Also known as: m60, m62, m62tu, m62b44, m60b40, 540i engine, 740i engine, nikasil v8, m62tub44
BMW's first modern V8s — the M60 of 1992 at 3.0 and 4.0 litres, and the M62 that replaced it at 3.5 and 4.4, in the 5, 7 and 8 Series, the E53 X5, the Z8 and, under licence, the Bentley Arnage.
The M60's Nikasil story is the one to know, and it is a fuel problem rather than an engine problem. Its bores were plated with Nikasil, which the sulphur in some markets' petrol attacked — the plating wore, compression fell, and the engine developed a hot-start misfire and eventually would not run. BMW replaced a great many blocks under warranty and switched to Alusil on the M62. A poor-running M60 with low and uneven compression is this until proven otherwise, and a car sold in a low-sulphur market may well never have suffered it. Check whether the block was replaced before assuming either way.
On both engines the timing chain guides are plastic and they get brittle, so a rattle at start-up is a chain-guide job rather than ordinary noise. The valley pan gasket beneath the intake leaks oil and coolant into the vee, where it is invisible until it emerges somewhere misleading — and on the M62's VANOS the seals harden and cost low-end response before they set a code.
Cars fitted with this engine
6 generations, across 3 makes. From the authored catalogue — an absent car means the catalogue has not reached it, not that the engine was never fitted.
Land Rover
Information, not instruction
CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.
Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
Posted about this engine
Be the first to write this up
Nothing posted about this yet. Whatever you found is worth writing down — even a dead end saves someone the same afternoon.
What makes one worth reading:
- The car — make, model, year and engine. The same fault behaves differently on each.
- What you measured, not only what you replaced.
- What actually fixed it — or that nothing did, which is worth knowing too.
Sign in or create an account to add what you found about M60 / M62.