The BMW B58 inline-six is a darling of the European car tuning scene. With a closed deck block, forged connecting rods, and a forged crankshaft, it seemed like BMW finally learned from its N54 direct-injected boosted-six stumbling block and created a juggernaut. However, to long-time BMW owners, one question lingered — how would BMW, um, BMW the B58 up? Well, it turns out that some of these boosted sixes are suffering from serious oiling system issues at relatively low mileage.
Make no mistake, the B58 is an absolute beast of an engine, capable of slingshotting a 3 Series from zero-to-60 mph in under four seconds, and willing to crank out more than 400 horsepower to the tires with simple bolt-ons and a tune. It’s been available under the hood of just about every BMW on a longitudinal platform in the past few years, and this single-turbo three-liter inline-six is as smooth as you could possibly want. However, earlier examples of the B58 have one achilles heel because BMW decided to make the oil pump rotor housing out of plastic.
In theory, this was a great idea. Plastic is less thermally conductive than steel or aluminum, lightweight, and could reduce parasitic losses. Unfortunately, plastic also gets brittle with age and in cold temperatures, and as oil tends to thicken in the cold, you can probably guess what happens next.
G-series B58 owners in cold climates – check your oil pumps! We’ve had two almost new cars in our shop since february with blown engines due to the oil pump failing in freezing conditions. BMW have made an updated oil pump which replaces duoplex plastic with metal. The pictures speak for themself????
byu/mariusrisan inBMW
Yeah, that’s pretty gnarly. Oil pump failure is something you never want to encounter, and to make matters stranger, symptoms for a failed oil pump on older B58 engines run the gamut. Some report excessive oil pressure, some report insufficient oil pressure, some simply report a whining sound. The common thread? If you let any of these symptoms go for too long, you could be saying goodbye to your engine.
According to the forums, being unable to check oil level through iDrive when the oil is hot is a fairly solid symptom of oil pump issues, as dramatic fluctuations in pressure will lead to the test automatically being canceled due to the self-testing function requiring tight tolerances in the oil pump.
As for affected models, they’re all over the map, but failures do seem to be most common on BMW’s crossovers, specifically vehicles like mid-2020 production and earlier X5s and X7s. However, early G20 M340i owners aren’t immune either. Many 2019 and 2020 examples without the high-performance cooling and tire package (option code ZTK) came with an oil pump featuring a plastic rotor housing, and owners have reported oil pump failure, sometimes with fewer than 30,000 miles on the clock. Curiously, the ZTK oil pump, part number 11419895359, has superseded the old regular oil pump, indicating that models newer than 2020 may not have this issue.
Weirdly, all this talk about oil pump failure is somewhat reminiscent of oil pump nut failure on M54 engine of the early 2000s, except a bit worse. In those engines, the nut holding the oil pump drive sprocket would back out under prolonged enthusiastic driving, with catastrophic results. On the B58, the failure mode is a little different, but the end result could be the same.
Alright, so let’s say that you own a B58-powered BMW that’s out of warranty and want to get this issue fixed. Figure around $1,200 in parts, but as replacement requires dropping the subframe, labor won’t be cheap. One poster on Bimmerpost was quoted $6,000 for oil pump replacement in their X5, and it’s easy to see why, given how the B58 places its timing components on the back of the engine, and the oil pump is driven by the timing system. Regardless of dealer service or saving money and going to an independent specialist, this isn’t a cheap fix, being financially up into what used to be M car repair territory. Ouch.
So, if you own a 2020 or older BMW with the B58 inline-six or are looking at one as your next daily driver, you might want to keep an eye on your oil pump. Failures seem widespread enough to render this a relatively common issue, and it wouldn’t be surprising if this becomes the modern BMW equivalent of Porsche’s infamous IMS bearing.
(Photo credits: BMW, Bimmerpost)
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S52s also have that oil pump nut issue. It’s only a few hours of wrenching and less than $300 to fix proactively
I wonder if you can fix these B58s the same way: secure the motor with a fender-to-fender brace, then drop the subframe with 30cm M12x1.5 (from memory—don’t quote me) threaded rod to get room to pull the pan like the E36/7.
I procrastinated and it got expensive. Wire your nuts, people!
I will just buy something that isn’t a BMW instead
Probably a smart move. But I just took mine up the road that originally convinced me to buy it yesterday: it alternately causes me to giggle with glee and squeak in alarm. The steering is almost telepathic, the brakes freakin phenomenal—and it’ll break traction with a mere twitch. I may die broke, but I’ll be giggling as I shoot backwards off that mountain 😉
Nothing like a German car to remove the oil dipstick, force you to rely on the electronic dipstick sensors, then have those electronics lock you out of checking your oil during a catastrophic oil problem. I’m not specifically looking at BMW here either. High end German cars have been doing the old dipstick removal trick for years.
The tagline is “Ultimate Driving Machine” – not “Reliable Driving Machine”.
didn’t know about the other n54 issues. thought it was mostly the HPFP. oh and the brilliant sun roof drains clogging and flooding the electronics. that were placed in the lowest part of the car. I was done with bmw after that 535xi. drove great. shit engineering and construction.
The floor electronics has been going on for a long time, don’t ask how i know 🙁
HPFP, the injectors (I stopped counting after 12 ‘fixed’ versions), cracked charge pipes, turbo rattle…the list goes on
If they make a metal version, I would pop for the upgrade when the Timing set gets replaced.
Makes the N55 oil filter housing gasket seem trivial in comparison.
This is why the Supra should’ve just used Toyota engines
I would have preferred they just didn’t make it to what we got.
Man will walk six feet on Mars before BMW will figures out a functional oil system. Clearly, am a fan. But, somewhere in the back of a dark hall in Munich, BMW’s top engineers are figuring out how a iX can leak a pool of formerly dinosaur on your driveway.
Looked around a bit more. The offending oil pump was only used in some B58s in some models. The one that Eric Gonzalez mentions below (part # 11417643046) that is found on B58s in other models does not seem to be subject to breakage. For example, it’s been used on B58s in the M240i cars and as I mentioned below, those forums do not reports issues with it. There was also mention of a software update that prevents the pump from backspinning and damaging itself(?) So I guess the moral of the story is if you own a BMW with a B58, check realoem and find out which pump you have.
Ouch. Hopefully my X5 PHEV—which has a variant of the B58–is gentler on its pump. But if not, it’s still under warranty for now.
So this is a series of engines – did this limited issue not impact the B38/48 versions?
How did they manage to “BMW it”, great line that!
This is why I wasn’t excited about the Ineos Grenadier, having a BMW engine seems counter to the mission of the vehicle. Like any other BMW, you have to dump it before the warranty runs out.
To be fair, this is an issue with older B58 engines and there are better oil pumps on newer ones, such as the detuned B58s in Grenadiers.
I’ve been skeptical about the BMW engines in Grenadiers as well, but so far it sounds like the B58 is an exception to the usual BMW unreliability. Supposedly Toyota had a lot of influence in its design since it was to be shared between them, so… we’ll see how they do long-term. I think they deserve a chance, and could perhaps end up being the one decent used BMW engine.
have a transit with a detuned eco-boost. am a fan. funny, used to want to extract more power from everything. but today’s power levels are enough
Thus following the normal life cycle of a BMW engine. Lauded for performance while under warranty. A financial train wreck for second owners.
Interesting. I’ve been on an M240i forum for years now and this isn’t much of a topic of conversation. Perhaps just not something that happens as commonly on them.
Same, I own a G30 and this is the first time I hear about this. I just created a topic in my usual forum showing other owners this article.
Seems to me that it couldn’t be a true BMW if it didn’t have at least one Achilles heel.
“BMW decided to make the oil pump rotor housing out of plastic.”
This reinforces my view that BMW has lost its way. In the past, BMW was all about the quality under the skin and the driving experience… and not relying on superficial bells and whistles.
These days, the company that is closest to what BMW used to be is Tesla.
Huh? Tesla? Not sure I see the correlation.
Actually, BMW has had significant issues in the past due to poor choices in materials. The radiatiors in the E36 cars, for instance, had a plastic neck that was guaranteed to crack after enough use. This, of course, resulted in all of the coolant blowing up and out of the system and more than a few blown head gaskets. They stubbornly stuck to those plastic radiator parts year after year and for a number of other engines and models as well. If you were on to this, you did a periodic prophylactic radiator swap.
So you might say that they’ve kept true to their way rather than lost it (and not in a good way at all).
This. I had to replace my entire cooling system on the Z4 because of shitty plastic used everywhere: expansion tank, thermostat housing and radiator.
yeah the material choices they have made for many years are beyond my understanding
It’s not an engineering secret that plastic degrades in the presence of heat, oil, etc. And these aren’t exactly minimum price third world vehicles. Poorly done, BMW!
I think the E36 is generally considered the turning point. Everything before it was pretty simple, solid, and reliable. E36 generation is when they started adding more bells and whistles and reliability started sliding.
Tesla? That makes no sense. Cadillac is closest to what BMW used to be.
Hi Thomas,
It would be great to post part numbers for the problematic pumps to avoid general panic. As the owner of a B58 powered G30 5 Series, this is concerning but at the same time I have never seen this been an issue in any forum. Perhaps the issue is overblown or isolated to very specific pumps not used in all B58 engines?
My car has a Mahle pump, part 11417643046 and it has no relationship with the 11419895359 pump you referenced.
The Reddit post is also 3 years old and hasn’t seen more posts since it was created.
So, after some quick digging, this is the allegedly problematic pump and here is the list of BMW models and production dates that use it. It was used only for a bit more than 1 year between 2018 and 2019 and only for certain B58C and B58D engine revisions. Not to say other pumps didn’t have plastic housings, but again, I think this is a bit overblown, especially considering the myriad B58s that are tuned to hell and using their stock pumps.
Git on out of here with yer rational thinkin’ and analytical brain! Git, I said!
[s]
so maybe they won’t have to give it a 10 year warranty like they had to on the HPFP on the N54
Ahh, the universe as it should be. It is comforting that any BMW owner knows exactly what to expect and gets it 100% of the time. This is priceless brand consistency, and Mercedes and Audi are learning too.
Learning? They’ve been like this for decades.
This is why you can get 2010 X5s for $5000 – $6000 with less than 100,000 miles. Ultimately Horrible Driving Experience©
So on top of a plastic oil pump on a “more performance focused engine” that also has no dip stick, meaning you have to check within the screen, it also runs its oil pump off the timing system which is at the back of engine… I swear BMW makes the most confounding decisions. I don’t even want to know the quote to do timing chain guides on a B58, given that’s almost guaranteed to be an engine out job.
Well, they do have a reputation to uphold!
Owning a bmw seems like a horrifying experience
Had the 135i been in production when I retired, I would have bought one. But I wanted a new car as a retirement gift, and I thank my lucky stars regularly.
If it doesn’t have some kind of stupid, potentially catastrophic issue, is it even a BMW?
Supra owners are averting their eyes..
A significant achilles heel-it’s what makes a BMW a BMW
On the other hand, you get to be Achilles for a while before the trouble starts…
I assume this has been fixed for all current production B58s, because if not this seems like a big issue for Grenadier owners.
Putting the Grenade in Grenadier
The Germans uh….find a way
From the same country that brought us some of the greatest hits of automotive plastic such as the Boxster coolant tank and the VW EA888 water pump/thermostat housing!
My mom’s A4 Allroad with the EA888 mechanically totaled itself at 60,000 miles. When I had one in a GTI I bought new the thing misfired for the first year of its existence and VW techs gave me a range of responses from “yeah, this motor just does that” to “have you been using VW approved gasoline?”
…seriously. He then handed me a list of VW’s preferred gas stations. On top of that it was having issues starting when I eventually got out of it…with 14,000 miles on the clock lol. It was probably the spark plugs but I didn’t wait around to find out.
Fuck that godforsaken engine. What do we say to plastic engine components?
NEIN!!!!