M62TU Oil in Valley Pan area?

[Dking078]

Here's a strange one for ya! Car is a 2003 540i M62TU

I got a leak in the Valley pan area, except it's NOT coolant. It's oil.

I can only see the oil pooling next to the rear driver side drain hole and nothing notable on the passenger side.

My question is, what the heck can do this? The car idles butter smooth, no misfires, 0 errors. CCV was replaced a few years ago. But currently sits in timing chain guide territory at 158K. Oil leaks down to the trans/engine mate point, RMS is brand new so nothing there, but it did confuse me initially why I was seeing drips from there. Oil consumption is not excessive, at least not yet.

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[dannyzabolotny]

Could be coming from a valve cover gasket leak, that's the most common source of oil in the valley pan area.

[Dking078]

Could be coming from a valve cover gasket leak, that's the most common source of oil in the valley pan area.

I am in need of a VCG refresh, but Most of what I saw in the area was just dirty (not active flow) oil residue/weaping. Outer parts of the VCG, mostly corners at this point are to almost at visual gold-flow level.

This one is putting numerous drips per drive.

I'm half way into the thought of overhauling my 4.4 or going big and buying a 4.6 to overhaul.

[1999 540i m]

Maybe ccv pipe, the one under the manifold

[jicaino]

The CCV pipe has an o-ring that when crumbling & gone causes the system to leak right there. How's your CCV failure symptoms?

[JimLev]

I'm going with the CCV pipe connection or the CCV itself.

[vinyldude]

This happened to me with my old 540i. A shop had recently replaced the valley pan gasket but the "swimming pool" was still slowly filling up with gunk. I was like what the heck.
After lifting the intake manifold I saw the culprit was the CCV pipe. The rubber section of the pipe had a small hole in it.

[Dking078]

I plan to take a closer look at it tomorrow with a micro tube camera . Thanks for the ideas! Thankfully the CCV transfer pipe is only $40-ish.

But getting there will be fun!

[Chedley]

So, did a new CCV transfer pipe resolve the problem ? Was it the O-ring of the pipe that was leaking??

I ask because I recently uncovered a similar mysterious oil leak problem on my car (2001 540i M62TU), but on the passenger side.

Oil pooling in the crevasse under the CCV, next to the rear of the engine, passenger side under the manifold. That is where you would expect to see coolant when the valley pan leaks.
If I clean it and dry it off, it will show up again after the next drive. It may drip under the bell housing overnight, as if it were from the rear main seal. Otherwise, everything else is fine and dry. No error codes, and no loss of engine oil -never had to top off.
Weird...

[Dking078]

It was. Flex coupling rubber was done-zo.