m50 engine..... vanos or non vanos? opinions please

[e30-EVN]

as the title says really. im currently looking into m50ing my car and just read up on vanos. sounds like a good thing but how is it controlled/wired up and what do other people think of this in an m50'd e30??

[penton08]

vanos is a form of variable valve timing, imo its always an improvement over non vanos. it is controlled by the ecu and requires no extra wiring to a non vanos conversion.

[e30-EVN]

okay thanx for the reply, it was extra wiring to control it that was my main concern tbh. most m50'd e34 5 series were vanos anyway and im prob going to use a 5 as my doner car so the sump ect are the right way around. thanx again

[Brianmoooore]

I think you may be confusing vanos with EWS. As said above, vanos requires no extra wiring mods at all - it's just a single wire wholly contained inside the engine loom, and not near anything you need to mod.
EWS, BMW's anti theft system, was fitted to late E34 M50's, and this is not at all difficult to wire up, as long as you have all the matching bits.
EWS M50's have a 413 ECU with a silver label. The non EWS engines have a 413 ECU with a maroon label, and this is a direct swap with the silver one - an easy way out if you do have an EWS engine.

[e30-EVN]

okay i will look for 1 with the maroon labeled ecu then, reason for this is my car has a viper cat 1 fitted with pager ect so no need for ews. my question was about vanos which i understand is bmw's version of variable valve timing but i was told its more to go wrong ect so i just wanted to know what others thought about it. although i did some digging on it afterwards and found a good article describing it and what it does. thanks for the answer regarding ews though brian as this was another thing i wanted to know about, so now i know i need a maroon ecu! cheers

[Brianmoooore]

I would overcome your Viper Cat 1 alarm in less than a couple of minutes.
I could not defeat BMW's EWS system, short of carrying a red label 413 ECU with me and swapping it in.
The vanos units do fail quite commonly, as a result of BMW specifying a material for a piston seal that's not quite as good as it could be.
An improved seal is available, and you can get one from DanThe on here. Simple job to fit.

[e30-EVN]

from some of the posts ive read of yours mate i dont doubt that! haha, but my car is right outside my door and if my pager ever goes off im there with a bat! every1 who knows me knows this to hehe so she's safe. an option ive been thinking of regarding the vanos mind is non vanos lump with speedtouch chip, make it roughly the same would it not?..... plus less to go wrong

[ross_jsy]

Will never make up for the lost torque low down you gain with vanos.

The problem is overhyped really. Just listen out for the classic vanos rumble when you look at the engine. Even if it's rumbling its not the end of the world

[DanThe]

The seals problem is not overhyped Ross, they deteriorate over time so most drivers wont even notice them getting worse, anything over 20,000 miles and the BMW seals will be shagged. Its a lot worse in twin vanos engines but this is a good video to see what goes wrong -

[youtube][/youtube]