E30 318i: Water in rear footwell - windscreen cowl leaking? Koi carp anyone??

After heavy rain I noticed the rear passenger foot well in the E30 is full of water. Can't see any signs of water ingress through the door seals or any stains in the headlining, but am told a common cause of this is the windscreen-cowl, so will be looking into this soon. For now, I have drilled a nice drain hole so at least it won't be filling up again.

F10 530d: 4 new Run Flat tyres (Goodyear Excellence 255/55/17)

 My run-flats that came with the F10 have been run practically, well, flat. They were an advisory on my previous MOT and the last 12 months have not been kind to them with the F seeing a fair bit of use and the two rears are about 1mm from the wear bar, so with the next test looming its time to throw some fresh rubber on.

I went for the same, like-for-like Goodyear Excellence that were fitted when I picked the car up, in 255 / 55 / 17 size. I'm not sure if these are standard fit from BMW, but it's what the police were running on it for high-speed pursuit, so they will do for me and my mainly sedate driving style...

They aren't cheap kit. Even with a discount through work I was quoted £233 for two new tyres and I needed four. This price I would consider prohibitive just for new rubber when I can get four new regular tyres for as little as £100 the lot, but the Goodyear is what I wanted so I went for used tyres. Well, they are hardly used, with the set I bought having 7mm+ of tread left and a 2019 DOT code. Three of them have a puncture repair in the tread, but even so the deal I got was too good to turn down... £250 for all four!

Run Flats or normal tyres??

I've grown used to these Goodyear tyres over the last five years, though they would not be my first choice in normal circumstances. The grip, noise and ride are all pretty good and I've had a decent run out of them given the amount of tread left when I bought the car. They have suffered two punctures during that time and this is where the Run Flats show their worth. The first I repaired straight away, but on the other occasion I ended up driving for four days and covered 75 miles on a tyre with zero PSI, yes that's ZERO air in it and to be honest the tyre still performed perfectly and there car drove as normal. OK I would NEVER recommend anyone doing this, but yes they work and are worth the extra money they cost! The downside of this convenience is the harsh, bumpy ride due to the reinforced side-walls. This may be a big factor on low-profile tyres, for instance I had 18" alloys on my E60 with Run Flats and the ride was pretty harsh, and I would imagine it gets even worse for 19" and 20" with tiny side-walls, but with my current 17 inch rims with a 55 profile side-wall the ride is actually very good, so this argument becomes negligible! 

E46 318i Touring: Oil leak fixed! Rubber rocker-cover gasket was the culprit!

It's about time I got back to wrenching on some Beemers after a busy hiatus, so where better to start than with the massive oil-leak on my E46 318i Touring. The car hasn't seen much use over the winter months, but as I start to need it again for its cavernous load-lugging functions, I figured it was time to spend a bit more time getting it right.

I was going through about a cupful of oil every 100 miles or so (I think that is a pretty favourable estimate to be honest, more like half a litre!) and worse than the cost of all the topping-up, smoke continued to billow from not only the sides of the bonnet (hood) while stopped at traffic-lights, but also straight into the cabin with the blowers turned on. This meant for the last 12 months I have had the climate-control set to full recirculation mode and on low, making de-misting the windscreen a nightmare on colder days.

I could see the oil-leak was coming from the rear left side of the engine, as it so often the case with N42 engines and assumed it to be the vacuum-pump (like with my E46 318ci in this this post), but after removing the rocker-cover (cam-cover) I found it was actually the rubber gasket itself. The thick rubber gaskets tend to harden and go brittle over time and almost completely down the left side of the cam-cover there was noticeable leakage, primarily at the back corner, next to the vac-pump of course. The gap at the rear-left corner was so pronounced I feel you could have slipped a credit-card through with a little force and touched the back of the cam-shaft! This was allowing a constant drip of oil out onto the heat-shield and down onto the exhaust-manifold, as shown by the arrows in the picture and causing most, if not all of the smoke.

Luckily, I suppose, I have been working through the Covid epidemic, so I am classed as a 'key worker' and had a day off, so I managed to blag Euro Car Parts that it was essential work and instantly collect the new Elring gasket (£22, but eBay alternatives are as cheap as £9.50 if you can wait!) and some Corteco White instant gasket-sealant (£7), though they still had me waiting for an hour outside!

Knowing how prone the top-end seals of the N42 are to leaks and not wanting to take any chances of removing the rocker-cover again anytime soon, I slapped on a liberal bead of the Corteco sealant over the vacuum-pump ring and along the entire left-side (lower) surface of the cylinder-head top edge along with the new rubber-gasket. The job does not take long at all (I will post a guide soon), with removal and refitting of the cam-cover only taking around 30 minutes each and that's taking your time...

Needless to say, this has stopped the major part of my oil-leak in this area! Not only has the oily steam stopped from the sides of the bonnet while stationary, the smell/smoke from the climate vents has now ceased and the car is no longer consuming oil at a silly rate, so I would say job done! There is still a tiny weep of fresh oil coming from around this area, but nowhere near like before and, after a run where the engine is warm, there is no dripping pool on the under-tray! For the money I spent, the difference in convenience is worth vastly more! I would have spent the ~£30 I did in oil in a couple of weeks using the car daily, so if you have this problem, it's safe to say this is the culprit and get it sorted!

E46 Clubsport: Nathan's split rubber + other issues.

More big spending as the Clubsport gets back on the road with a new MOT, starting with 4 new Maxxis tyres for the refurbed split-rims. It's been running a bit rough, but as he started it for the first time in a month it ran a bit worse and began producing a lot of white / blue smoke from the exhaust. Fearing the head-gasket he started dismantling and found it was just one of the profile-gaskets in the rocker-cover [16 in the bottom diagram] was split and hadn't seated in the head properly the last time it was replaced and was allowing oil to spill down into the chamber and was causing the smoke. This, he assures us, is a common problem in 6-cylinder BMW petrols and had nothing to do with any 'engine-weld' products he may have also added. Never the less, with a new rubber-gasket the smoke has ceased. During the job he found the rubber intake hose was also split in two places, clearly contributing to the lack of smooth acceleration suffered since he got it, so he treated the 330 to a new one of these as well.

The MOT threw up borderline high emissions, which was waved, and both front lower ball-joints were knackered. These are usually replaced as a whole control-arm, so that's what was done and finally the Clubsport is back on the road, looking and sounding as it should with better pull and a really raspy vanos exhaust note. Next up comes replacing the lower bumper splitter sorely missing from the front end.

E60: PAS-Pump + Exhaust Vibration-Damper.

With everything else apparently working, the 530d was still of the road due to the niggling problem of an un-bleedable PAS-system and rattling exhaust.

• Bleed PAS-system with cap off reservoir and engine off, by turning the wheel lock to lock about 30 times and adding fluid until no more bubbles were coming out.
• Remove front-bumper and drive back onto ramps.
• Locate exhaust onto connecting-rods of vibration-damper.
• Modify connecting-rods to fit new exhaust position.
• Refit exhaust and reinforcement-plate.
• Refit engine centre-undertray.
• Drive off ramps, refit bumper and test drive!

PAS-Pump Bleed:

This is the hardest to bleed PAS-system I have ever come across, though the pipes / pump have been off the car for 3 weeks and could have allowed the system to drain and fill with air more than before. The pump was whining on tickover and making an almighty groan when turned in either direction. The fluid in the reservoir was also frothy white. To fully bleed it required the engine and reservoir cap to be off and the wheel turned full lock left to right about 30 times. To do this I raised the front of the car on axle-stands so the wheels were still touching, but with hardly any weight on them. The first turns lock to lock gulped the remaining fluid right into the system and so much air was coming out I kept re-checking the pipes for a leak. Eventually, the reservoir had swallowed the last of my bottle of fluid and is just about sitting up to the minimum mark, but still bubbles were popping up as the wheel was turned. The lock to lock business continued with me and my dad taking turns for quite some time until there were finally hardly any tiny bubbles rising to the surface. This whole thing was a job in itself, but the pump is very quiet now and the steering assistance is back.

Exhaust Vibration-Damper:
During the first tests there was an almighty rattle from the exhaust from tickover up to about 2k rpm. I assumed this to be because I had left off the exhaust 'vibration-dampers' that brace the bottom of the cat to the gearbox and stop it shaking. I discarded replacing it at first as, if you don't remember exactly the way it all fits together and start bolting your gearbox and exhaust back on willy nilly, then it's impossible to figure out. The long bracket with 3 holes fits around the edge of the gearbox bell-housing, held in by one of the large E14 and two of the smaller E10 Torx-bolts that hold the box to the engine. The connecting-rods then run from the foremost stud on the cat to the N/S stud on the bracket; and from the rearmost stud on the cat to the O/S stud on the bracket, as shown in the picture from TIS. Only trouble was, neither of the rods went anywhere near the brackets. I'm not sure if the entire engine and gearbox is in a slightly different position from before, or it's just the exhaust out of line, or both, but the eyelets on the left-right rod were about 5mm too long for the studs; and the front-rear ones were almost an inch too short. After 2 frustrating hours spent removing mounts and trying to relocate the gearbox / bracket to meet the exhaust I gave up and decided to modify the connecting-rods to fit the new gap lengths. The only remaining way to adjust exhaust position would be to loosen the two nuts holding the cat to the back of the turbo, only to do this requires the rocker-cover / injectors to come back off and I'm not doing that, for now at least.
The modified connecting-rods are below and, due to lack of time, are rather crudely done. I bent the left-right rod down about 3/4" at a steep angle to take 5mm length out of it and help bring it down to the bracket at a flush angle and works rather well. The front-rear was a bit less neatly done and makes use of a piece of 1mm sheet-steel, cut roughly to an inch square and bolted to the rod. It's not the best workaround in the world, but it gets the job done.
After all that, the 'vibration-damper' did not get rid of the rattle! Instead, I traced the annoying noise to the front rubber-mount a bit further down the pipe. The exhaust was banging right into the side of the metal bracket on the gearbox-mount and a bit of fiddling with the adjustable eyelet managed to separate them and killed the rattle dead, so there you go.