I have a 96 Euro Spec E39 520i with M52 Single Vanos, and 222.000 Km. Since I bought the car it only ran good occasionaly, specially during warm-up. Beside that, hesitations bellow 3k Rpm, slightly rough engine start, cold or warm. A couple of weeks ago it started to run badly, with rough idle sometimes, and hard acceleration. I took it to a tested and the tester tured out 2 error codes:
1. Crankshaft angle pulse generator
2. Cyl 2 Ignition Coil

After clearing the DME memory, only the first code reappered.

I have replaced cyl 2 ignition coil, no result.
I replaced the crankshaft pulse generator, and the car would not start. It starts with the old one though.
As I know the importance of the Crankshaft pulse generator in proper engine operation, I suppose this might be an issue, and suppose that the the new sensor was bad out of the box. Unfortunatley they will not replace the sensor as it was not installed at an authorised dealer.

After reading theese posts and understanding how Vanos works, I came to think that this might be the actuall issue, considering the car's age and mileage.

Any thoughts?

• 1996 E39 M52 Problems - valy84 2008-11-04 11:13:54 (147 views)
  • Re: 1996 E39 M52 Problems - Rajaie 2008-11-04 14:31:13 (112 views)