My BMW 335i

[PranK]

God damn. In 2 or 3 years I might not need 4 doors anymore! What a concept!

[PranK]

So today I went well outside my comfort zone (again) to replace my valve cover gasket. 

I have had a big leak over the exhaust leading to a lot of smoke and smell every time I drove it. The leak was in the rear driver's corner. 

The job wasn't hard as such, just a bit finicky and time consuming. 

The old gasket was rock hard and broken right where the leak was. 

The leaky corner had so much sitting oil in it. 

The good news to my amateur eyes was no buildup or sludge under the cover. It all looked fairly nice in there.

 

I haven't started it yet. I ran out of light and body when putting the coils and injector loom back in. Probs only 30min left for the morning. 

I was so nervous putting the cover back on, I must have lifted it 5 times to make sure the gasket was still seated properly.

God it's going to be nice to be leak free and not make other traffic light queuers think my car is about to explode.

[PranK]

My happiness was short lived. 

The car has a violently rough idle. If I get the revs up it runs really nicely albeit with some very small misses occasionally.

I have checked and double checked all my connections and vacuum lines. I've even replaced some unrelated vacuum lines to to and find the problem. 

The codes are all over the place. Throttle position, throttle vacuum, o2 sensor 1, o2 sensor 2, occasional misfire code. Makes me think a wire has been broken or something isn't clipped in properly but there's so little around where I was working to miss plugging in or to break. Super weird. 

It's only at warm idle. Cold start is beautiful until the revs drop below 850 - 900 rpm then all hell breaks loose.

[The Bogan]

1 hour ago, PranK said:

My happiness was short lived. 

The car has a violently rough idle. If I get the revs up it runs really nicely albeit with some very small misses occasionally.

I have checked and double checked all my connections and vacuum lines. I've even replaced some unrelated vacuum lines to to and find the problem. 

The codes are all over the place. Throttle position, throttle vacuum, o2 sensor 1, o2 sensor 2, occasional misfire code. Makes me think a wire has been broken or something isn't clipped in properly but there's so little around where I was working to miss plugging in or to break. Super weird. 

It's only at warm idle. Cold start is beautiful until the revs drop below 850 - 900 rpm then all hell breaks loose.

Did you disconnect the battery for a while?

It might need to relearn how to BMW, maybe?????

[PranK]

41 minutes ago, The Bogan said:

Did you disconnect the battery for a while?

It might need to relearn how to BMW, maybe?????

Yep battery was off the whole time. I did have to reset about 1000 "adaptations" in the various ecus but no love. 

I might pull the throttle body out and give it a clean but I'm not convinced.

I don't get why it runs fine at higher revs. The cold start today was beautiful! 

[The Bogan]

1 hour ago, PranK said:

Yep battery was off the whole time. I did have to reset about 1000 "adaptations" in the various ecus but no love. 

I might pull the throttle body out and give it a clean but I'm not convinced.

I don't get why it runs fine at higher revs. The cold start today was beautiful! 

Does it have a vacuum brake booster?

If it does, and the booster isn't connected you will get TPS and all sorts of other codes, and it will struggle to idle

Have you driven the car, checked the brakes?

[PranK]

2 hours ago, The Bogan said:

Does it have a vacuum brake booster?

If it does, and the booster isn't connected you will get TPS and all sorts of other codes, and it will struggle to idle

Have you driven the car, checked the brakes?

I have driven it slowly around the block, didn't notice any issue with the brakes. It is a vacuum brake booster.

[PranK]

So, after going through everything multiple times and even cleaning plugs with contact cleaner, I am making no inroads at all. 

I found one post from a dude who had a little pinch in his gasket and so I'm convinced it has to be a loss of vacuum caused by this. So, I'll take it all off (it'll be much quicker this time) and inspect and reseat the gasket. Its a genuine BMW rubber gasket, hopefully theres no damage. 

Also, as the valve cover is plastic they can crack. Mine inspected ok last time but I'll have an extra close look this time.

Thank god I work from home. Can't believe the X5 has gone out in sympathy though. It needs a new front diff or diff rebuild. 

🤞

[PranK]

I've replaced a heap of vacuum lines, some visibly leaking. Made no difference.

[The Bogan]

Need something reliable, like a Mazda (non-rotary), or a Honda, or a .......... Commodore 🤣, the only issue with my cars is me 🫤

[niZmO_Man]

sorry to be a bummer but... B58
LOL

[PranK]

Found the problem. I cracked part of the valve cover when trying to pry it off. Theres a big leak there.

I did see this when I did it but the part that I cracked looked like it was just for mounting the fuel rail on and not for vacuum. After asking on Reddit, it appears that part is 100% pcv related.

I'm slightly irritated at having to swap it out for a third time but also super happy to have found the problem. I can fix and move on.

More fuel for you N54 haters, the valve covers are plastic.

 

[joshuaho96]

17 hours ago, PranK said:

Found the problem. I cracked part of the valve cover when trying to pry it off. Theres a big leak there.

I did see this when I did it but the part that I cracked looked like it was just for mounting the fuel rail on and not for vacuum. After asking on Reddit, it appears that part is 100% pcv related.

I'm slightly irritated at having to swap it out for a third time but also super happy to have found the problem. I can fix and move on.

More fuel for you N54 haters, the valve covers are plastic.

 

I was going to say generally speaking if it's like 80k+ miles since the valve cover has been replaced you don't even attempt to just replace the gasket. The valve cover itself will likely be warped and it will continue to leak after replacement, just not as severely. The valve cover PCV diaphragm can also tear and create a major vacuum leak.

Welcome to BMW life. My friend's 2006 330i was t-boned and totaled out so he also just got a 335i so I can add to this thread now.

Edited June 17, 2024 by joshuaho96

[PranK]

4 hours ago, joshuaho96 said:

I was going to say generally speaking if it's like 80k+ miles since the valve cover has been replaced you don't even attempt to just replace the gasket. The valve cover itself will likely be warped and it will continue to leak after replacement, just not as severely. The valve cover PCV diaphragm can also tear and create a major vacuum leak.

Welcome to BMW life. My friend's 2006 330i was t-boned and totaled out so he also just got a 335i so I can add to this thread now.

I must have read 100 DIY's and watched 200 DIY Youtube videos with most people saying just grab a new cover and, well, despite my normal aproach to these things (replace it all!!) I didn't get a cover. I don't know why I didn't, I'd already ordered a bunch of bits from FCP and it would have made perfect sense to put that in the order. 

Anyway, I'm not getting OEM as its just crazy money, even from the states its 900 ish delivered. So, I got an OE Elring one, same as they sell at FCP but local so I can get this fixed this week. Our X5 is waiting for a new diff so we find ourselves in a common scenario of having 2 broken BMW's on the driveway! 🤣

[PranK]

We're back! 

The new valve cover arrived on Friday and I fitted it Friday night and in the rain on Saturday. 

The car runs perfectly! Also as it gets through the residual oil there's less smoke which is really nice. Hopefully that's all gone after an hour long drive today. Anxious me will go around the whole cover tomorrow with a mirror and torch to make sure gasket is where it should be and that oil is also where it should be.

It was a much tighter fit! As you'd expect and I did the torque sequence twice as it kind of settled into place. I might go around it again just to be sure.

[PranK]

Ok, so here the embarrassing 'fess up' post.

Here's the crack, or broken part of the old valve cover.

Pretty obvious break and in hindsight it's quite the face palmer 🤦‍♂️ but let me explain why I didn't think this was a problem.

This side part of the valve cover is an additional piece, it protrudes from the main valve cover and it's also where the fuel rail mounts..... 

You can see the rail at the bottom and you can see this external piece hanging off the side of the cover. It almost looks sandwiched in this pic. 

Here's another cover with that side piece ... 

On top of this, when looking at the inside of the cover, there were no openings(*) for that section.

So I really just thought I'd broken some crispy plastic mount for the fuel rail.... Until somebody drew my attention to the air openings at the BOTTOM of the cover, not INSIDE the cover. So, I had a ginormous PCV leak.

The cover needed to go and I should have taken everybodies advice and got a new one in the first place. The original one is just fried, its really brittle. It was nice to have the new one be really snug in position and the screws were slightly tight to do up which was completely different to the original ones that almost undid themselves.

 

 

[PranK]

I do have a tiny tiny misfire occasionally but I think it's because I got a little fuel down into a plug tube so I'll pull the coils out and see if I can dry those out. 

[PranK]

So, some plans for the old girl...

• Blackline LSD - Given the cost, its doable over the RacingDiffs LSD conversion. I can get it landed for about $1200. Currently I'm the only car in the family that can't get up Bec's mum's crazy steep and slippery driveway. All other cars are fine but I sit spinning one wheel.   How embarrassment. 
• An exhaust - I'm not sure what I want here but something just cat back as I can't hear my exhaust at all from inside the car and I need to constantly check tach on the track to see if my shift was accepted (gearbox wont allow high rev downshifts and I need to check the gear or tach a lot to make sure it went through because I can't hear it).
• Either solid aluminium or super hard poly rear subframe bushings - The back squirms a lot at the moment, if I give it anything at all on a slight turn or on unhappy surface it just moves around too much. Apparently very little nvh with the aluminium bushings but these can damage the underside because they dont give anything. A little undecided.
• I got a replacement headlight for my 'fish tank' headlight. I'll sand both headlights back and clear coat them. I've found this is the best way to restore horrible BMW headlight covers.
• Rear adjustable camber arms - I'd like to be able to dial a little bit of camber in on the rear.
• I would still like a cheap fixed seat to swap in for the track. I flop around everywhere in the stock seats despite them being the M Sport seats.
• I'll need to change my oil filter housing gasket soon as I think I have a small leak.
• I'd like to check the condition of my intake/valves because the direct injection doesn't clean them up and if theres buildup I'd like to clean them. Tho, I don't see this as much of a common issue in AU over the US. I'm not sure why.

Thats all I can think of. 

 

[PranK]

I forgot this from last month. A small one but made a difference to me. 

My gear knob and boot was just so gross. I hated looking at them. 

I really wanted a genuine BMW Performance knob and boot but they came in around $500 or so which is just stupid. So for months I watched eBay and found a dude selling a set from the states for about $200 delivered. 

I had to perform minor surgery on the boot as LHD is different but I got it to fit and it looks so much nicer.

I love them. As much as I can love an auto shifter at least 🤣

Now the surround looks gross. I guess I'll just keep going until the grossness is all eliminated! 

[PranK]

Did a bit of a repair on my headlights over the weekend.

The drivers side headlight turns into a swimming pool every time it rains, so I bought a replacement. Got a bargain at $380 with the next cheapest being $550. I had to swap my angel eyes bulb, Xenon, high beam flasher and indicator over from the old light and once I opened the new one it was just so full of sand and shit everywhere I reckon it was a Simpson Desert recover vehicle or something. It was terrible and I now know why it was cheap.

Anyway, after swapping my main bulbs over I thought I'd clean up the install of the angel eyes bulbs in both drivers and passengers headlights. The wiring in the headlight is just cracking so badly and rather than pull it out to replace it, I just fed some heat shrink down over the cracked parts to protect it. Also cleaned up some joins.

The factory pre LCI angel eyes are like an orange/brown and are hideous.

I also wet sanded and clear coated the headlights but it was probably too cold. They're better than they were but not great still so I'll have another go shortly as I can do this on the car.

I also had to replace the adaptive controller on the new headlight, the last one had clearly been very wet and was filled with sand. I had a replacement one here as they are not exactly reliable.