Hi all,
Greetings from stormy Scotland. I am a newcomer to owning a BMW. I recently bought a 2006 E60 535D MSport from London and drove it up to Scotland. It is stock - still has a DPF, EGR etc. However it could be remapped but with no reference point it is hard to tell (my current car is a 2008 2.7tdi A6 so it doesn't quite match the smoothness of a 3L with twin turbos!). I may use my code reader soon to check boost levels and compare to stock. NB: there doesn't seem to be a lot of black smoke so maybe not?

I am looking for some help, advice and stories regarding owning an E60 - anything is appreciated. I have a few issues which I aim to fix in the coming weeks (when the weather is better).
Here are my issues below

• The rocker (valve) cover gasket is leaking oil which has left the left hand side (facing the car) of my engine bay in a nice saturated black.

Do you have any advice when it comes to replacing these - specifically any other parts I should acquire? as well as other things I should replace while there. I am planning on replacing the injector o-rings as well as the vortex filter at the same time.

• Blue smoke on cold start

This one is slightly worrying. The day before it was much worse with blue smoke coming out on revs, we had a look last night and seen there was a loose screw on what seems to be a turbo intake pipe, after tightening this the blue smoke on revs went away - however, upon inspection this morning the cold start smoke still persists. Please see photo of the culprit screw and pipe below:


My guess is that the oil is there as a result of it leaking from the rocker cover down to this pipe. This may explain the cold start blue smoke (see other photo below). It may also be leaky valve stem seals - has anyone tried them DIY and if so any advice? Any further parts to check that could be the cause would be ideal.


Any advice would be highly appreciated - anyway - onto the other issue!

• Steering lock fault

Upon startup (key in) I intermittently receive a steering lock message, scanning with a (BMW specific) code reader reveals the following error codes:
A112 ELV Fault, A116 Critical Status, el.sterring lock
I have looked online and have found some explanations as to the cause of these issues but I am hoping anyone who has ran into these before has some advice.

These are the main issues I have currently and I plan to work through them and (hopefully) fix them all. Any link to good deals on parts would be extremely helpful!
If you need any more information feel free to ask!

Thank you so much for taking your time to read through another leaky bm post and I highly appreciate any advice you have. Lastly here's some photos of the car from the outside below:


Cheers!