Our latest featured service is Oil Pan Gasket Replacement on a 2005 BMW 325i, brought to us by a client from Kensington/Cedar Cottage, Vancouver.
The BMW 325i features a straight six cylinder engine used in many BMW vehicles. This engine design has been utilized for many years and, while it looks basically the same on the outside, has been altered to many displacements and performance levels. This is incredibly smart on BMW’s behalf as they can efficiently manufacture many engines with the same tooling.
Overall these are a very good engine from a performance and reliability standpoint. There are few things that go wrong with them, but they are not perfect. Like all engines, there are numerous gaskets to seal the oil and coolant inside the engine. Over time these gaskets wear out. In the case of our featured BMW 325i the engine oil pan gasket was leaking oil.
During a regularly scheduled maintenance service we found a large amount of oil leakage at the front bottom of the engine. While we suspected engine oil, there are also power steering and transmission cooler hoses in the area that were oil soaked which added to the possible leak sources.
Proper diagnosis is key to finding oil leaks. We employ two techniques to positively identify the leak: first we clean off the leaked oil and second we add UV dye to the engine oil (and any other fluid that we suspect might be leaking). Inspecting the leak after an overnight drive by the vehicle owner verified the oil pan gasket as the leak.
Oil pan gasket replacement times vary greatly from car to car. The simplest types can be done in an hour whereas some take days.
For more about the BMW 325i click here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_325i
For more about our accurate oil leak diagnostic techniques click here https://pawlikautomotive.com/services/oil-leak-diagnosis-video/
