BMW Cars
For the first eight years of BMW ownership I paid a professional technician to maintain my car. In 2006 I bought a new BMW and decided to keep the old to serve as a rolling classroom to help me learn how to maintain them. This section outlines all the work I've done myself with regular technical assistance from my technician and a Bentley manual.
A BMW M3 pickup has been spotted doing hot laps at the world famous Nurburgring racetrack. Yes, this is the same V-8-powered BMW M3 that is renowned as one of the world's hottest, sportiest and all around lust-worthy German sports machines. And no, this isn't an early April Fools joke -- although we're still kind of hoping it is.
Our spy photographers have provided the indisputable proof that someone at BMW has gone seriously crazy, by chopping off the back of a lovely M3 and slapping on a pickup bed behind the passenger compartment. From the B-pillars forward, this prototype is all ground-hugging BMW M3. Yet at the rear, this car has more in common with a Chevy El Camino or a Ford Ranchero.
This BMW M3 pickup was one of many official M3 cars being tested at the 'Ring, according to our sources. Racing stripes done up in camouflage hinted at this being a factory-endorsed prototype, rather than the handiwork of some wacky private owner. But the hacked-off B-pillar and crude rear window made it unlikely this car/truck stands a serious shot at production.
A BMW spokesperson has now confirmed to Road & Track that the M3 Pickup spotted in Germany is simply a one-off test mule. "BMW M did indeed create the pickup seen on the 'Ring, but it was just an internal project, not something that is in development," said Dave Buchko, BMW Advanced Powertrain & Heritage Communications Manager. "There are no plans to produce it."
BMW aficionados will undoubtedly be breathing a huge sigh of relief. This the same diehard legion of fans who still bemoan the original iDrive interface, SMG gearboxes, and just about any car ever designed by Chris Bangle. Tell these folks that BMW is building a pickup, and you'd better be ready to duck and cover.
Set to arrive in 2012, the next BMW 3 Series will showcase everything from a range of turbocharged 4-cylinder engines to a hybrid model and 5-door hatchback (designed in the same mold as the 5 Series GT). But you heard it here first: the 3 Series and M3 family tree will not include a pickup.
One of the routine maintenance items that you should perform on your BMW is the checking and replacement of your accessory drive belts. The belts are driven off of the crankshaft and power accessories such as the water pump, power steering pump, alternator and air conditioning compressor. There are typically two belts on the car - one that powers the air conditioning compressor and another that powers everything else. Both should be checked periodically (every 3,000 miles, or when you change your oil), and particular attention should be paid to the main belt. The car can run fine without the air conditioning belt installed.
Some of the early E30 cars use a standard v-belt design, and some of the later cars use what is known as a poly-ribbed belt (having many channels or ribs on the underside of the belt). The poly-ribbed belt setup utilizes a spring-loaded belt tensioner pulley that provides the proper tension for the belt at all times, making adjustment unnecessary. The traditional style v-belts need to be tensioned using standard types of clamps and tensioners.
When inspecting your belts, the one thing that you want to look for is cracks (yellow arrow - Figure 1). If you see any cracks at all, you should replace your belts. The cracks will usually occur on the inside of the belt (the surface that typically rides on the surface of the pulley). With the poly-ribbed belts, this is the grooved surface. With the v-belts, this is the surfaces on the legs of the 'V'.
With the poly-ribbed belts, replacement is a snap. The tensioners that hold the belt tight can be easily released using a socket and or 8 mm hex tool. Different tensioners turn different directions, so you may have to rotate the tensioner clockwise or counter-clockwise depending upon your particular car. The description of this process is one of those things that is difficult to describe, but very easy to do. First, pry off the small plastic cap that covers the tensioner (green arrow Figure 1). Then, place your tool into the tensioner and try rotating clockwise or counter-clockwise - will become immediately apparent how the tensioner releases the belt (Figure 2 and Figure 3).
Removal of the two belts is easy - you do not have to remove the fan. Simply release the tension on the belt from the tensioner, and then the belt should simply slide off. Release the tension, and then you should be able to unwind the belt from the engine. The belt should be able to be maneuvered around and through the fan - you do not need to remove the fan to swap out any of the belts (Figure 4).
It is important to note that if your BMW has air conditioning, you will need to remove this belt first, as it typically blocks the other belt. Another tip - if the belt is worn, simply snip it with some large tin cutters and pull it out of the car, after you have released the tension on it.
Installation of the new belt is easy. Simply slide on most of the new belt onto the pulleys, release the tension on the tensioner, and slide the belt onto the tensioner. Check to make sure that the belt is securely seated in all of the pulleys. Verify that the ribbed portion of the belt is set against the crankshaft pulley. The proper orientation of the belt is shown in Figure 5.
Replace any plastic caps that you may have removed from the front of the tensioner pulleys. Now, start the car and peek in at the belts. Verify that they are turning smoothly on all of the pulleys.
For engines with the older-style v-belts, the procedure is nearly identical, except for the tensioning. The alternator is mounted on a bracket that rotates and is used to keep tension on the belt. In addition, there is a small rack-and-pinion device on this bracket that allows you to crank up the tension on the belt (Figure 6). The first step in setting or releasing tension is to release the nut on the back of the bracket that keeps the whole assembly secure. Do not attempt to turn the geared bolt without first releasing this nut on the rear - you will most likely damage the bracket. With the nut released, you can now turn the geared bolt counter-clockwise, releasing tension on the belt. Belt replacement is nearly identical to the poly-ribbed belts.
Well, there you have it - it's really not too difficult at all. If you would like to see more technical articles like this one, please continue to support Pelican Parts with all your parts needs. If you like what you see here, then please visit our online BMW catalog and help support the collection and creating of new and informative technical articles like this one. Your continued support directly affects the expansion and existence of this site and technical articles like this one. As always, if you have any questions or comments about this helpful article, please drop us a line.
One basic tune-up procedure for just about any car on the road is the replacement of your spark plugs and spark plug wires (where applicable). On the BMW E36 six-cylinder engines, BMW has eliminated the use of spark plug wires by integrating six small spark plug coils that sit on top of each spark plug. While this configuration may be a bit more expensive than the typical single coil, single capacitive discharge box configuration, it makes the car's ignition system more reliable by removing a component that constantly wears out and fails (spark plug wires). It's a pretty cool setup, not commonly found on older cars. As manufacturing components has become increasingly inexpensive, ignition setups like these have become more common.
I recommend replacing your spark plugs every 10,000 miles, or about once a year. In reality, you can probably go longer than that, however, you never really quite know how long the plugs are going to last, or you may forget to do it if you don't setup a yearly schedule. Needless to say, replacing your spark plugs is one of the easiest tasks to do on your BMW - provided you have the proper information, which I will provide here.
Begin by prepping the car. The only thing that you really need to do is to make sure that the car is cold. If you try to remove or install spark plugs in a hot car, then you may encounter problems with the spark plugs gumming up or damaging the relatively delicate threads in the aluminum cylinder head. Just make sure that the car is cold, or at the bare minimum, only slightly warm to the touch.
Let's talk about the six cylinder cars first. The first step is to remove the top plastic covers from the engine. These serve no mechanical purpose - they are there only for decoration and to prevent dust and debris from getting into the recesses of the engine. On the six cylinder cars, there are two covers, a long thin one on the top of the car, and a wider one towards the left. Speaking of left, for the purpose of this particular tech article, I will refer to the left side of the engine as being on the left as you are standing in front of the car looking at the engine. The right side would, of course, be opposite to that. For reference, the windshield washer bottle would then be on the left, and the air filter would be on the right.
On the two plastic covers, there will be two small, snap-in plugs on the top. Carefully remove these plugs (don't drop them into the engine) with a small screwdriver, prying them up as you grab them (Figure 1). Underneath you will find a nut that holds the cover onto the top of the engine (Figure 2). Remove the four nuts on these two covers, and they should both simply slide up out of the way. Figure 3 shows the engine with the center cover removed.
Underneath the left cover, you will see the six spark plug coils that sit on top of each of the plugs (Figure 4). You need to remove each of these carefully, in order to gain access to the plugs. Using a screwdriver, release each connector from each coil. There is a metal retaining ring on the rear of each one that fastens it to the coil (Figure 5). Once you lift up on the retaining clip, then the connector should simply slide out of the coil. Carefully remove all of the connectors from each coil (Figure 6), taking care not to bend the wire harness too much. These wires are stiff, and generally don't take well to being bent in multiple directions. Just be gentle with them.
To assist with your maneuvering of the wires, detach the center clip that holds the wires that come from the center channel. This clip is shown in Figure 7. Gently place the wires off to the side and out of the way, without bending them terribly.
With the wires detached and placed slightly out of the way, you can now remove each of the six coils. Each coil is fastened to the valve cover using two screws. On two of the coils, there are two small ground straps that connect the coil to the stud on the cylinder head. Take note of these ground straps - they must be installed properly when you are finished, otherwise your car may encounter problems. These two ground straps are shown marked by the greens arrow in Figure 8 and Figure 9 (coil already removed in this photo).
Remove each of the two nuts that hold each coil to the valve cover. At this point, the coil should be able to be easily pulled right off of the engine (Figure 10). The coil has a small coil pack on one end, and a spring-loaded spark plug connector on the opposite end. Simply remove the coil/plug assembly and place it off to the side. All of the coils are the same, so it doesn't matter which cylinder bank it came off of - unless you are specifically trying to troubleshoot a bad coil fault code that was displayed by the main computer.
With the coil removed, you should be able to look down the hole and see the spark plug hiding in there. Figure 11 shows what the top of a normal looking spark plug looks like. However, as you remove the plugs, you may discover something peculiar. The way that the ignition system is designed on these BMWs, there is the opportunity for the spark plug holes to completely fill up with oil, if you have a leaky seal on your valve cover. When you pull out the spark plug connector / coil combo, you may find that it is completely submerged in engine oil, as shown in Figure 12 and Figure 13. Looking down the hole, you may not even be able to see the spark plug because the entire hole is filled up with oil (Figure 14 and Figure 15). While common sense says that this is not a good thing, the reality is that this is actually quite common, and doesn't seem to affect the performance of the car one bit. If you do find this oil in your spark plug holes, I would suggest that you go one step further and replace the valve cover gasket. This replacement procedure is very simple, once you have the coils removed, and should only take you about 20 minutes more, providing you have the actual gasket on hand. If you find oil in your spark plug holes, then you should definitely replace the gasket.
If you find that you have oil in your spark plug holes, I suggest that you take some paper towels and attempt to soak up as much of the oil as possible, before removing the spark plug. If you don't get rid of the excess oil, then it will leak into the cylinder head through the spark plug hole when you remove the spark plug. This will cause your car to run sooty when you first start it up, and it may even foul your brand new spark plugs that you just installed!
Spark plug removal is easy - you just need the right spark plug wrench. I have one that I love - it's a spark plug socket with a rubber insert that catches the plug. In addition, it has a built-in swivel on the attachment end. This is especially useful when trying to remove plugs in hard-to-reach places, as they are always located on Porsche engines (BMW engines aren't really that bad with respect to spark plug access).
Using a breaker bar, grip the plug and turn it counter-clockwise until it is loose. Then pull out your tool and grab the plug. When the plug comes out, you may want to take a close look at it. The spark plug is really the best way to visually ‘see’ what is going on inside your combustion chamber. You need to pull out all of the spark plugs to replace them, so you might as well take a close look at them while they’re out. While today’s modern fuels make plug-reading much more difficult, you can still glean a lot of information from looking at them. A good, well-balanced engine will produce a plug that is light brown in color, and dry. If the engine is running too rich, the plug will often be coated with a lot of extra carbon. Keep in mind that the rest of your combustion chamber probably looks the same. An engine running too lean will have a powdery white coating on it, and the outer porcelain ring may have a burned appearance.
When reading spark plugs, pay close attention to the white porcelain ring around the plug. This white area will give you an excellent background to inspect the color of the plug, and to help determine how your combustion chamber looks inside.
If the plug is wet with oil, then that indicates that there is significant leakage into the combustion chamber past either the valve guides or the piston rings. This is generally a bad sign, and an indicator that a future compression test may not yield good results.
Figure 16 shows an unusual spark plug with all four of its electrode eaten away. I would hazard a guess that this plug was improperly plated from the factory, and as it progressed through it's life, the repeated sparking slowly ate away at the electrodes until they were gone. A plug in this condition would misfire often (if at all), and would generate poor performance for this particular cylinder. Surprisingly enough, none of the rest of the spark plugs in this set exhibited this type of damage. This is what leads me to believe it was defective from the manufacturer.
Figure 17 shows a brand new Bosch Platinum spark plug. While I don't have any specific preference for any specific manufacturer of plug, you should definitely make sure to get the proper ones for your car. Spark plugs have varied over the years as engines have been changed slightly due to smog regulations. The important thing to remember is to get the proper ones for your car (they are scaled by electrode type and also by heat range), otherwise you may encounter odd ignition problems. Spark plugs are cheap - I would go with a brand name like Bosch or NGK, choosing to avoid the no-name brands. Make sure that you measure the spark plug gap (if single electrode) with a spark plug gap tool before you install the plugs.
Install your new plugs using a torque wrench to measure the amount of torque applied to the plug (Figure 18). This is very important, as it is easy to over or under-tighten spark plugs. Make sure that the plug is firmly seated in your spark plug socket as it is very easy to insert the plug into the head and have it cross-thread. This means that the threads of the spark plug don't mesh properly with the ones in the head, instead choosing to "cut their own path." This damages the threads on the head, and in extreme cases, may destroy the threads in the cylinder head entirely. Trust me - you do not want this to happen. Proceed carefully and cautiously here.
Install each plug into the cylinder heads without using any anti-seize compound. Torque the spark plugs to 25 Nm (18.4 ft-lbs). While writing "How to Rebuild and Modify Porsche 911 Engines", I discovered that Porsche doesn’t recommend the use of anti-seize compound, as detailed in Porsche Technical Bulletin 9102, Group 2, identifier 2870. The bulletin applies retroactively to all Porsche models and the theory is that the anti-seize tends to act as an electrical insulator between the plug and the cylinder head. This could have detrimental effect on the firing of the spark due to the loss of a good, consistent ground connection. Keeping those findings in mind, I would make the same recommendations for the BMW cars.
With the new plugs installed (Figure 19) and properly torqued, you can replace the coils (don't forget the small ground straps shown in Figure 8 and Figure 9) and reattach the coil connectors (Figure 20 and Figure 21). Snap the wires back into their center holders (Figure 7) and replace the top two plastic covers. When you're done, your engine should look back to normal (Figure 22)
Changing plugs on the 318 4-cylinder cars is a bit different and a bit easier. You remove the spark plug cover in a similar manner (Figure 23). There should be a handy little blue spark plug wire pull tool under the cover. Use it to remove the plug wires from the ends of the spark plugs (Figure 24). With the wires disconnected, remove and reinstall the plugs in a similar manner to how I described the procedure for the six cylinder cars. You will also want to replace the spark plug wires every 30,000 miles or if they look cracked and worn out.
Well, there you have it - it's really not too difficult at all. If you would like to see more technical articles like this one, please continue to support Pelican Parts with all your parts needs. If you like what you see here, then please visit our online BMW catalog and help support the collection and creating of new and informative technical articles like this one. Your continued support directly affects the expansion and existence of this site and technical articles like this one. As always, if you have any questions or comments about this helpful article, please drop us a line.
I recently had to tear down the top of my BMW 325is M50 engine in order to replace the head gasket (see accompanying tech article - coming soon). Performing this large amount of work, I decided that it would be in my best interest to have a complete valve job performed on the cylinder head at the same time. This requires that you remove the camshafts from the cylinder head.
Piece of cake, I thought, until I learned that the BMW camshafts are not like many others that I had worked on previously. Particularly on the six-cylinder cars, the camshafts are very long and hollow. This makes them very susceptible to bending and adverse side loads that can be placed on them during the removal process. After consulting the BMW factory documentation, I quickly realized that BMW requires you to use a special tool in order to remove the camshafts. "No problem," I thought. "I'll just purchase the tool and then rent it out through Pelican for others to use." Well, that well-thought out plan went right down the drain when I realized that the tool costs over $1400 and isn't even available for purchasing at this time. The story I received from our BMW dealer was that the tool is specially made by one guy, in some small company, in the motherland of Germany. There would be an eight-month lead time for delivery of the tool, and even that wasn't guaranteed. In addition to that, you had to buy two tools - one for the four cylinder engines, and an adapter add-on tool for the six cylinder engines.
Being the cavalier defender of the Do-It-Yourself mechanic, I decided that there had to be a better way to do this without using the tool. I dove into research, and inquired to many shops and BMW owners about how they have removed the camshafts. Just about everyone I spoke with told me that they either took their car to the dealer, or in one case, had the tool themselves. Hmm, not promising information. I even heard of one story where a poor soul took his 325is to a shop to have the camshafts swapped out - and they broke them removing them. To add insult to injury, they told the fellow that they weren't responsible, and that he had to buy new ones. I'll bet these dolts didn't even bother to check the BMW factory documentation (or even the Bentley manual) to find out the proper removal procedure.
Okay, so at this time, my goal was to find a way to safely remove the camshafts without using the tool, and without breaking or damaging them. I'll spoil the suspense right now - I achieved successful removal and installation using a special technique I developed after studying the camshafts for quite a few nights (and a few failed ideas, which I will explain in a few paragraphs). Especially encouraging was one story from a fellow who had seen a BMW racing crew carefully and quickly swap out camshafts in the pit without using the special tool. With this knowledge in hand, I had a feeling that I would be able to figure out a way to achieve this goal. If it sounds like I'm boasting right now - it's because I am - just about everyone I spoke with said not to try it. I just figured, "what's the worst that will happen - I'll just break some camshafts." I wanted my readers and customers to know what would work and what wouldn't work, without all the myths and hype.
Let me pause for a second though to give the standard disclaimer. BMW doesn't recommend that you use this method for removing your camshafts. If you don't do it correctly, you can break your camshafts. While this won't destroy your engine, you'll have to replace them ($500 or so apiece, new) before you can run your car again. This would probably be the worst-case scenario. However, if you are careful and smart, and follow my directions and precautions precisely, you should be able to achieve the same successes that I did. Note: I am not responsible if you use this method and you end up breaking your camshafts.
Figure
Figure 1
Anyways, let's talk for a moment about why the camshafts break, so that we can discuss the methods used to prevent this from happening. As mentioned previously, the camshafts are hollow, and very long (Figure 1). Camshafts are also hardened, which makes them very brittle and prone to cracking. Although I have never broken a camshaft, I would guess that they would break much easier than they would bend, due to the hollow geometry combined with the metal hardening processes. If you place a force on one end of the camshaft, and another force on the other end of the camshaft without adequate support in the middle, you will slightly bend and break the camshafts. The key to safely removing the camshaft is to reduce the uneven forces that are placed on it during the removal process.
Where do these forces come from? They come from the preloading of the valve springs. The camshaft can rotate, obviously, through 360˚ of motion. During 100% of this time, there is at least one pair of camshaft lobes pressing down on valve lifters and compressing a pair of valve springs. Transmitted through the lifters, the springs place a tremendous amount of force on the camshaft. The camshaft is supported evenly by the bearing cap that lies between each camshaft lobe. If the camshaft is cocked, or if the force is not evenly distributed across the length of the camshaft, then the camshaft will bend and break.
Figure
Figure 2
Figure
Figure 3
To understand what we need to do, I would first like to discuss how the factory tool works. Figure 2 (11-3-260) and Figure 3 (11-3-270) both show drawings of the BMW factory tool. The tool shown in these drawings is appropriate for the removal of camshafts on four-cylinder cars. The tool bolts onto the head near where the spark plugs are mounted. A handle on the tool then activates a set of rods that press down on all of the individual bearing caps that hold the camshaft to the head. At this point, with the tool in place, you can remove all of the nuts that hold each of the cam bearing caps in place. With the tool applying uniform pressure and force to each of the cam bearing caps (very important), you can release the rods slowly and let the camshaft rise off of the lower cam bearing surfaces. The tool applies even, uniform pressure across the entire camshaft during the removal process. When the camshaft lobes are no longer compressing the valve springs, then you can safely remove the camshaft, as it will have no more forces placed on it.
Make sense? It does to me. However, understanding the problem is only the first step. One would think that you could achieve the same results as the BMW tool by simply unscrewing all of the bearing caps uniformly. For example, each nut would be turned 1/2 turn until they were all removed. I must admit, in theory, this seems like it would work very well. However, from the research that I did, I found out that this is almost a sure-fire way to break your camshafts. It seems that simply uniformly removing the bearing cap nuts does not guarantee uniform pressure on the camshaft. I didn't hear too many of the specifics, but I did hear that there were quite a few camshafts broken using this method, so I quickly rejected it.
Figure
Figure 4
The problem lies with the tension that is placed on the camshaft by the valve springs. Reduce or remove this tension, and you should be able to safely remove the camshafts without them breaking. How to achieve this? Well, I first thought about fashioning a tool that would fit between the valve and the seat on the cylinder head. Such a fork-shaped tool would effectively hold the valve open and compress the seat. However, the tool would have to be manufactured out of a soft plastic-like material like Delrin, otherwise it may damage the seat in the head. My second idea was to use rope - marine rope to be precise, considering that it's available in many different thicknesses. With the head out of the car, you turn the camshaft until a particular valve is open. Then, wrapping the valve with rope, you rotate the camshaft and let the rope compress between the valve and the seat. My attempt at this is shown in Figure 4. For all intensive purposes, this does work. It safely keeps the valve slightly open and the spring slightly compressed. However, this technique didn't appear to keep the valve open enough to make too much of a difference on the force that is exerted on the camshaft. Besides, a number of problems exist with this method. You can only do this when the cylinder head is removed from the engine. You can only do this when the valve is compressed, which would make the insertion of the rope (or Delrin tool) difficult to do without an appropriate spring compressor.
Figure
Figure 5
After wrestling with the rope for several hours, I decided to give it a rest and see what else I could do. After many hours of pondering, and thinking, I began to wonder exactly how many valves had to be held open in order for the camshaft to not have any load placed on it. During normal operation, valves open and close. When the valves are closed, they do not place any load on the camshaft. So I got to thinking, "is there a spot on the camshaft where only one set of valves are open at a particular time?" The answer is yes - and that is key to the removal technique here. The theory is that if only one set of valves are open at a time, there are no forces or loads placed on the camshaft from any other lifters. Since each pair of cam lobes is supported by a single cam bearing cap in the center (Figure 5), slowly removing this bearing cap will leave equal pressure on both sides over a very small distance - basically making it impossible to break the camshaft.
Figure
Figure 6
Figure
Figure 7
Figure
Figure 8
Huh? This is one of those techniques that I have had great difficult explaining to people without the cylinder head sitting in front of me. Let's take a look for a moment at Figure 6. In this photo, the cam lobes for cylinder number one are shown with red arrows. The ones for cylinders 2-6 are shown with green arrows. For the purpose of removing the camshaft, you want to rotate the camshaft by using a wrench to grip the square end, as shown in Figure 7. If the head is out of the car, make sure it is supported on two small blocks of wood (Figure 8), so that the valves don't try to lift the head up in the air off of your table from the opposite side.
Rotate the camshaft so that the cam lobes for cylinder number one are acting on the valves for cylinder number one. At this point, it doesn't matter whether you're working on the intake or exhaust side. There should be a point in your rotation where the cam lobes are acting on valves for cylinder one, and all of the other valves (2-6) are closed. At this point, the valves for cylinder number one should be slightly open (not fully open).
How can you tell if the valves for cylinders 2-6 are closed? Easy - I just stuck my pinky finger down behind the camshaft lobe and tried to rotate the camshaft lifter in its bore. There will be a small clearance between the lifter and the camshaft when the valve is closed and no camshaft lobes are acting on the lifter. This will allow the lifter to be rotated in its bore by your finger. There should be one spot on the camshaft where you can rotate it, and all cylinders two through five should have the valves closed, and the lifters free to spin with your finger.
Figure
Figure 9
A word of caution here. The camshaft will be heavily spring-loaded due to the fact that cylinder number one has two valves compressed and open. In addition, the cam lobes acting on cylinder number one will be cocked off at an angle, meaning that the camshaft will be spring loaded, and can snap back into another position if not tightly held in place. For this reason, I recommend that this be a two-person job. One person holds the camshaft in place (Figure 7 and Figure 9), while the other person removes it. If not, then the camshaft can rotate while you're removing it, and this may cause it to become compressed against some valve springs and break. In addition, when you're feeling the lifters with your finger, if the camshaft rotates quickly back into place (snaps back), you may end up crushing your finger. Go with my advice here - two person job.
On my 1993 325is, I was able to find this "sweet-spot" where there was no loads placed on the camshaft, except for the valve springs from cylinder number one. While all of the BMW 3-Series camshafts are similar, they may have different profiles, where this sweet-spot doesn't exist. In this case, you need to find the spot closest to the "sweet-spot", where the valves for cylinder number 2-6 are all barely compressed. There will be one of these spots on your camshaft.
Figure
Figure 10
To remove the camshaft, simply put the camshaft into it's "sweet-spot" location and remove the cam bearing caps for cylinders 2-6. There should be no loads on these caps, and after an initial loosening, the nut should be able to be removed easily by hand. Make sure that your assistant is holding the camshaft secure and steady so it doesn't slip (Figure 10). If it slips at this point, the lobes will try to compress the valve springs with no support on the camshaft and it will surely break.
Figure
Figure 11
Figure
Figure 12
Figure
Figure 13
Figure
Figure 14
Figure
Figure 15
Figure
Figure 16
Figure
Figure 17
Figure
Figure 18
Turning your attention to cylinder number one, slowly begin removing the bearing cap. Alternate between screws and turn each one a quarter turn at a time - this will ensure that both sides of the cam bearing cap receive equal pressure. The camshaft should slowly lift up as the valve springs pull the valves back into their seats in the head. If it doesn't, then give it a very light tap with a very small hammer to loosen the bearing cap (Figure 11). Continue until the bearing cap can be removed. The nuts will go very close to the end of their travel on the stud before they will be able to be removed by hand (Figure 12 and Figure 13). This is normal. When the bearing cap is removed, there should be nothing holding the camshaft to the head, and you can simply remove it from the head (Figure 14). Don't drop it on the floor.
Alternate Method: If you can't get to a point where all of the lifters for cylinders 2-6 can rotate in their bores, then you need to slightly alter the previous procedure. Instead of removing all of the bearing caps for cylinders 2-6 all at once, use the following method. Put the camshaft in the rotation as close as possible to the point where there are no cam lobes acting on the lifters. This will be the point where cylinder number one lobes are acting on the camshaft, but the rest of the cylinders are placing very little force on the lifters. This will minimize the amount of force on the camshaft. Remove all the bearing caps for all cylinders (1-6) by turning each nut counter-clockwise a quarter turn, turning each and every nut only one quarter turn before continuing. In other words, turn all of the screws one quarter turn, then repeat in the same order.
Installation of a camshaft is performed in the opposite manner of removal. Set the camshaft on the head so that the lobes for cylinders 2-6 are as far away from the lifters as possible. The lobes for cylinder number one should be pointing downwards at an angle. Begin tightening the bearing cap for cylinder number one, a quarter turn on each nut, alternating as you go. Constantly check the lifters as you tighten down the camshaft - they should be free to rotate in their bores if you have aligned everything correctly. If you used the alternate method detailed above, then repeat the alternate method for installation - tighten each of the bearing caps for all of the cylinders one quarter turn, and then repeat. Camshaft bearing caps should be tightened to 11 ft-lb (15 Nm), as shown in Figure 15.
This procedure should work very well, particularly if the cylinder head is out of the car (Figure 16). You can perform this procedure if the engine is in the car, but it makes it quite a bit more difficult to navigate (Figure 17). One note of caution - if you do perform a camshaft swap with the engine in the car, then you will want to make sure that you don't accidentally tap your valves to your pistons. In order to be 100% safe, you should turn your engine clockwise to top dead center (TDC) for cylinder number one. Figure 18 shows the main crank gear with the TDC mark (green) pointing towards the notch on the engine case (red arrow). Now rotate the engine about 45 degrees clockwise. This will move the pistons about half-way in their bores so that they won't have any danger of touching the pistons - no matter what you do.
