The Vanos Repair that wasn't

So after waiting a week or so get to receive the new Vanos part(s), the BMW began the repair.  It sounds odd, but the BMW dealer would not open up the valve cover until they received a warranty repair authorization from BMWNA.  Looking back on it, they had a good reason.  They knew what I did not, that some Vanos failures can spit pieces of metal throughout the motor which can cause a catastrophic failure (like scoring the cylinder walls).  Well shortly after the tech removed the valve cover and began inspecting the vanos failure, he realized the worst had happened.  A metal piece had broken off a sprocket in the Vanos assembly (see photos) and had likely spit metal into the engine.  He called me right away.  By the time I arrived at the dealer, the tech told me that he had scoped the cylinder walls and removed the oil pan.  He found metal debris in the oil pan and believed it got there from traveling down the cylinder walls (meaning the cylinder walls had been scored).  This all meant that the motor was destroyed.  I spent about an hour chatting with him about the posts on various M3 and BMW related forums which indicated many other people besides me had similar Vanos failures.  He told me that the dealer had recently repaired a Vanos failure almost exactly like mine.  I asked him, "do you think a supercharger could have caused the Vanos to fail?"  He said, "no way.  You can see from reading the boards that many other people are having Vanos failures on these cars, and none of them have superchargers.  The Vanos is a self contained unit totally unconnected to the Supercharger.  And given that the Supercharger has only been on the car a couple of months, there is no way that one could argue long term stress on the motor.  He said, the reality is that BMW knows that they've got a problem with these Vanos components.  But in my experience, if there is any way for them not to pay, they won't."

So, the BMW dealer told me that they would have to order a new motor for the car.  However, they had to get approval from BMWNA.  As I left I thought to myself, my dream car just died and I have the feeling BMW is going to try to weasel out of paying the warranty claim.

Note in the photo to the right, you can see a good sprocket compared to the broken one.  The teeth literally sheered off.  You can also notice in the photos above an "X" scratched near each valve, the tech told me that the tech who had done the valve adjustment marked each one as he adjusted them.  You can also notice where the pieces of metal got trapped between the sprocket teeth and the chain as you can see chipped teeth and casing with chain cut marks.

Coming up next, "The BMW bureaucratic slow roll and BMW's non-denial denial".