What Is Vanos

[brien4787]

what is vanos, and what cars have it?

[Kevin325i]

http://www.bmw-forums.com/forum/inde...showtopic=5353

[Cruzin 323is]

yup, thats got it under control!

[jshearer]

yup, I don't know enough to understand alot of that.

[brien4787]

i skimmed it, and still confused....
how do you know if a certain car has it?
also, how much are they to replace? i heard that some people have had vanos problems.....
the reason why i bring this up is that i am looking into getting a 325 sometime this year....

[2ndclasscitizen]

All 6 pots after September 1992 had vanos. Which in itself is no easy task to understand. But its in the FAQ so I wont go into it.
If you want to know if a car has it, get under the bonnet and have a look at the front of the engine. If you have a lump on the front like in the red square in the picture, you have vanos.



This is something thats going on my car at the minute, but shouldn't be too much to repair as it only has a single vanos, so a few hundered should sort it. Different story on the M3's as they have double units.

[brien4787]

is it something that you really need...lets say if it goes out on you...does your car still run fine?

is it also something that most people can fix on their own, or do you have to be really good with this kind of thing?

[jrhaile]

no it doesn't run fine. I believe the vanos has something to do with your engine timing too...

[vincentwashere]

its like vtec on hondas

[Kevin325i]

Originally posted by vincentwashere@Feb 25 2005, 12:47 AM
its like vtec on hondas

[snapback]298958[/snapback]

They're actually very different.

If you lose vanos on your engine it won't make the car explode, it just won't run as efficiently. It could be really doggy (cam advance got stuck at the low end) or run out really good on top (cam gets stuck on high end)