identifying a BSM delete or gear drive

Is there any way to identify short of pulling a BHW apart to tell if the engine has been gear drive upgraded or deleted?. A 130k engine to be exact with no written history.

Only surefire way is to pull the pan.

Some have said there is increased resistance on the dipstick, but I checked pre and post (Delete) on mine, and felt no difference.

If I had one, I would drain the oil and try to use a borescope type camera into the drain hole and have a look inside the pan.

Delete would be easy to spot - geared would require a little camera manipulation to see if the black plastic cover is still in place (chained version).

I was too slow

change the oil if it takes 5qts its delete

^^^
Yep. I noticed that my first oil change after the delete the engine oil capacity went up, roughly by 1 liter as compared to pre-delete.

Yeah I just did my oil, despite having it apart for the TC I didn't pull my pan and check for sure, hoped it was deleted and wouldn't have mattered anyway I needed it up and going and didn't have the time or $ to do the delete right now...4qts has me in the middle of the hash unfortunately, i was hoping it would need 5! you guys are saying 5 qts gets you middle of the hash area? all i did was drain oil and replace filter, I didn't suck out filter housing or anything...

If you still had a BSM, 4qts would have brought it to the fill line and in your case most likely a little more

I just bought an 05 wagon, I crawled under it, with magnifying lens and very bright LED light inspected the screws on the oil pan, they all were marked, so someone had the pan off, I'll be changing the oil next if it takes 5qts I know delete was done

I've recently acquired 3 cars I want to check for BSM status and wondered if anyone had any updates on bsm identification? I have a Harbor freight tight spot camera and am gonna try that and will try to post photos of what I see.

Chances are your 130k engine still has chain. Since I believe you are going to have engine out, plan on dropping the pan and doing the job, its really not that hard with engine out. I did mine(geared) that way and you can give the pan a good cleanout at same time.

thundershorts said:

Chances are your 130k engine still has chain. Since I believe you are going to have engine out, plan on dropping the pan and doing the job, its really not that hard with engine out. I did mine(geared) that way and you can give the pan a good cleanout at same time.

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wish I had a 130k engine. I just bought a nice wagon with 215k and a bad tranny. Engine sounds fine. Could it still be on the original chained bsm? if so, what would be the problem with replacing the chain? Probably be hard to find those parts? I guess the chain driven bsm is intrinsically weak so probably a non starter.

My 210k sedan still had the chain bsm. At 215 i did the deleted/5 speed swap and the hex keys were starting to go.