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How to Diagnose a Ticking Noise in your BMW
91K views
Jan 29, 2023
1:28 ticking sound 6:00 diagnosing the ticking sound 7:55 engine flush/oil change 10:13 water pump/tensioner replacement 15:05 bad water pump This video entails a step-by-step process on how to diagnose a ticking sound in your BMW. This is an extremely common issue for BMW owners and in this video, I describe my process for locating the source of the ticking sound and then repairing the problem. BMW ticking sounds are most commonly attributed to hydraulic lifters, however, I discovered later in this video that the source of my problem was a bad water pump pulley and two bolts that had broken off in the water pump. In this video, I perform an engine flush/oil change, replace a belt tensioner, and replace a water pump. Eventually, after performing this maintenance my ticking noise disappeared.
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0:00
Hey, E36 fanatics, Steven here. Today I'm going to be handling a new issue with this BMW I got
0:09
This is a BMW, E36, obviously, but it's pretty applicable to any BMW that you own
0:15
This is a super common problem on BMWs, whether it be a higher mileage BMW or just an older vehicle like this E36
0:25
And what that is, is a ticking noise coming from your engine
0:28
It's usually at idle and the most common symptoms is that the ticking noise, as soon as you started on a cold start, you'll hear it coming from the engine bay
0:41
And then maybe you rev it up to a couple thousand RPMs and the ticking noise disappears or you start driving it
0:49
You know, you drive it on the highway and you don't hear the ticking noise. And then you slow back down and stop and go traffic and you can hear it again
0:56
So in this article, in this video, we're going to talk about what the hell is that ticking noise
1:02
Is it a big problem? Like what could it be? And is it symptomatic of a bigger issue
1:08
And then how can we diagnose it? So I've got a couple different ways to diagnose exactly what it is
1:14
If you guess that the most common problem is a hydraulic lifter, you're probably right
1:20
You're right. It is going to be the most common issue with the ticking noise
1:25
but we want to make sure that's the real issue. Okay, so what am I talking about when I say ticking noise
1:34
If you can hear that loud noise coming from the engine, that is a ticking noise
1:42
And you want to distinguish that from other noises that you could be having with your engine
1:47
such as a rod knock or a rattle noise, which would suggest a vanos issue
1:55
So this is a ticking noise coming from the engine. So what you just heard is the ticking noise coming from this E36
2:15
And what I just did is I started hitting the gas and raising the RPMs
2:23
And if you're listening, you'll notice you'll notice. you notice that the ticking noise went away as soon as I raised the RPMs above like 2,500, 3,000
2:32
the ticking noise goes away and then when it drops back down after I've been running it for a little bit
2:39
the ticking noise is still kind of there, but it's much less pronounced than it was when I first started this
2:45
engine at a cold start. So what the hell does that mean? What does that tell you? Well, basically
2:52
that points to that you have a hydraulic lifter issue. It's super common on BMWs, especially as these
3:00
things get older. Typical causes of the hydraulic lifter having this problem making noise
3:08
is it just happened. First off, it kind of just happens with BMWs as they age, as they get a decent
3:14
amount of miles on them. Actually, at one point BMW said that a little lifter noise is completely normal
3:20
So, and then the second reason is, you know, you don't really maintain your engine very well
3:28
And namely with that is keeping the oil change intervals correctly, changing your oil at the right time
3:35
and not, you know, trying to get as much mileage out of them as possible. Because dirty oil and sludge in the engine is the most common cause of this lifter tick
3:44
What happens is you get sludge in the areas around the hydraulic lifters and that will cause the additional noise Before I go ahead and talk about ways you can fix this issue if we want to confirm that it a hydraulic lifter
4:00
because especially people who aren't that familiar with BMWs, like say you don't work on these cars all the time, like I get stuck doing
4:08
well, a ticking noise might sound similar to other issues in a BMW engine
4:16
One thing is the VANW engine. One thing is the vanos, for example
4:20
Now in this car, I recently changed the vanos a few months ago
4:24
because it was having some serious rattling issues, which is a different noise than what you'll hear with a hydraulic lifter
4:33
But if you're not that familiar, it sounds kind of similar. So the vanos, when that starts going bad
4:39
it'll make this kind of rattling noise. It kind of sounds like marbles in a can almost
4:46
But like I said, we want to confirm that it's not a vanos issue. We also want to confirm that it's not something else that's not actually the hydraulic lifters
4:57
And the way we're going to do that is with an automotive stethoscope
5:01
Okay, so here's my trusty mechanic stethoscope. These are super cheap. If you do any work on your vehicles or your backyard mechanic or do some work on various cars
5:14
This is a super cheap tool to have and it's pretty useful. I bought this from Harvard Afraid
5:20
I think I paid like five bucks, maybe eight bucks when I bought it originally
5:24
And it comes with a little extension. So basically what this tool is used for is if you're looking for a ticking noise or, you know, some sort of sound coming from your engine
5:33
You want to try and narrow down the options. This tool is pretty good for narrowing down the, where the sound is coming from
5:43
Anyways, I'm going to pull off this plastic cover right here. It's really easy
5:47
It's just two little nuts on this. This is an E36, but most E46 and more recent BMWs, pretty much the same way
5:58
This is just to get a better sound with the stethoscope. I got the engine running
6:07
I got my stethoscope, and all you need to really do is touch
6:13
different areas. This is your vanos right here and you're going to want to just touch different areas
6:21
around the top of the engine. And the ticking noise is certainly coming from the front top of the
6:32
engine. So what do we do now? Well, like I mentioned earlier, I replaced this vanos before. It should be
6:41
in fairly good condition. I'm quite certain that it is the hydraulic lifters making this noise
6:46
And it's a common issue on older BMWs. Let's face it. So first off, the way to avoid this problem
6:54
from occurring or limiting at least your risk is to just maintain your BMW correctly and change the
7:02
oil and don't let the oil get too low because that's a quick way to cause a lifter tick problem is
7:10
if you let your oil run too low. There's a lot of different people on forums and on YouTube
7:16
talking about all these different products to limit or eliminate hydraulic lifter noise
7:23
I have not had a lot of good experiences with the different products available
7:29
the different liquid products available and such to silence your lifters or whatnot
7:35
There's one thing I do to shut up the lifters before I want to consider actually
7:40
going deeper into the process and that means actually opening up the valve cover pulling off the camshaft and changing out the hydraulic lifters And that thing I do especially when it already needs an oil change is I do something that basically like a deep oil a deep engine flush
8:01
All I do is I take a half can of sea foam or a little bit more
8:05
I got mine right here. And I dump it into the engine
8:10
and I let the car run for like five to ten minutes, let it warm up and idle that way
8:16
You don't want to be driving around your car with a bunch of seafone in it. So basically what that does is it helps to break up some of the gunk and the crap
8:25
that might be sitting at the top of your engine. And hopefully that'll free your lifters and eliminate this noise once you change the engine oil
8:35
It's a super easy, you know, DIY thing to do. and, you know, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but hey, if it does, then you've eliminated that annoying, freaking noise from your engine
8:48
Like I said, this is not a cure-all, but it's an easy first step to do before you have to, before you consider taking a more serious approach and changing out the lifters on the engine
9:01
Okay, so I'm finishing up the process of doing this little engine flush oil change, whatnot
9:08
you can see all is black as night and part of that is because of the sea foam it'll make your
9:17
oil really dark fairly quickly and I'm not showing the whole process of an oil change it's quite simple
9:25
and you're probably going to know how to do one anyways but I mean for for at least an e36 but
9:32
all the BMWs are pretty much the same E36 you got a 17 millimeter bolt at the bottom you take
9:38
that out and the oil spills out and your filters right here. This is pretty much standard on most
9:45
BMWs, at least three series VMs. So like I said, I only dump about a half a can into these engines
9:52
These engines take a lot of oil so you can put a decent amount of sea foam and the rest of it I'll
9:56
probably just put in the gas tank. So now I'm just going to, I poured some in and I'm just going to
10:01
start the engine up and I'm going to let it run and heat up for about five to ten minutes. That's a good
10:06
way a good thing to do anyways I like to heat up my engine before I do an oil change
10:12
hey viewers back to what's that ticking noise on my BMW so as you can see here I finished up the
10:21
oil change and the engine flush turned it back the engine back on didn't really do a thing you
10:27
know it seemed like it sounded a little bit better but really not much of a significant improvement
10:32
But I'm like at that point, I'm like, you know, even if the lifters were bad
10:37
generally whenever I do this and I change the oil and do the whole flush
10:44
at least it's going to remedy the problem a little bit, right? So now I'm starting to get worried, trying to figure out what this issue is
10:51
And I listened a little bit more with my stethoscope, my mechanic's stethoscope
10:57
and I figure out that the noise is really coming from my serpentine belt area
11:01
and I'm like, okay, maybe it's just a freaking pulley. And this is a little, not really a hack
11:07
but it's just something you can do if you think that you've got a bad pulley potentially
11:11
but you're not sure which one or even if you have a bad pulley, if that's the right area
11:16
So what you do is first off, you make sure the engine's cold. You don't want to do this one, you know, you've already been running the car
11:23
And what I did is I pulled off both the serpentine belt and the AC belt
11:30
and after that it just started up the car. And if the noise is gone then you know that it that problem is associated with your serpentine belt region As you can see here with nothing attached the car runs pretty beautifully actually
11:57
So that's great, you know, now I know that the problem is coming from my serpentine belt area, but where exactly
12:04
So, to do this, and I have another video on changing a tensioner pulley
12:11
As you can see, my tensioner pulley is right down here, and it's still spinning, spinning, spinning
12:18
It's supposed to have some resistance to it, and it's got nothing
12:23
So I know that the tensioner pulley seemed better days. Then I look at my water pump pulley, and I noticed, well, it's gone now
12:33
But I noticed when I was first playing with it that it was actually shaking a bit
12:37
I'm like, oh no, what is that? So I went ahead and bought a new water pump thinking that the bearing inside the water pump had gone bad
12:46
And when I took a closer look, I realized that the bolts going into the water pump pulley were actually loose
12:57
And the water pump pulley was going all over the place. And not only that, one of them is missing
13:01
So now I'm going to pop these bolts back in and tighten them up and change this tensioner since I know it's seen better days
13:11
Might as well change it while I'm here. And then we'll see if my noise is gone. So what started with just a little ticking noise and figured that it was the lifters, this turned into me changing a tensioner and tightening up a water pump pulley
13:26
As you can see here, this bearing shot, supposed to be tight. And this thing don't even turn
13:31
be tight like that. It's not. If you end up having this problem, you got to change this pulley
13:38
It's two bolts. Okay, so this repair has been significantly more of a pain than I originally
13:43
anticipated. Well, unfortunately on this vehicle for all my E36 owners out there, most E36s have
13:51
an idler pulley, but not all of them do. Some of them, I believe, the 98, which is this year
13:57
Some of the models in the 98 do not come with an idler bully. This one is one of those
14:03
And it was a real pain to try and find a replacement
14:08
I ended up having to go OEM because the auto parts stores kept giving me the wrong part
14:12
So anyways, I got almost everything back together. I got a new serpentine belts
14:18
So as we can see here, the annoying ticking noise is gone
14:23
Engine still doesn't sound all that good, but hey, it sounds a whole lot better in the
14:27
And in this job, you know, as you've seen, this is kind of the process that I sometimes have to go through
14:35
When you hear some weird noise, you start off, well, you got to take a noise from the engine bay
14:41
What is it probably? Probably the lifters, but let's take a sathoscope and double check
14:46
Make sure it's the lifters. Okay, it sounds like it's coming from there. We haven't done an oil change
14:50
Let's do an oil change. Did that sound didn't disappear? So then I looked in a different area
14:56
I looked in the belt area and I'm like, hey, you know, noise sounds like it's coming from the water pump or the tensioner
15:02
Replace the tensioner, check the water pump. The pulley's bad and the bolts are stuck
15:09
As you can see here, there's one stuck in there and then there's one stuck right over here
15:17
Two of the bolts were stuck in here, so I ended up replacing the water pump, which I replaced about a year, year and a half ago
15:24
So this ended up taking a lot longer than I thought, but it ended up working
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Hope y'all enjoyed the video. If you did, please like, comment, and subscribe. I'll have some more videos out for you from E36 Fanatics
15:35
Y'all have a good one
#BMW
#Vehicle Repair & Maintenance