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Today was a perfect 60 degree day in my area of North Carolina so I thought I would work on the oil leak on my wife’s 2004, BMW 325i. I am not a big fan of working on this car. It makes me look stupid in every way. Today I managed to drop nuts and bolts down in that plastic pan that covers the bottom of the engine. I also managed to strip a 30 Torx bolt. I hate this car.
Anyway, on to my question. My plan of attack is to replace the valve cover gasket for that oil leak. When I finally managed to get the cover off, I noticed a plastic cover over ONE of the two camshafts. It was covered with a lot of black sludge. The bottom of the valve cover also has an a lot of black sludge.
Questions:
1) Should there be two covers, one for each camshaft?
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The cover is for one side only.
http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts.do … g=11&fg=15
By looking at the color of the engine, I don’t think you have the sludge problem
> 30 Torx bolt
You mean T30 star bolts (reverse torx)? BMW don’t use torx bolts in engine covers. The only place BMW uses torx bolts would be in transmission bell housing.
Valve gasket leak is a common problem for these engines and should take you about 40 – 50 minutes to replace these and parts are dirt cheap. The most common leak is through the spark plug O-rings.The engine looks clean to me.If you can remove the plastic cover try cleaning it with brake cleaner. Replace the stripped bolt and finish the job.
Skim- great post good luck and keep us posted. C8-)Yea don’t clean it because it doesn’t look bad and you might do more harm than good but perhaps increase your oil change interval by 1000K meaning do it 1000K sooner than you have in the past. Just use the oil the engine calls for I don’t recommend switching to synthetic.
Quoted From skim3544:
The cover is for one side only.
http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts.do … g=11&fg=15
By looking at the color of the engine, I don’t think you have the sludge problem
Hey, thanks for that link with the diagram Skim.
Your welcome,
It is the official BMW parts catalog – this is the same CD that BMW dealer uses to identify the parts.Here is another link for BMW TIS:
http://tis.spaghetticoder.org/
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