Dear BMW Engineer(s)..

..who decided to put two of the oil pan bolts inside the bell housing on M5x motors: flips the bird

/weekend junkyarding rant off

But they are easy to get to, what's the problem?

I hate the 3 E-torx going through the bellhousing more.

Yeah, what's the problem? That didn't seem to be too much of a hassle to me, I thought it made pretty good sense.

Vanos, air oil separators, valvetronic...

window regulators, and door handel carriers.

The problem is that it's an automatic transmission and didn't look like there was a way to pull a lower access plate like on the manual transmissions w/out having to pull the whole trans. please correct me if I'm wrong. Of course if I had gotten to the yard earlier in the day, I probably would have had time to pull the trans, so my fault there.

side note, it's a green e34 525it with a bmwcca sticker on the back hatch that looks like it had a front hit. If that rings a bell for anyone in the DC/Balt region, I know which yard your car ended up in.

Did you forget your cordless sawzall? Best junkyard tool ever!

2002maniac wrote: Did you forget your cordless sawzall? Best junkyard tool ever!

I try not to resort to that unless I really need to, or a part is already cut (trimming exhaust after they've already chopped out the cat.

Found this pic. Anyone know if the two pan bolts are accessible via those two little ports at the bottom?

edit: looking at this pic, that looks likely. worth a shot! I'll find out saturday morning if the car/pan is still there.

edit #2: looks like that's exactly what those ports are. http://www.bimmerboard.com/forums/posts/1077597

now who's the shiny happy person? <-- this guy!

BMWs are pretty logically laid out. Once you figure out the logic, they are pretty easy to work on

mad_machine wrote: BMWs are pretty logically laid out. Once you figure out the logic, they are pretty easy to work on

Yeah, except for the PCV system. That stuff just sucks. (zing!)

Somebody is planning an E30 swap…

What's it going to be? M52 or S52?

mad_machine wrote: BMWs are pretty logically laid out. Once you figure out the logic, they are pretty easy to work on

After a year and a half of e30 ownership, I would tend to agree, which is why it was all the more frustrating at the time.

And mr2peak is correct. I'm ditching my turbo'd eta motor in favor of something more appropriate for rallyx. An m52b28, e34 throttle cables, and e36 mount arms have already been acquired.

bluej wrote: Found this pic. Anyone know if the two pan bolts are accessible via those two little ports at the bottom?

That is their reason for existence, yes.

People hate Torx until you have to stick a bolt on a socket and tapemeasure-extend a bunch of extensions up and over to stick the bolt in. Try that with a hex bolt without dropping it, or an Allen bolt without rounding it out.

unevolved wrote: Yeah, except for the PCV system. That stuff just sucks. (zing!)

We have an E39 here that did the thing where the engine decided to ingest all of its oil. The rear bumper dripped a line of oil in the shop overnight, and so did the weep holes in the exhaust system.

I know my Volvo needs this done, but thankfully its oil trap has failed in the direction of blowing the dipstick out instead of sucking all of the oil out of the engine.

I think the Euro cars have funky crankcase evap systems because they are more expected to run at WOT for extended periods of time, whereas American and Japanese cars are expected to spend their lives at little more than a fast idle.

Honestly, it's not that bad if you've done it before. The Bentley manual doesn't have the right procedure, and once I figured out how to rotate one of them off, I was able to do it a second time (different car) in about 2 hours.

I'm a big fan of BMW engineering in general, but the M54 CCV system is not exactly what I would call well-designed. After many (many...I got to the point where I could change the whole CCV in 45 minutes) hours trying to resolve an oil consumption issue on my E39, I modified the system to partially bypass the troublesome diaphragm (the cause of most of the problems) and add considerably more vacuum to the crankcase. Oil consumption promptly went to zero and has stayed there for many thousands of miles since.

bluej wrote: ..who decided to put two of the oil pan bolts inside the bell housing on M5x motors: *flips the bird* /weekend junkyarding rant off

It's probably the same guys who made the call to put the starter in a place where you need to remove the intake manifold, transmission, or part of the front suspension to change it.