OK, some time now since this happened and I have recently sold the car. After a lot of troubleshooting, and the obvious removal of injectors and cam shaft cover, I saw that doctor Dean was partially right. the serpentine belt snapped and got mangled behind the crankshaft pulley, presssed in the main crankshaft seal. This was of course bad but the worst thing was that it caused the engine to stop for some milliseconds and this again caused the chain tensioner to probably loose tension on the chain. When it decided to continue it probably caused the chain to jump a few teeth, and it also moved the intake cam shaft pulley bolts to one end. This again caused the valves to be in the wrong place when several of the pistons rose to tdc and bent valves and six out of seven cam shaft bearings cracked. so yu can say that the timing was off.

I had to change the cylinder head, timing chain tensioner and chains and some gaskets, new oil etc. Waiting for parts was the worst part, but I had bought a new car so it wasnt a big problem. I had it running again in august last year.

The culprit was of course the serpentine belt to begin with, and I had changed this the year before. Maybe it was a bad belt, maybe I managed to damage it when replacing it, or maybe it wasnt properly installed in some way I will never know, but anyway the lesson learned here is that either way it is a smart move to change both belts, ac and serp. I managed to hit the worst case scenario, normally the belt snaps and nothing else happens.

I know that diesels arent quite that common in the US as in europe, but I think that the guys in the bmw communities can manage to meet and help each other out when a fellow member has problems with his car no matter which type of engine or technology it is. a good conversation can help you see problems from a different angle, and may help you to find a solution. It doesnt matter if the suggestions are wrong. You can check it out and cross it off the list.

If someone is interested follow this link to see pictures of what happened. Sorry about the english, it is originally in norwegian and google translate is doing its thing, badly.

https://translate.google.no/translate?hl=&sl=no&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fbimmers.no%2Fforums%2Ftopic%2F819733-e60-530d-vil-ikke-starte%2F

also visit my instagram @dag_ragnar, with some pics in a post from june last year.

It will not be your egr mate I can tell you that I’m from the Uk any people that come here trying to help you with diesels mate don’t listen to them Americans don’t have a clue about the Diesel BMW’s I’m Diesel Bmw expert I had 530D myself now camshaft faults are common on these cars but I can also tell you that’s wrong the signal problem is your crackshaft sensor on the back of your gearbox as your serpentine belt snapped which I don’t know why that was why have you never changed it 530d is a beautiful car and should be looked after properly which a belt is £10 why wasn’t this changed earlier and what has happened as your belt has come lose the crank and timing gears have jumped the wrong angle as you would expert the car driving the timing in one angle and then belt let’s go stops driving the crank and it’s locked itself up and if it’s auto even worse you need to redo the crankshaft timing and that is a must espically for diesels with the injector timing not only that your diesel high pressure pump is driven by the belt aswell so you need to be checking your timing immeditey its nothing to do with sensors or battery power I assure you the. 530d are very tempermwntal and unless you understand them your in a world of trouble luckily it’s a engine I only know way to well in working on a e53 3.0D now as we speak but not with that problem as I’ve overly looked after this car

I have done that already and the egr along with it. Also hooked off the turbo hose. No change.

Here is a video of starting attempt with egr off. It is the same with egr on also, just less spectacular if you can say that.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zpficiz71xshl21/IMG_4782.MOV?dl=0

Unplug your mass airflow sensor then try starting the car , any difference?

Another test this morning before going to work. took out the camshaftsensor, but still had it connected. Turned the ignition on and measured 12v over pin 1 as it should be. Measured 4.94 volts over pin 2, and when holding a piece of metal up to the sensor it showed ~0 volts. To me this is a working camshaft sensor.

Ok, so when deleting the sensor error code the engine cranks and then fires for a second and then dies, a couple of seconds later it fires again, but dies after a second. If I continue to press the button, no more attempts to fire is heard. My guess that the code is thrown at that time and the engine will not try to start anymore. I could try to check this tonight, and see if the code appears if I just let it turn for a second or two.

Should I try to reset the sync between the EWS and the DDE? What could be the worst case scenario if I did that?

Will it help at all? Have heard that if the immobilizer has turned on it should be a code somewhere, and it actually shuts down the fuel pump. And I have fuel pressure.

Tried this evening again, as I came home from a little trip. Took off the alternator cables and the glow plug module. Inpa reported the glow plug module missing of course, but the 3EC1 was still there. Got the wife out to crank it while I took off the camshaft sensor to check with my own eyes that the camshaft turned aorund, and it did. Measured resistance on the sensor and got 1450 ohms on one of them and 1560 ohms on the other. what should the value be?

Next thing is to check the wire harness. Is there contact between the camshaft sensor and the ECU?

But I am running out of options here.

Inpa reports fuel pressure when cranking. There is also a diagnostic function for the fuel pumps and they seem to be ok.

Have not had time to test without glow plug module, will try to do it this evening.

When the coolant pipe was torn off. The only other thing that could be damaged is of course the alternator. I will try without that also. My theory is that something drains power making the camshaft sensor output to be wrong. I hav seen 9,5 volts on the error codes.

Are you getting fuel, is it pressurized?

Ok, tried to detach the TB and it threw the code 43E2 along with the 4687. I have also noticed that there is a code 4242 for one of the glow plugs. The glowing period normally is so fast that you dont notice it, but now it takes a few seconds, and every time. I have noticed that the error codes also have information about battery voltage, and even though I have a fairly new battery, and it has charged over night, I am getting some ridicolously low voltages. Could be that glowing which would certainly drain the battery. Next thing before troubleshooting the wire to the camshaft sensor itself wil be to detach the glowing module and/or get hold of a start booster.