BMW E36 M3 3.0 1993 Vanos problem

[Didzis]

Hello everyone! This is my first post here on Bimmerwekz forum, so please do not kill me if I do anything wrong.

I searched info on vanos here on this forum but I cannot seem to find an information I was looking for therefor I would like to ask you all a question.

Can it be so that the vanos cannot be repaired? 6 months ago a sertified BMW dealer held my car for a month - vanos repair. They changed vanos valve. Now after 6 months the symptoms are the same as they were before:
Unstable idle, car runs smoothly only after 5k rpm, happens to stop running when idling.

As the bmw dealer informed - the vanos valve stays open at all times. What regards warranty on valve they changed, the answer is easy - this time the problem is the same, but you have to change all vanos unit.

Thank you kindly.

Regards,
Didzis.

[PrInG]

Are you 100 percent posi. that the vanos is the problem. My car had simialr problems to what your talking about. Unstable idle didn't run. But if you revved the hell out of it enough to get it moving it would run fine at higher revs. I ended up taking out my ICV(IDLE CONTROL VALVE) spraying some carb and choke cleaner/ WD-40 whatever you have. and cleaning it up with a q-tip. Very common problem as I found that most of the others have had this problem and are still having it since. Hope that helps you out. Might wanna check that out before you go spending all that money.

[Didzis]

Thank you for your response. No I am not 100% sure that it is vanos. I have been in like 4 places to diagnose the problem and each time I get a different answer.

Answer from the BMW dealer was to change whole vanos unit
Other said I am having wiring problem, because ECU receives only 11.5 to 12.5V (?)

Another answer was that the camshaft position sensor might be faulty and the final answer was that the crankshaft position sensor wrote a fault into DMA.

In my opinion these errors are kind of linked together (excluding the vanos prob.) - one followed or reported because of the previous error etc.

Thank you very much, I will try to test the idle-run sensor and see what happens.

Cheers,
Didzis.

P.S. Could idle-run sensor cause it to start only with 3rd time (when warm). When started - it smells gasoline badly.

[Didzis]

uh, sorry, not the idle-sensor but ICV

[PrInG]

I don't believe the ICV has anything to do with when the car starts. It is just a valve on a spring.