Another friendly reminder of the importance of oil changes.

[Oillover]

Recently I watched a YoutTube video of CarWizard, where he was addressing cooling issues on a BMW 5 series.
The car had been clearly abused as indicated by infrequent oil changes etc. This lead to oil contaminating the cooling system (but thankfully, no coolant in the oil).

The part of the video that I found especially interesting, was how the oil in the coolant had started oozing out of the cooling hoses (which were never designed to handle oil).

This got me thinking of my old BMW, which still has many of its original cooling hoses from the Brian Mulroney/Ronald Reagan era. They are still as pliable and resilient as they were when new, with no signs of failure anytime soon. I always thought of gaskets and seals like the rear main, camshaft, crank and valve stem seals which all depend on the quality of the oil. Guess this video just informed me of another reason to keep the oil changed frequently.

 

[BMWTurboDzl]

I saw that can call BS on his assessment being that he said the OFH was already leaking externally. IMO the coolant hoses were covered in oil from the external leak. In addition, we're talking a car which is over 10 yrs old

 

[goblin]

He certainly has his charms and interesting bits, but for both his "wizard" title and his channel he'll have to eternally kiss Hoovie's ring, because both were single-handedly and unilaterally handed to him by Hoovie.

He has the benefit of some craft, a lot of space, and the right equipment, but he's very far from knowing everything, and Hoovie's exotics do not a mechanic make.

I used to watch him till the day he declared emphatically that Honda engines had no soul in th 90s, or was it Japanese altogether.
For BMW stuff specifically nothing beats the guy with the rag (something something's kid) and m539restorations at two sides of the spectrum, and for ghetto repairs the frenchie from Smells Like Gasoline is absolutely unbeatable. Especially his trip to Japan to fix a Peugeot episode.

Only guy who can drop an exotic's powertrain on a slab of concrete in a muddy yard, with Parkland (Einhell) power tools from Lidl and Lidl ratchets that he puts 6ft extensions on.

 

[Oillover]

I saw that can call BS on his assessment being that he said the OFH was already leaking externally. IMO the coolant hoses were covered in oil from the external leak. In addition, we're talking a car which is over 10 yrs old

hahah! thank you for clarifying!
I'll make sure to take his reviews with a grain of salt from now on (or maybe I'll just stop watching them, as most are becoming more click-bait).

 

[Silverado12]

IDK, my Chevy is 13 years old and still rock solid. BMW makes a beautiful car but that cutting edge technology seems to be experimental at times with BMW.

 

[goblin]

IDK, my Chevy is 13 years old and still rock solid. BMW makes a beautiful car but that cutting edge technology seems to be experimental at times with BMW.

The only experiment is that the absolutely don't care, and have nailed their clientele extremely well:

- Wealthy first owners who keep it till warranty expires.
- Poor lost souls buying past warranty - a few years past it, playing lottery, eventually cutting their losses or winning big by getting lucky and keeping up with maintenance till the first big maintenance item hits them.
- And last, the real Jedis, who can wrench at home, have the space, tools, skills, time, knowledge and some reasonable amount of money, knowing full well what they're getting into, and knowing that for someone who can work on cars a BMW is one of the not so expensive cars to maintain, and gives back an amazing bang for the buck.

As long as you avoid the real pitfals, of course.
Some of their engines are indeed problematic no matter what. Some are however bulletproof in most regards.

However, the peripherals are a maintenance item, and in BMW's view peripherals are items such as every single cooling system item, all the piping, electric coolant pumps, and so on - all items that require hours and hours of work, with unavoidable special tooling / special equipment required for some operations.

The other thing is that the engineering is borderline pure humour. It's literally "Hans said to do it, you have to do it, or else".
The oil filter housing leak goes like this:

- Oil Filter housing starts leaking oil. No problem.
- Oil makes a mess everywhere, and the engine loses some oil. No problem.
- Oil mostly leaks on the accessory belt. No problem.
- Belt eventually slips and jumps off the pulleys. No problem.
- On most normal cars the belt would just fall off, and would be a mild annoyance to crawl home. No alternator, no AC. No cooling pump if mechanical, but hey, on most BMWs it's electric nowadays.
- On BMWs, the belt tries to fall, has nowhere to go forward (towards the front of the car), because there's no space whatsoever.
- No problem. It wraps over the crankshaft pulley, digs behind it like a crazy sci-fi worm, wraps around the crankshaft hub, and finds its path to freedom through the crankshaft main seal, into the engine. All this in less time than it takes to say Oooops.

Fix ? Change the **** gasket the second you see the first drop. You were warned.

At the same time, should you have the tools, knowledge and equipment needed to wrench correctly on one - sky is the limit. There is a huge ecosystem of performance parts, tuning and so on.

And last but not least - the little idiosyncracies of spare parts.

My Hyundai's ignition coils - original Hyundai part - are MSRP'es at $170-ish a pop online. Nothing golden or diamond on them. It's just that they cost that much. I need six.
I can find a Denso at RockAuto for $40 a pop. Which is normal.
An original BMW coil is $80. You usually need six of them as well.
But a really good (original quality or better) Delphi or Eldor is $25.

Of course, we're talking parts for a BMW like the one in the video. 10-ish years old.
A laser headlight on the recent ones is $5500 a piece, lowest price on the Internet.