andrek

Hi all. I am sorry to say I found a fresh oil spot underneath my 550i today after leaving the car parked on an inclined driveway for a couple of weeks. I had taken my car to a good BMW indy shop for an oil change a couple of month ago and got an all clear, no oil leaks found, after inspection. I am farely certain there were no oil spots in the garage where I have parked my car for the past 8 months. The car has 78k miles and uses up about a quart every 2-3k miles. Did my engine spring an oil leak that has been accumulating on the undershield? Should I be looking at replacing the engine gaskets? Any input would be really appreciated.

champaign777

maybe its not from your car how y know
the only way is to inspect where is the leak

DFWBMW550i

if you know anyone with a car lift, try lifting it up and take out the liners under the car and see where its dripping from...when i first bought my 550i and i done the first oil change, i noticed a drip where the drain plug was. Someone cross threaded it and i ended up purchasing a new lower oil pan and gasket (was like $222 from ecstuning) but it could also be your valve covers, alternator bracket/gasket, timing covers, etc. (just got to find out where its dripping from or what area/side of the car all the oil is building up on....

andrek

uiUnfortunately, I am pretty sure that the oil came from my car as its the only car that has been parked in that spot for quiet some time and it looked very fresh and rather clean. I know that during my first DIY oil change I did last September small part of the oil drained on to the undershield. Once car was moved from the garage to the same inclined driveway, an oil spot formed that I had to concequently remove.

Thank you for the valuable advice. I don't have access to a lift but I do have a low profile/high lift 2.5ton scissor jack that was purchased specificly for this car (with M-Aero pack) and enough heavy duty stands to support the car at every possible lift point. This should allow me to lift the car high enough to remove the under shield and locate the source of the leak, hopefully.

I have recently experiensed a couple of rather rough starts on that incline with the front of the car facing the hill, that were resolved by adding more oil to the engine. Nether occurance lasted more than 10-15 seconds, but is it possible that this caused damage that resulted in this leak?

I will do everything to prevent this from happening in the future but looked for some "insurance" measures.The German oil/lubricant company liqui-moly
makes an oil additives called CERA TEC and motor protect
, which uses MoSO2 particals to reduce friction/wear by as much as 35%, as they claim, compared to their own synthetic oil alone. I understand the MoSO2 additives are used in aircraft engine oil to protect the engine from oil pressure loss. I would like to using try using this additive, but am concerned it may trip BMW's optical oil quality sensor. Any thoughts???

Gatriel

I vote alternator bracket gasket.

I'd go ahead and do the valve covers and upper timing chain gasket at the same time.

These problems could be so easily avoided if they would just;

1) No more 15k mile oil changes
2) No more environmentally friendly gaskets and wiring harnesses.

tonyb635

I agree, before you get too worried about it remove the under body panel and have a look up inside. There are a few mounting screws which are obvious and then it simply drops down. My car has never had a visible leak from the outside but when I removed the panels a while back I was a little surprised with the visible oil spots etc. These can come from many sources. Probably the most common is a lazy person changing the oil. There is not a lot of room there and often the oil gets on the panel which over time if not cleaned can accumulate and drip on the ground. This SUX, because a leaky car is a PITA. While you have it off you can have a look up inside to see if there are any other sources and then decide if it's something that needs immediate attention. I would get a can of engine cleaner and spray and rinse off the area then check it again in a few days. At this point, there are just too many things that could be causing the leak and you will not know until you or someone else take a look in there.

luigi524td

Good advice from others = pinpoint the oil leak source. But, your oil consumption seems very high for a "low-mileage" BMW V-8! If it's leaking and can be easily fixed, great. If it's 'burning' it ... :-(

GoRavens

Similar thing happened to me. It was actually transmission fluid. Ever have anything done with your fluid yet? There are also no low fluid indicators/warnings for trans fluid... so be careful

andrek

GoRavens, I think you might be right, the spot on the ground is far enough back to be coming from the transmission. I used the dipstic to compare engine oil to the fluid I found on the ground and my engine oil is much darker. I have not had transmission fluid changed yet. Is there any way to check the levels? What did you do in your case?

tonyb635

1. I've never had a 15000 mile oil change. Even if I let it go, it was always much less than this on the E60. Just had the F10 serviced today. It had 10,200 miles and oddly enough it now says 6000 until next change. My guess is that it has something to do with, hell who knows why? I normally change the oil at 6000 on e60 and then again when the indicator tells me to. I view this counter like I view the miles remaining on fuel. Mine tells me when I fill up 600 miles to empty tank. I wish!

2. All manufactures have to be good corporate citizens and produce environmentally friendly products. When supplier produce parts they are held to the MDS system where the item is assigned a IMDS number which is generated for that specific product. Who would want to support products that when they end up going into landfills cause serious disruptions and environmentally unsafe conditions. Sure, they still do this, but it's against the laws. So the parts are designed to deteriorate over time. You should see my sons Mazda, all of the window seals look like they are 100 years old and cracked and flaking. So it's just not BMW. The coating on the wires is not recycled but it does have to conform to the same laws. Most of us have issues with the AE wire chaffing, in this case, this is from the heat generated at the source.