Also known as: s62, s62b50, 4.9 v8, e39 m5 engine, z8 engine
BMW M's 4.9 V8 — the E39 M5's engine, and the Z8's.
It is an M-division engine and it is not the M62 it is derived from: individual throttle bodies, double-VANOS on both banks, a semi-dry-sump oiling system and a much higher state of tune. Advice written for the ordinary V8 is wrong here more often than it is right.
⚑ The VANOS units are the defining maintenance item, and their failure is gradual rather than sudden: a soft bottom end, a rattle at idle and a check-engine light for cam timing, usually traced to the seals inside the unit. It is a known rebuild rather than a mystery.
The rod bearings are the item that decides an engine's fate, and the pattern is well documented enough that a preventive replacement on a high-mileage car is a normal thing to do rather than a panic. Oil analysis is the cheap way to ask the question.
Its throttle actuators and idle behaviour are electronic and age badly; a hunting idle on one of these is very often the actuator motors rather than a vacuum leak.
Parts are M-specific and priced accordingly, which is usually what decides whether a fault is worth chasing.
Cars fitted with this engine
2 generations, across 1 make. From the authored catalogue — an absent car means the catalogue has not reached it, not that the engine was never fitted.
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
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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.
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