Originally Posted by
ndindynd
2009 335i. About a year ago I had a leaking oil filter housing, replaced at the local bmw shop. A while ago I notice that my car is again marking it's spot and took it back in. They gasket was again leaking, replaced under warranty. It took an extra day because the techs got behind. About a week later I hop in the car to go to work and the low coolant warning pops up. I've never had to add a drop since I bought the car, no biggie I think and I filled a more or less empty reservoir. About a week after that I hop in and again, low coolant warning. That's odd I think, and once again the reservoir is empty.
So in the 2 weeks since the gasket I've gone from never having to add coolant to having put in over a gallon. It's not burning any, at least not nearly enough for that kind of loss as i'm not smoking out everyone behind me at a traffic light. I'm also not seeing pooling underneath. I live in Florida so I'm guessing it's too hot to really collect and drip but it most be going somewhere and likely under pressure.
I pulled up the instructions on the gasket and I see they're supposed to remove a couple coolant fittings, drain some fluid, and then remove the intake manifold to do the repair. My assumption is the leak lies in a botched reassembly after the techs got into a rush. It's just as assumption of course. I've never worked on the bmw engine, but every toyota,ford, jeep etc engine I've torn down had had coolant running through the intake.
Anyway I called the dealer today and was told "All I see we did was a oil filter gasket, that wouldn't affect your cooling at all." I explained what I found for the method and they asked me to bring it back in. The lady on the phone is just the lady on the phone, I don't expect her to know every nut that gets turned on a repair.
Anyway the ?'s are, am I correct in the removal/install of the cooling parts and intake could cause a leak? If so how likely is the fudged gasket install to be the culprit?
Bookmarks