Redline oil kills Vanos???

[Medvedko]

Hey guys,

I have used Redline oil with great success for the past 2 years. Anyway, I went through some old "oil" threads and people have mentioned that there is something in Redline oil that can destroy the vanos on our cars. Can somebody please explain this too me and why this would happen only with Redline oils.
Thanks

[mrclam]

i am actually currently undergoing this problem on m3 right now...my vanos is making funny noises just a month after putting it into the car. i'm thinking about having the dealer inspect it and hopefully replace vanos under the CPO warranty...otherwise i don't know what to do about it. does anyone have more information?

[mrclam]

bump^

[pete]

hmmmm, unlikely but i guess its possible something about the oil or one of its additives could somehow affect some of the vannos components.

[Baby M3]

Hmm.. Interesting observation.
Red Line oil's been around for a while and it's the first time that I heard something negative about it.
Thanks for the heads up.
Please keep us posted.

Jon

[Knightmare69]

Has anyone actually contacted Redline and brought this to their attention? I'm sure Redline would be able to somewhat answer this question, hopefully. Thank god I haven't switched over from Mobil1 yet.

[Medvedko]

Thanks for all the input. I have not experienced any problems as of yet and don't plan to. I am not going to say out loud that Redline is a poor product. I have it in my tranny and it is smooth as hell. I just know that certain people who had Vanos failures on this or other boards have had Redline in their systems. Otherwise I have seen a ton of other people who have their vanos fail with other oils. I do wonder sometimes if using such light oils can cause damage to other things quiker than just having the security of enough oil at start up. I have heard and seen too many cars using light oils that tick like mad and others that don't. Almost seems to damge and annoy other things in the motor.
Anyway, I might just stick with 5-30 Mobil 1 "tri" synthetic considering it is a widely marketed oil and I change it often enough "2500 miles or every 3 months" so breakdown isn't a major concern. I guess I will stick with Redline in my VDUB.

If anyone has contacted Redline about this issue please by all means post a response. I would like to know as well if there is some additive used that is fooling with the VANOS.

[mrclam]

i just called redline and the tech was out to lunch but they said they would call me back in probably half an hour or so, i will post an update.

[mrclam]

UPDATE:
i just spoke with the tech at redline oil. he claims that there are known problems with the VANOS unit, but not in usage with redline oils, and that there is nothing in redline that would cause the vanos to malfunction/screw up. the tech then told me to take up my problem with bmw and it sounds as if the dealership may pay for the repair now(under CPO)

[Medvedko]

Cool,

It is a bit more comforting to know that Redline isn't the cause of VANOS failures. I see a lot of racers sponsored by Redline and only heard the best of things about the oil from everyone.

I called BMW (my dealership) and spoke with the tech over there. He told me it is extremely unlikely that an oil can destroy the VANOS drive system unless it was in there for 20k+ miles. He said they have replaced some before the cars hit break-in. He also said they have one customer M3 with over 95,000 that has no problems since new. So, I guess either you have a good unit or a poor unit.

Thanks mrclam for going through this!
Andre

[Red Bimmer]

I've been using Castrol 10-40 for the past month after a year of Castrol 20-50. My car kinda makes a chucking or metal valve cover shuddering noise when changing from gear to gear (from the engine). Does this mean a vanos problem and if so does the vanos go bad if the oil is too light? Thanks