...and tell me if you think this amount of oil pooling around them is normal, or the level of gunk on the cover is normal? E36 328 by the way.





Note that I'm seeing quite a bit of oil vapour coming from the crank case breather, hence taking the cover off. Any obvious problems here?

that looks relativly normal, looks like it might not have had all its oil changes on time, most of my M50's and M52 have had differant levels of deposits.

chances are it might be the valve stem seals starting to go how much smoke are you getting? i've had one that seemed to smoke more but never got much worse.

chris

Yeah, hoping it's all normal - it doesn't look terrible - but I saw that the valves (the ones which were closed, anyway) were sat in little pools of oil when I removed the inlet manifold. That's not right... trying to figure out where it's coming from.

can you make a catch can out of a can or something cheap and see how much it picks up. does the car smoke at all on start up,overrun ect?

chris

Looks typical of an engine that has suffered from a lack of oil changes.

quote:

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Originally posted by MikeRJ
Looks typical of an engine that has suffered from a lack of oil changes.

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Looks a bit more gungy than one 535i engine I saw stripped for the first time at 175K miles with shot valve guides/seals, if that helps?