"Known weaknesses"

Every car has its quirks. Some cars are plagued by electrical gremlins. Some cars eat up consumables like tires and brakes. Some cars do weird things when driven at the limit on track. Once we start beating on production vehicles in a track setting, we start discovering that many of these quirks turn out to be weak points. No car is going to be perfect, and the E36 chassis BMW certainly is not.

The list of "known weaknesses" with these cars has gotten fairly lengthy...not surprising when considering that then chassis has been in use for more than 18 years now. Weak front subframe mounts, weak rear subframe mounts, weak front lower control arm ball joints, weak rear sway mounts, fuel starvation at lower fuel levels, weak window track mounts, trunk wiring fatigue, leaking DME housing, and leaking power steering hoses are justt some of the items owners of these cars are typically forced to deal with at some point during their ownership. One more item to add to this list is weak valve retainers. Evidently these bad retainers only came in early-production engines in the M3 line. I had heard about this issue before, but never actually had any decent evidence that the problem really existed. I hadn't known anyone to have any problems and even my online research didn't lead me to much. All that didn't matter as I began disassembling the top end of my engine last week. Only one intake valve and one piston were damaged. The reason was quickly and obviously evident...failed valve retainer. This little thing that looks like not much more than a washer has caused me quite a headache and made my wallet a little lighter.


This is the pieces of the retainer and keeper

Here's the damaged valves, spring, lifter, etc.

The damaged intake valve before removal