The BMW Smell / Plus the Toxic Smell that nobody talks about

The BMW Smell & the Toxic Smell that nobody talks about (possible solutions) updated 1/23/2020

If you own an E90, by now you probably have noticed that there is a stinky smell, that always lingers, day after day.  I've heard it called the "BMW smell" because all BMW cars have a very particular smell.  But in this blog post we are going to talk about that smell and where I think it comes from.  But more importantly I am going to talk about a very Lethal smell that comes from the Plastic Oil Pan Catch under the motor that nobody talks about, that is TOXIC and gets so bad that it can hurt your throat and will make you sick.

Old Cabin Air Filter Smell  (NON Toxic ) :  -Most of the moldy old smell comes from an old Cabin Air Filter, I've noticed that if I don't replace the cabin filter regularly, about every 6 months, my car smells bad, moldy and dusty, this is very easy to fix and to replace.  I made a blog post before, if you are interested on how to replace it.. I will put the link here:  https://msauceda1.blogspot.com/2019/05/cabin-air-filter-replacement-e90.html

If you are interested in the Toxic smell keep reading...

Leather Smell AKA The BMW smell  (NON Toxic) :  The BMW smell that everybody refers to so commonly, I think comes from the Materials that BMW chooses to build the car from.  Mostly I think comes from the leather in the car, but some comes from the Glues and plastics that are used in the car.  It's hard to tell if the smell of leather and or glue is toxic, hopefully somebody out there does an air test on our cars someday.  When I first got my car it smelled like this, so I am very used to this smell, and honestly I don't think this is bad, but I could be wrong.  The real toxic smell is coming up next...

Dirt and Oil stuck to the plastic pan cover, the source
of the Toxic Smell

Burnt Oil smell (The Toxic Smell) :

The Toxic Smell comes from the Plastic Oil Drip Pan under the engine.  Hear me out...this will get interesting....  As you know most E90s have a problem with the Valve Cover Gasket Screws... They tend to break.... I think you know where this is going.... When you drive your car under normal circumstances, the Motor Heats up and then cools down... during this thermal expansion and contraction of the Aluminum Engine/ Aluminum Screws, the Valve cover gasket loses its seal and Oil starts to leak out of the valve cover.   The Oil starts to accumulate in the plastic drip pan under the engine and eventually gets filled with Oil and Dirt.

New replacement :)

Well... After a while the oil and dirt covering all of the plastic drip pan starts to stink up... then these  Toxic Fumes emitted from the Dirty Oil / and Dirt under the engine heat up from the HOT engine and where does it go???  as you know Hot Air moves UP... well the toxic fume smell moves up to the hood.... AND what up there... well the Cabin Air Filter... This Air intake goes straight into the cabin of the car.

YES! you are inhaling Dirty Burnt Oil... This is Toxic and very bad for you.  Now mix this with the BMW smell and it's hard to tell what you are inhaling...

Side Effects:  I got to a point where every time I drove my BMW I got a sore throat... I am not exaggerating... If you drive a lot, you will find that you get tired and sick all the time and you may not know why that is, sore throat and headache would be common too.  You see these are toxic fumes... You are not meant to inhale Motor Oil Fumes... or Worse Old Burnt Motor Oil...  This will make you very sick and if you drive your car every day you will not notice the stench smell... But when you give somebody a ride in your car they will notice  and they will say... what is that smell???and you will think ohhh... it's just the BMW smell... TRUE some of it is, but not all...So beware of this problem.


 Drip Pan Maintenance ( To Get rid of Toxic Smell) Not the BMW smell LOL,...
The Solution... Either remove the bottom panel and clean all of the oil from the Oil Catch (plastic) under the engine or replace it with a new one.  BUT most importantly, fix the Oil Leaks from the Valve cover gasket.  Fixing the oil leak will prevent the oil from accumulating under the engine and will prevent this problem.  I did it to my car and Boy did it make a HUGE difference... New oil catch pan and fixed oil leak by replacing Valve cover gasket... Check your car... you may have the same problem...

 The Valve Cover gasket is not very expensive.  A solid 3 hours to replace... but worth it.

Battery Fumes
The last thing I am going to talk about is something you wouldn't expect.  The battery fumes. 

You see... the battery is inside the car, and any fumes would go directly into the car.  As you know the battery is in the truck of the car, and any fumes that escape the battery from overcharging would linger inside the car.  Most of us don't leave the windows open during the night, specially if you park your car on the street or outside. 

Let me explain what is going on.  Last time I replaced the battery in my car I didn't plug in the battery vent.  When I replaced the battery in my car last time, about 5 years ago, the new battery didn't come with battery connector, it's an elbow, I will put a picture here.  I assume that because the new battery didn't come with this elbow it wasn't needed to be plugged in.  But all in needed to do was remove the elbow from the old battery to plug into the new battery... and I didn't do that.

All of the fumes escape via a small hose going down to the outside of the trunk.  Make sure you plug this vent hose into the battery, because the Battery DOES Leak fumes out... so make sure you are not breathing these fumes.  The OEM battery is a Lead based battery, and it does have 2 Vent holes.  One is plugged and the other is open to accept the elbow to plug into the vent hose.  Make sure your battery is plugged in, because this will make you sick too.

Buy a Battery Vent Hose kit, this is what you will get ( pictured on the left).  I got mine from Amazon, and it was a perfect fit.  I only used the Elbow, to plug the vent hose already on the car to the battery.

Toxic Fumes will make you tired, and sleepy, and will accept your nervous system and you brain, as well as fertility, it says right on the battery....  Google this, and you will see how bad this is....  Unfortunately most of us don't know better. 

Make sure you vent the fumes out of the battery properly, or you are going to breath those fumes, every single moment you are in the car!

I hope this was helpful to you.

I post a ton of BMW 330I E90 related content, I have a lot of other posts, check them out, link below to the main page.

Comment below if you have any questions...

Thank again and until next time

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E90 BMW Recalls, My Experience: Airbag, Blower Motor

Airbag Recall: 

New Airbag E90 330i 2006

Let me start by saying that I never experienced anything weird with the air bag, but I don't think I was supposed to, I think the problem is when the airbag deploys that it could cause damage to the driver.  None the less I was happy to get it replaced.

NO appointment: bad idea...
I just showed up at BMW El cajon, CA.  I didn't have an appointment and they told me I had to call the "appointment center" to be seen, so I went home and I made call, they told me the next day was available so I went in this morning... It took 3 hours to get it replaced.  Initially I was told 1.5 hours, but let me explain why I was okay with it.

They also inspected my Blower motor wiring, which is the 2nd recall I knew about that I wanted to get fixed.  Which leads me to the second part of this post....

Blower Motor Wiring Recall:

The cable is now brown, it's actually 2 RED wires, when good.

The blower motor part is available, but the cars affected by the recall need to be inspected First and given a Repair Order number.  Then when the part arrives they call you to bring the car in.  I was okay with them taking an extra hour to inspect my wires because this means that I am now in line to have the Blower motor/ Wires replaced.  Which is what I wanted.

3 levels of "BAD":
The service representative told me that they have 3 levels of "bad", referring to the burnt wires.  Level 3 means that it's bad, and it should be replaced soon.  Which is what I have.  He told me that I could wait a week to a couple of months for the parts to be available.  Hopefully it won't take that long.  Level 1 and 2 are not very serious damage, which means the wires are not burnt... yet.


Cost for Recalls:  Zero
The cost of the recalls is only my time, which some may say is worth more, but I was okay with it because I got a new Airbag, and hopefully soon a new blower motor/wiring for my car.

Blower Motor Stopped Working: Temp Fix

A couple of days ago I started my car and to my surprise no air was coming out of the air vents.

So I set about to find out what was wrong.

The problem was that the wire got so hot that it burnt the wire terminals and from the heat it became corroded between the terminals to a point that no power was going to the "resistor module" that runs the Blower Motor wires.

Temporary Fix: Please do this at your own risk.

I needed the blower to work no matter what so this is what I did to "temporarily fix" the problem.  Now keep in mind that this is not meant to fix the problem, I did this to my car because I assumed the responsibility of what could happen.  I assume no liability if you do this to your car, please follow this instructions at your own risk.

This fix made the blower motor work again for me.

No association with Websites, they just have the parts I needed:

If you don't want to deal with this, the easier fix is to buy a new Blower motor resistor:Amazon link at the bottom of the article.

www.Amazon.com  They are $40.00 Dollars

Link to Connector, without wire :  Connector replacement Website

www.autohausaz.com  They are $3 dollars

If you want to fix it yourself, do this:...

I removed the board "Resistor module" and I found the bad terminals

Burnt Terminal

I unsoldered the terminals... NOT an easy job.

I sanded the PCB board to see PCB terminal connections. to make sure I knew where they were supposed to be connected.
In case I ripped a trace.
Back of Board

Also removed the coating the board had, and the burnt materials, as Burnt material is conductive.
Front of Board

I flipped the connectors, good ones were on the left, so I soldered them on the right

After I cleaned them, I ended up sanding them clean, for a better connection.

Only 3 pins are used, note which, the circled one I did not install because it goes to nothing.

More pics:

Known as "Resistor" module, this is the inside of the module

Burnt Connector on "Resistor Module"

This is the Reason for the Recall
Blower motor Burnt Wire / Connector

Cable is below the Blower motor.

I hope you found this information useful,

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Stuck Vent : Fix

Stuck Vent : Fix
BMW 330i 2006 E90

The Story why my vent got stuck

I am sure it happens to all of us, we are driving our car, and all of a sudden you are forced to make a hard right or left, to avoid something on the road and unfortunately, your coffee is in the cup holder... you keep driving but then you look to your coffee and you realize that a bit of the coffee came out of the cup and landed on your dash, you look at the coffee in the dash and you clean it up quickly, but then a week goes by you notice the vent knob is hard to rotate, and you think, well that sucks!!!!

Cut to... a year later, after you are frustrated by the vent that won't close or open, and then you wonder, how can I fix this...

The fix: Plenty of soap included

Honestly I wasn't sure I was going to be able to fix the problem, but I wanted to give it a try.  I knew that it was probably coffee syrup that got inside the vent that caused the problem, but how to clean that off, it's all inside the vent.  I had a good idea but I needed to take apart the vent.

What I ended up doing was taking out the plastic Vent and washing it with HOT water and SOAP.

Hot Water and Plenty of Soap, Vent wash

This is a link to my youtube link, if you want to see the entire video.

Youtube link: Vent fix video

Thank you for checking out my Blog, until next time.

Broken Sun Visor replacement

Broken Visor, Passenger side.

If you own a BMW E90, chances are that your passenger side visor is broken, they usually break on the clip to the right of the mirror.  I have to say I've had 2 visor replaced already today being the second time. I am not exactly sure how or when it broke, but if you know anything about these visor, you know this thing is not all that great because it doesn't allow much travel on the clip.  I would say only enough travel to keep a business card or a picture on it, otherwise forget it, the clip will expand and break.  Then when it's broken, somebody will try to pull on it, not knowing it's broken and then snap! it ends up looking like mine, (picture above).

I got my Visor for $39.00 dollars on Ebay, it's much more money if you go to the Dealer.  I've had good luck on ebay, so I definitely would recommend going on Ebay to get a replacement.

This is a link to where I got my visor: eBay Visor link.

I am sure this has happened to more people, so I wanted to share my experience on how to replace it.  Let me know if you went through the same thing...

This is how to replace it:

You are going to need a T25 Torx bit,  No it doesn't use a phillips or flat head, of course it had to be complicated right...

Undo the 2 screws, as you can see they are not that long,

Move the sun visor out of the way to get access to the screws.

When you remove the screws slowly pull out the wire connection, this is for the switch, to turn ON the Light Bulb.  One of these days I'll replace the light bulb with an LED light, I'll post that when I do it.

Then unplug it.  Only 2 connections on the plug if you are interested in knowing.  1 pin is missing in the middle.

Old and New, Visor connector cable.

Then simply plug the new visor, and install the 2 screws, and you're done.

Installed Visor, when you slide to see the mirror the light should turn on, if you did everything right.



Good Luck Replacing your visor, let me know how your installation went...

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Chime speaker broken, (Fix)

Chime Speaker Broken (Fix)

After driving my car for a few years I noticed that the chime speaker sounds bad.  I found that super glue will do the trick, it's fast and easy, and I rather fix it, better than buying a new speaker, which is expensive I might add.

Center Logic 7 speaker, ( Chime Speaker )

I found that the problem is that the cone separates from the ring.  

Super Glue to the rescue, simply apply a small amount of glue all the way around, let it dry under the sun for about 30 minutes, and that's it.  The speaker is working normal again.

You can see the glue want to drip, just add a little bit.

I am no expert, I just figured why not fix it, save some money.

This is the super glue I used, in case you are wondering:

Loctite Super Glue, I got it at Walmart.

More pictures of the speaker in case you were wondering what it looked like:

After I removed the trim.

 Tip to remove the trim:  Press with your finger in the very front(drive side) of the trim, press firmly until you see the edge of the trim, and then using a small flat screw drive slowly work your way around the trim, it just snaps off.  Take your time, I broke mine rushing, just take your time, it snaps off.

Thanks, I hope this helps you.

If you want to order the super glue online, here is an Amazon link: