BMW E36: replacing camshaft belt?

Hello,

I have just bought a BMW E36 from 1994 (in France, it's called a "316i
Compact"). It has 120000 km, and I am told by a car amateur that I
might need to replace the camshaft belt for security.

Can anyone confirm or disconfirm that? Is there any common wisdom, or
BMW recommendation on this?

Thanks,

Martin

wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have just bought a BMW E36 from 1994 (in France, it's called a "316i
> Compact"). It has 120000 km, and I am told by a car amateur that I
> might need to replace the camshaft belt for security.
>
> Can anyone confirm or disconfirm that? Is there any common wisdom, or
> BMW recommendation on this?
>

Unlike a timing chain, a timing belt is a "wear item" and subject to
periodic replacement on many vehicles, typically, IIRC, every 60K miles
(96,540km). Your interval should be specified in your Owner's Manual.

If it breaks and the pistons collide with the valves... that's bad.
The common wisdom is to prevent that from happening.

-----

- gpsman

> wrote
> I have just bought a BMW E36 from 1994 (in France, it's called a "316i
> Compact"). It has 120000 km, and I am told by a car amateur that I
> might need to replace the camshaft belt for security.
>
> Can anyone confirm or disconfirm that? Is there any common wisdom, or
> BMW recommendation on this?

I have x-posted to alt.autos.bmw, which is a much better place for
this type of question.

The answer is: replace it *NOW* if it hasn't been done at 100,000 km.
See http://www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk/buy_engines.html. (John's pages
have a lot of info and references.)

FloydR

gpsman, Floyd:

Thanks.

And thanks for the tip regarding alt.autos.bmw; I will go there in the
future.

Cheers,

Martin

> > I have just bought a BMW E36 from 1994 (in France, it's called a "316i
> > Compact"). It has 120000 km, and I am told by a car amateur that I
> > might need to replace the camshaft belt for security.

In roughly mid 1993 BMW switched from the belt drive M40 to the chain
driven M43.

M40s have a distributor at the front of the camshaft. M43s don't, they
have one coil per cylinder. So it's easy to tell which engine you have
:-)

--
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Email: , John G.Burns B.Eng, Bonny Scotland
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