BreakMyWindow 1972 Report post Posted July 16 Bought this one back in May to swap the interior in to my Black 130i. I’ve got 2 other bimmers that are black on black so wanted a nice contrast for the 3rd one. Plan is to tidy it up, fix engine and sell. Cosmetically it’s pretty tidy but the reason why it’s posted here is because the engine is turning out to be a bit of a headache to sort out. It has a persistent tick/rattle at idle coming from the exhaust side of the valvetrain, on the rear bank of cylinders. Like my black 130i I thought this would be a fairly straightforward fix with a decent cam, bearing ledge (tried 3 different ones) and set of 12 new lifters. Nope! I’m a bit poor on time with 2 young kids these days, but after finding nothing really conclusive taking the valve cover off 3 f**kn times I went back to basics and checked compression. Cyl’s 4&5 are about 24-26psi down on others so although not terrible, it leads me to believe the lower readings on those cyl’s correlate to the noise I’ve verified with a stethoscope coming from the valvetrain for those cyl’s. Aside from the tick at idle it drives nicely, has some trick Bilstein “Executive tuning” shocks. Pretty low kms at 135k. Not a fan of the auto but the auto blip on downshift is somewhat sporty. Have since done a full interior swapout including dashboard and centre console with my black 130, cut and polish and a general tidy up. Here’s a few pics of progress. Made 1 decent iDrive monitor out of 2 that had different issues A bit of a going over of the paintwork Little bit of wear on the original bearing ledges, but now I know that wasn’t the issue. The 3rd set I installed was pretty mint and from a car with around 100k kms on it. It seems the 130i n52’s have hollow exhaust camshafts, where as other n52’s have solid ones despite all being the same pn. The cam I fitted in my black 130 was from a 330 and was solid, and the others I pulled from a 323 and 2x 325’s were solid too. Bit of an oopsy with the tensioner. Must’ve put the dummy tensioner (hardened steel) in crooked when I did the timing and chewed out the alu threads. Tightened the tensioner to strip (was pretty f’d off and not thinking straight) then removed it and managed to fix the head side by running a tap in the hole and replaced with a new tensioner. Whew! As for Compression results… I got the engine up to operating temp then pulled the coils and plugs out followed by adjusting the vtronic motor to the position ista calls for. Then my sh*t comp tester blew out the hose after testing 2 cyl’s. I got another tester and by the time I got home, proceeded to test with the engine luke warm. Wasn’t fussed about outright numbers, just deviation between cylinders. Let’s see what leakdown testing finds….. 2 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jacko 2282 Report post Posted Friday at 01:03 AM On 7/16/2025 at 9:23 PM, BreakMyWindow said: It seems the 130i n52’s have hollow exhaust camshafts, where as other n52’s have solid ones despite all being the same pn. The cam I fitted in my black 130 was from a 330 and was solid, and the others I pulled from a 323 and 2x 325’s were solid too. Epic work, saving 130's is now the jam it seems... its a pity the prices even for decently sorted ones are still so low. On the cams - I remember reading years ago about the hydroformed ones, from memory they had a switch in production around the time of going to the "black tops" LCI engine, where the game was to make N52s cheaper to make, and the solid cams came in then with some crossover. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BreakMyWindow 1972 Report post Posted Friday at 01:37 AM Ah k, the solid one I got from a 330 was manufactured in late 2004. I was thinking maybe hollow cams were exclusive to 130i N52’s. Who knows…I’ve seen alot of cross-over of parts changing over the years messing with bimmers. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BreakMyWindow 1972 Report post Posted Monday at 02:58 AM Nothing conclusive to what the ticking noise is at idle. Cylinder leakdown was all in the “Green” showing 20% leakage on all 6. Re-did the comp test, this time with throttle plate open.. Cyl 1 - 260 Cyl 2 - 260 Cyl 3 - 260 Cyl 4 - 240 Cyl 5 - 240 Cyl 6 - 250 All within spec. Calling this a healthy engine, just with a bit of a tick on idle. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
