545iBMW

How do you prevent oil leaks or at least prolong the life of the gaskets?
I recently had various gaskets replaced on my 545i ($22xx) from an indy.
I got 68K miles on the ODO and typically, dont drive the car on bad weather - which means, car sits most winter as well as on rainy days.

Shop said that I should drive the car more to prevent leaks.
Can someone enlighten me?
Can I drive the car once a week to work and not worry about gasket leaks? Or can I just run the engine at idle 2x a week in my garage? Or do I really need to drive it every day?

devildawg712

Man, I wish there was one universal answer to this, but the fact of the matter is that there isn't. 68k miles tho?!! That's insane! Good for you! My 04 545 has approx. 125k miles now and I've been dealing with leaks on and off forever. It's hit or miss dependent on the car, the type of weather it's exposed to and even how much you drive or don't drive it apparent to your situation. My e60 is a garage queen now so the leak really doesn't bother me as much.

I too have been visited by the leaking gremlin as of late and I'm at the crossroad where I'm trying to decide to just accept and allow the car to leak while monitoring, or fix it. I really want to keep the car till it's good and dead so I may have to fork out the cash.

dingolfing

All cars need regular exercise, especially ours. As rubber gaskets age, they get brittle and shrink. Nothing can be done to cure the brittle condition, however, regular applications of heat keeps the shrinking in check.

If your Bimmer is more than 5 years old, and you park it for over 2 weeks, you may notice a small puddle of oil underneath the car. More than likely the oil pan gaskets (and likely all the other gaskets) shrank just enough to allow some seepage. When you drive the car again, the next night you won't get an oil puddle. The engine heat enlarged the gaskets back to operating condition.

As another example when the gaskets get really bad, before I replaced my upper timing cover gasket, it would leak immediately after starting the engine cold. Oil just kept oozing out, and continued to do so, until the engine got hot enough. Then the leaking stopped. It wouldn't leak again until the engine was cold and all gaskets shrank. In this case, the aluminum metal portion of the rubber-lined gasket was what expanded enough to stop the leaking. The thin rubber strip wasn't doing it's job anymore, which is why it had to be replaced. I don't know why BMW chose not to use a thicker solid rubber upper timing cover gasket like the valve cover gasket, because the timing covers always fail before the valve covers do.

The frequency of heat cycles required to keep older gaskets from leaking would depend on how old they are. I'd say driving the car at least once a week should be fine.

Ultimately, though, you will still have to replace the problem gaskets when their time has come.

seanjordan20

Why would you want to get rid of an option you paid for at the dealership? LOL We all have these issues. It will never stop as long as you have the car. I have replaced many gaskets on my car. The one day I went to a wise indy shop mechanic and he told if your leak is not pouring uncontrollably then don't fix it because you will end up spending more than you want to on gaskets. I have had a leak on my pan gasket for 3 years now. Unless it starts leaking where I have to put oil in it once a month then I will keep the $1200 in my pocket. I have spent over $2000 on gaskets and wont do it again unless it is really needed

twh

I agree. If the leak is only "sweating" and not ending up as a pool of oil in the garage, find out where it is coming from, make sure it isn't a critical thing and then just let it be if it is not. Of course, make sure the place it's leaking from has enough fluid to not cause damage. For example, you don't want an x-drive transfer case to run low as there is only a quart in there. Just about any engine oil leak that isn't major is probably not a problem.

KyleB

Buy a Lexus.

quanger

Kyle, you've always crack me up LoL.
+1 on getting a Lexus for less preventive maintenance.

cmyachtie

Unfortunately for you I guess these 545's are meant to be driven........case in point, I have not had any oil leaks myself and it' s my daily driver, however on 24th of February. I went into hospital for hip surgery. And my car was parked in my garage for over 6 weeks wen I noticed an oil leak and found that rather strange but reading this thread here explained it nicely as since I have been driving my car again regarly no more oil leak.......not a single drop!!

KyleB

Check out the new GS F-Sport. It's a seriously nice car. I've driven nothing but BMW since the late 90s, but I'd buy that over an F10 5 series any day of the week.

If BMW wants to gain customers, it could double its sales volume by injecting some reliability into its cars, and I don't mean the kind of reliability that suddenly vaporizes as soon as the warranty/lease period is up. I'm talking about '10 years down the road' reliability.

What's the common anecdote about BMW? "Don't own one without a warranty!!" Maybe someone at BMW should look into that...

cmyachtie

Don't hold your breath on that, as long as sales continue like they are currently I am not expecting any improvements, when sales plummet maybe we can expect better reliability from Munich.