Yendor1972

I'm pretty sure my car hates me. In the year and a half that I have owned it I have yet to be able to drive it for 2 weeks straight. I fixed all of the electrical gremlins in it and a week later it started spewing oil out of the oil pan gasket, not just a little drip, literally spewing. I finally got around to getting that fixed last week and picked it up last Wednesday and worked from home. I drove it to work (45 min each way) on Monday. Thinking I would make sure that the oil was not still leaking I pulled up the oil level indicator as i got near home. It showed that it was low, then suddenly it was lower with a warning to add more oil. I got home and checked under the car and no oil dripping, where was it going. The FIL was there and he opened up the coolant overflow and there was my oil. The car ran fine when I parked in the drive way.

My question, is this indicative of a OFHG failure? Is this a head gasket issue? I'm trying to figure out when I should cut my losses and burn this f***in' car to the ground. I'm trying to make it my daily driver to cut my expenses, my wife was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and I know there will be lots of medical expenses coming our way. Any help would be appreciated.

gman6262

I feel for you, that's got to be frustrating. What's the mileage on the car, and has the OFHG ever been changed? The OFHG is relatively simple to change, may be worth cleaning everything up and starting with that. The head gasket is another story, obviously the turbos have to come off and there's a lot more work involved.

neilv

Headgaskets arn't an issue on these cars so unless you've overheated it or beat the hell out of it; Its doubtful.

My main guess would be a bad OFH gasket install

Yendor1972

The car currently has 163,000 miles on it. I don't think the OFH gasket has ever been replaced, at least it wasn't listed in the extensive repair documentation that the car came with.

When searching on O'reilly's website my local store showed the correct gasket set that I needed in stock. To my surprise they actually had it there, the manager explained that someone else had ordered it and never came to pick it up. Their loss, my gain. It will go down on Sunday.

gman6262

Good luck - let us know how it works out.

alaskasail

What I don't understand is how cars and trucks with a 100,000 miles on them are advertised on Craigslist as "low miles" with no leaks etc. and these $71,000 BMWs leak like sieves. Also I wonder why mechanics insist on installing OEM parts.which failed in the first place..Who makes those parts? After replacing the OFH gasket (that was fun) I'm in the same situation and have purchased a complete oil pan and valve cover gasket sets to stem the hemorrhaging..

I'll be monitoring this thread and will contribute if I ae anything worthwhile.

Yendor1972

It was still a bit too cold this weekend to get this done. I need to do a complete flush of the cooling system and the water I need to use to do that may have frozen if I didn't get it done quickly. I don't have enough room in my garage to do the work with the door closed. Living in MN can be a challenge for working on cars.

amesser325

Did you get both OFHGs? I think the cooler/filter hsg is the worse contributor but since you're there... Also, I assume the N54 is the same as the N52 WRT aluminum bolts on the OFH to head joint so if you haven't gotten those I'd order em up.

I feel ya on working outside - just moved to a new house with a similar garage setup. We (Louisville) haven't had as cold as you guys but 20F in an unheated garage is not fun at all. Especially coming from a heated/cooled garage previously.

Hopefully this gets you on good reliability terms. I've now had 2 E61s and have had mostly good luck, to where I actually sold my 15 M235i 6MT so I could get my 2nd E61.

Andy

Yendor1972

Yes, I was able to get both. I suppose I should order up the bolts. Thanks for the heads up.

Yendor1972

The deed is done. I had a buddy help me out (this is his car now, he did not pay this price for it though https://jalopnik.com/for-17-500-this...r-w-1729164829). He helped a lot. The gaskets were hard like plastic. Got everything out and back in in a couple hours, taking our time to make sure we had everything cleaned up. Did a flush and new coolant and an oil change. I took it for a test drive of about 8 miles with no issues. I drove it the 28+ miles to work this morning and she purrs like a kitten. I also replaced the sway bar end links. I am so glad to be able to save this beautiful car. She is so much fun to drive. Hoping that this is the last work I have to do to it for a while, but the brake fluid light is on now. I suppose I should do that at some point too. Thank you for all of your advice.