Re: BMW E36: replacing camshaft belt?

Jul 24, 2006 3 Replies

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Floyd Rogers 19 years ago

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

formatting link

(John's pageshave a lot of info and references.) FloydR

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martin.plantec 19 years ago

gpsman, Floyd:

Thanks.

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

Cheers,

Martin

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John Burns 19 years ago

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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martin.plantec 19 years ago

John,

You were quite right, my car (BMW 316i Compact from 7/1994) has a chain, not a belt. I was misled by a reference book which lists all models from '94, and which was still quoting the old specs.

Thanks!

Martin

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