I seemed to have run into some BIG time issues after I did a timing chain job. I just purchased a 2009 hardtop with the N12 - I didn't know much about them at the time and it ended up needing the timing chains replaced. I am very mechanically inclined and tackled the job by myself. It was very easy and painless to do. I had the Camshaft locking tool, and the crank tool and read several instructional threads. After completion I rotated the motor a few times to check timing and didn't have a problem. I drove the car for 2-3 days and it ran great but today at a stoplight I got a yellow coolant light - which turned into a red coolant light. after I started moving they went away and didn't think much of it. But 5 minutes later I get an oil light. the car starts smoking and I instantly pull over. The coolant reseviour was pressurized and about to explode and there was smoke coming from the engine itself, I removed the oil cap and quite a bit of smoke came out.

I never had a check engine light after the timing job. is it safe to say these events are unrelated? seems like if I botched the chain replacement, it would have caused problems immediately....

the super pressurized coolant reseviour leads me to believe the waterpump or thermostat took a crap but im pretty concerned about the oil light. I replaced the oil and used a MANN filter when I did the timing job. any insight would be greatly appreciated!

 

 

I purchased some fancy oil from ECS tuning and it was almost green. I did an oil change maybe 100 miles ago so its still pretty clean

yes there is coolant in the overflow bottle and its got so much pressure its causing it to force out

*car has 75K miles*

 

I dont think they are related unless you forgot to release the belt pulley. Also, did you make sure the system didnt have bubbles? did you check the pipes to make sure all went the proper route? were you getting hot air inside the cabin (if you turn the heater on). did you spin the engine by hand to see if oil is coming up to the head?

 

During the timing job i never had to remove any coolant related parts.

 

Go back to your passenger side fender well, remove all the covers, check the water pump pulley. I've had the same issue before and turns out that friction wheel had seized up and it caused my water pump to not spin. After the friction wheel got replaced, everything's back to normal.

My friction wheel went bad because I was also doing a timing job on the 09 MCS and when I put everything back, I took each part into the cleaning bay and cleaned the **** out of them. The friction wheel got disassembled, cleaned, then assembled and I guess I've bolted it down too tight, causing it to not spin that freely. When the car operates with it, the wheel heated up and the plastic housing melted down. My drive belt snapped and I was getting all sorts of warning lights similar to what you described in the original post, with coolant tank about to explode. After I ordered a new friction wheel (and not mess with its originally put together bolts/nuts), install it, and everything got fixed afterwards. I also replaced new coolant tank because the bottom piping had a seal breach during the bad expansion.

Hope my remedy helps. Good luck.

 

 

UPDATE:

I towed the vehicle home and began to dig into it.
First thing i noticed was the rubber from the water pump pulley was shredded into the friction wheel - sounds like exactly what Yupetec said. That does explain a lot because i did mess with that pulley bolt thinking it had to come off, and upon initial startup it was making a blaring noise and i hit it with some lube and it went away. That appears to be the culprit for the coolant temp sensor warning / pressurized system.

However

I did get an oil light shortly after the coolant temp light, so just in case, i decided to pull the VC and drain the oil and look for anything suspicious. I stuck my flashlight right up next to the oil and it lit up like a stary night sky. great. there is metal in the oil. The oil was VERY dark and just smelled burnt after only maybe 100 miles. Is there any way these two can be related?! seems too odd to happen minutes apart. Am i 100% screwed at this point? or is it possible to add fresh oil, maybe some seafoam oil treatment to flush out the contaminants and then add good oil again. the car still starts up and lot drives fine, no apparent noises

 

Glad I can help, with that water pump. About that oil lamp and the way your oil looks when you are draining it, I would be worried, too, especially when there's metal shavings in there. At this time, I do suspect that the stuck water pump "did" cause a badly over-heating situation. I'm wondering if you've driven far with that situation to have this sort of damage. Worst thing I can think of is if the overheat caused thermo-expansion to the engine or the component within and those metal could be shavings from anything in head or piston. Maybe it'd be a good idea to do a compression check just to be sure. If compression still holds for all cylinders, then I wouldn't worry about the shavings right off the bat.

Also, when I faced the same problem with that friction wheel, I was testing the car after timing chain job, driving it hard, and I've gone about 1/4 mile from home when the belt snapped, and I managed to drive home afterward to the garage. (total driven mileage: 1/2 mile). To this day, car still runs strong. I have a magnetic oil drain plug, never seen any alarming metal shavings during oil change and check up.

 

Another "unusual" design characteristic of the N14 (and probably the N12) is the lack of bearings around the cam journals. Our cams ride directly on the aluminum head / cap. I ruined a head due to lack of oil on the cam journals --- the aluminum just fused to the cam. There was lotsa other damage to a cylinder wall and its piston, that caused the lack of oil, but I just want to let you all know that a magnetic oil pan drain plug isn't gonna catch a lot of aluminum, and I expect a lack of coolant could have drastic effects on oil flow in the head.

You could try to just drain / flush oil, without disassembly, but I'd be more than curious where the metal came from. Too bad most of the metal surfaces with oiling are critical and hard to access for inspection. Maybe a compression test to check for ring damage?

 

 

Really wish you were closer. Will it drive onto a car hauler?

 

If the car overheats, the oil pressure could go low as the oil vaporizes and it will smoke because it is "way too hot". So that is not entirely impossible. However, yes, low oil pressure could be indicative that half the oil went onto the street or into the coolant passages because of the following:

I believe what the other guy was asking or inferring is: 1) is there OIL in the Coolant?; or 2) is there coolant in the Oil? Both of those things are REALLY bad. At least that is what I think he meant. He was asking is their oil in the coolant reservoir.
You can ignore a coolant problem where your motor overheats to a point where you "crack the block". When you crack the block, you will see these two fluids intermix. Half the oil will go on to the street or into the coolant. Basically, a cracked block, means your all done, finished. When your car warns you it is over-heating, you pull over immediately. A car tend to warn you about an overheating problem with very little extra time to drive for another 10 mins. Car goes from hot to really way too hot in a very short time period--minutes.

Sometimes you can get lucky, and just blow the head gasket.