Bmw dealership blunder? Incompetence?

[Music] foreign [Music] welcome back to a new episode of diagnose Dan today we're working on a 2012 BMW 1 series and this story is really really crazy this car Stranded by the side of the road then it was towed to a BMW dealership that wasn't able to fix it then it was told to an independent shop and that didn't fix it and right now the car is here it's a crank no start so let's see if we can diagnose this one together [Music] so the car came with an email and it goes like this dear Danny we've got a BMW 1 series F20 with an n13b 16a engine from 2012. this car Stranded by the side of the road and was towed to a BMW dealership that leadership diagnose the vehicle and they told the customer the car had a lack of fuel pressure okay if they told the customer they needed to replace the low pressure fuel pump in the tank the customer agreed they replaced the low pressure fuel pump but still a crank no start and still no fuel pressure then they called the customer again and they told the customer The Next Step would be to replace the high pressure fuel pump but it can also be a faulty injector or faulty engine control unit or a bunch of other things and they told the customer what would you like us to replace next I mean they are the specialist right they lost the customer's credibility and the customer thought this is going to be expensive they're just changing parts so he got the car towed from the dealership to an independent shop that independent shop replaced the high pressure fuel pump but still a crank no start and still no fuel pressure now the independent shop contacted me via this mail and they're asking us Dan can you diagnose this vehicle for us so that's where we are right now so let's see what we can do for them now by the way if you look right there that's the Mercedes from my previous video and since that video I didn't touch that vehicle the only thing I did is I drove it out of my diagnostic Bay because I've got many many cars waiting to be diagnosed and this is one of our own cars so it doesn't have priority but as you can see the module is still not installed I didn't program it I didn't do any work the only thing I did is drive it out of my diagnostic Bay now when I did that the car started misfiring I had all kinds of warning lights so I'm pretty sure this isn't the last thing you have seen of this vehicle and it will probably start in a future video now as always let's start out by confirming the customer complaint and let's find out if this is a crank no start now in the meanwhile I hooked up a battery maintainer and I hooked up the scan tool so once we've confirmed this is a crank no start we can scan for fault codes and see if there are any fault code stored that could lead us into the right direction but let's start out by confirming that customers complain thank you laughs now just scan the entire vehicle for fault codes but in the entire vehicle there is no fault code stored like when you go into the ECM you will see there are no dtcs now what I think is that at some point either at the dealership or at the independent Workshop they cleared out all the codes no DDC now not very helpful at all so let's see what our next step will be now every time I got a case like this with no fault code stored maybe because somebody else clearing them out or sometimes a car doesn't set a code every time I have a case like that I like to go back to the basics and in this case that's checking for spark Fuel and compression and there now when an engine has got fuel compression air and Spark it has to run now it doesn't mean it has to run beautifully but it has to do something now this engine isn't doing anything at all so something is very very wrong now since it's very convenient on this engine I want to start with spark and if we confirm the engine has got sparked I like to go to the fuel system I suspect something is wrong with that because the other shop and Adidas ship complained about the lack of fuel pressure and maybe after that go after air and timing and compression but let's start out just since it's convenient to rule that out with checking for spark now I quickly removed the cover from the engine I removed the coil and I removed the spark plug and I hooked up the spark plug to a known good ground now also notice that this breather hose is broken now that's not causing our crank no start but it is something to keep in mind and something that needs to be taken care of later now the next step I'm going to crank the engine over while you guys look for ignition foreign that's a good thing because now we know that the engine computer is controlling the ignition coils now I reinstalled the coil and the plug and the next thing I want to go after is fuel now the other shops were complaining about the lack of fuel pressure so in the first step I want to select the high pressure fuel data pit on the scan tool I want to crank the engine over while you guys take a look at that pressure reading now something very very interesting just happened as you see we've got two graphs the graph on the left is showing us the actual fuel pressure measured by the fuel pressure sensor on the fuel rail on the right we've got the fuel pressure that is desired by the engine control module so this is the pressure to control module 160 in order to let the engine run now once we started cranking the engine over the ECM was demanding 100 bars of fuel pressure now when we started cranking over the fuel pressure spiked but immediately dropped now why did the fuel pressure the actual fuel pressure dropped out while the engine still wanted to see 100 bars of pressure I guess that's the big question here at the back of the engine we've got the high pressure fuel pump that runs off the camshaft now the high pressure fuel pump has recently been replaced by an independent shop and it is fed low pressure fuel through this fuel line through a low pressure fuel pump that has been replaced by the dealership now just to make sure enough fuel or enough fuel pressure is making it to the high pressure fuel pump in the next step I want to take a pressure reading of the low pressure fuel system now what I did is I hooked up my pressure sensor in between the high pressure fuel pump and the fuel line that comes from the tank from the low pressure fuel pump that has been replaced by the dealership I hooked that up to my Universal pressure tester to make sure that enough pressure makes it to the high pressure fuel pump to do its job foreign [Laughter] as you saw we had a nice and constant fuel pressure feeding the high pressure fuel pump which I was expecting because the low pressure fuel pump is new now if the high pressure fuel pump is being fed enough fuel and the high pressure fuel pump is also being replaced by a new one why is it not delivering enough fuel pressure now let's do a little experiment and let's try to find out if the lack of fuel pressure is the only problem this engine has got if the lack of fuel pressure is the only problem of this engine when I introduce an alternative fuel source the engine will attempt to run now I'm going to introduce an alternative fuel source into the intake right here this is the air filter and this is the mass airflow sensor and right now it's very convenient that this PCV hose is broken and we will take care of that later but for now I'm going to introduce Fuel and if the fuel pressure is the only problem then the engine will attempt to run foreign foreign at the beginning of this diagnosis we already learned that this engine has got spark now we also learned that we've got a lack of high fuel pressure but we just introduced an alternative fuel into the cylinders now if the engine is mechanically sound and we've got spark and fuel it should attempt to run now as you get here it was doing absolutely nothing it was not even trying to run so could there be an explanation for the engine not running with spark and fuel and not having high fuel pressure now since this engine is not attempting to run with fuel and Spark I suspect there's something mechanically wrong with it so what I did is I hooked up my picoscope and I hooked up two channels to both the exhaust cam sensor and the intake cam sensor right here I hooked up the third channel to the crank sensor on the flywheel underneath the engine and in the next step I want to catch the cam crank waveform and compare it to a known good one now this is the waveform we just recorded now all we need to do is zoom into this waveform separate the channels and compare it to a known good one the benefit of using a picoscope in this case is that it comes with a waveform library the waveform we've captured wouldn't mean anything to us without comparing it to a known good so I went into the Pico Library I entered n13 which is the engine code for this engine and I found two known good cam crank waveforms I compared both of them to each other and they were identical I downloaded one of them and we're going to compare that non-good to the waveform we've captured from the engine we're working on now when we take a look at the waveform we've captured and especially to the waveform of the camshafts we can see two narrow Towers now when we compare both narrow towers of the exhaust and the intake camshaft we can see there's quite a lot of room in between them but when we take a look at the non-good waveform we can see that both narrow Towers exactly line up and this is quite typical and this is what you see on a lot of vehicles now when we compare the tower the narrow Tower that's closest to the missing tooth on the crankshaft we can see it on our engine there are 19 teeth in between that small Tower and the missing tooth on the crankshaft now on the known good engine that's only 17th so that means we've definitely got a timing problem our engine is not timed correctly now I suspect that when the car stranded something went wrong with the timing of the engine the other shops concentrated on the low fuel pressure but this was just an effect of the timing being off but how can the timing affect the pressure of the high pressure fuel pump now in order to explain to you how the timing of the engine can affect the fuel pressure I actually removed the high pressure fuel pump from this engine now this is basically quite a simple pump low pressure fuel comes in the top and high pressure fuel comes out of the side now this basically is a mechanical pump that's mechanically being driven from a cam on the camshaft so this is a cam follower and the pump is located on the side of the cylinder head and it's being pushed by a cam on the camshaft now every time the cam pushes on this piston it pressurizes the system now just like the intake and exhaustive valves the timing of those are being controlled by the cam on the camshaft when the system is being pressurized so when the cam pushes on this piston is also being controlled by a cam on the camshaft now if this pump was purely mechanical the full stroke of the Piston would always be 100 effective so we would always have maximum fuel pressure now we don't always need and we don't always want maximum fuel pressure and there's where this electronically controlled valve comes in now let's imagine the cam pushes on this piston and it pushes the Piston halfway in so 50 percent down the way let's say then we close this valve and then the system starts pressurizing now only the half only 50 percent of the stroke was effective and we only have 50 of the fuel pressure so by controlling this valve we can control the fuel pressure now in order to do this this valve needs to know exactly where this piston is moving in which direction and where it is located is it moving in is it moving out is it 25 in is it 50 in or 75 percent in now normally this is not a problem because the cam on the camshaft is timed and it comes at a fixed time now unless the timing is off it could be that this valve is thinking the Piston is moving in but it's actually moving out now this can result in either too high or too low fuel pressures when the timing is off now although I think my diagnosis is right there's one thing that was still bothering me and that's something the independent Workshop wrote in their mail in the first mail they sent me they stated they did some checks and one of the things they checked was the timing now this is the original Mill and although it's in Dutch you can clearly see that over here it says that they check the timing and the timing is good now how can I check the timing and the timing is good if our waveform is way off so that kind of bothered me so I decided to do an insulator pressure test now that waveform didn't look good either there are spikes in there that are not supposed to be there so I was thinking how did they check the timing maybe they checked the timing mechanically so that's what I did I mechanically timed this engine and right now the crankshaft is in time the Locking tool is in the crankshaft and I also got the Locking tools for the camshafts but there is no purpose in installing them because the camshafts are way off when the crankshaft is in time the cams of the first cylinder should face upwards and outwards but this one is kind of facing upwards but not outwards and this one is actually facing down now you can also see that there's a huge amount of slack in the chain and a big giveaway something is wrong here is this shiny part right here there's supposed to be a chain guide right here and when we actually look behind the chain right there we can find the plastic part of that guide and when we dig a little bit deeper and take a pair of pliers I think we can retrieve the metal part of the bracket of that chain guide that was supposed to be right there so I guess that's diagnosis confirmed now how did that other Workshop check the timing I have absolutely no idea now why did the dealership replace the low pressure fuel pump you would imagine that a fuel pressure test is quite a basic test that a dealership would be able to perform now maybe the pump was really broken but that would mean that multiple failures occurred at exactly the same time and it is highly unlikely now when we first started the car we saw a spike in fuel pressure and I think that was an attempt of the ECM trying to control the fuel pressure and when it saw it wasn't Rising fast enough it stopped controlling the fuel pressure all together now why didn't that or the timing set a fault code I'm not sure but it might only set fault code while the engine is running and not during cranking so I can imagine the war fault codes before but either the dealership or the independent Workshop deleted those now the next time you've got a few pressure code from a mechanically timed pump remember that the timing can actually affect your fuel pressure now I really hope you enjoyed this video if you did please subscribe to my channel and when you hit the little bell you will get a notification each time I upload a new video and remember diagnose then fix it again see you next time guys [Music]

Channel: DiagnoseDan

Views: 295,516

Keywords: bmw, scam, f20, dealership, blunder, timing chain, timing, hpfp, garage, workshop, mechanic, south main auto, rainman ray, fordtech makuloco, autodoktoren, pine holow auto diagnostic, scotty kilmer, ed china, wheeler dealers, topdon, snapon, education, explained, fail, wrong, fix, repair, automotive, camshaft, pico, oscilloscope, multimeter, electronics, vanos, faultcode, crank no start, valvetronics, diagnosedan, diagnostic dan, diagnose dan, mastertech, fuel pump, high pressure fuelpump, learn, wiring

Id: ZlIAZGgYOEQ

Length: 19min 59sec (1199 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 25 2023