Chain tensioning rail

[ndmunro]

Hi

I am confronted at an indicated 61K Km, with the prospect of having to replace this item as follows from the maintenance guide:

"Replace the lining of the chain tensioning rail, chain guide rail and thrust piece every 60,000 km"

Can anyone provide first hand kwowledge of doing this work and as to how easy or not it is. I will be doing it myself as BMW have indicated they would 8-9 hours labour to do the job.

Any tips on techniques or tools or gotchas would be much appreciated.

[grifscoots]

Hi

I am confronted at an indicated 61K Km, with the prospect of having to replace this item as follows from the maintenance guide:

"Replace the lining of the chain tensioning rail, chain guide rail and thrust piece every 60,000 km"

Can anyone provide first hand kwowledge of doing this work and as to how easy or not it is. I will be doing it myself as BMW have indicated they would 8-9 hours labour to do the job.

Any tips on techniques or tools or gotchas would be much appreciated.There's nothing easy about it and it's no fun. I had 108,000 miles on my LT without replacing it. They are purdy tuff stuff.

[dshealey]

Hi

I am confronted at an indicated 61K Km, with the prospect of having to replace this item as follows from the maintenance guide:

"Replace the lining of the chain tensioning rail, chain guide rail and thrust piece every 60,000 km"

Can anyone provide first hand kwowledge of doing this work and as to how easy or not it is. I will be doing it myself as BMW have indicated they would 8-9 hours labour to do the job.

Any tips on techniques or tools or gotchas would be much appreciated.

Don't bother. Most knowledeable dealers will tell you it is not necessary. There have been pictures posted of these for years now that had over 100,000 on them and still looked just fine. I once had a little rattle I could not find, so ordered them to see if that was the problem. When I did, the service manager asked me why, and said they had replaced only ONE set in the years he had been there, and that was on a K11 with 270,000 miles on it.

I replaced mine anyway, and when I removed the old ones I saw what everyone had said previously, they still looked like new, only discolored a little from being in hot oil for 50K miles.

Personally, I would not touch them until well over 100K.

[murray]

Last winter I changed mine at 95000 and they looked great, Also did the chain and sprockets.
I would wait at least until 100,000 miles.