2008-04-09 13:09:58 (377 views)