Engine Oil: Dino vs Syn and AutoRx

[Larry Horne]

I have 1997, 328i auto with 147,000. I have used 15W-40 dino (Rotella T) since 25,000 miles with no consumption. Oil change interval at 3,000 - 3,500.

I've just noticed a slight oil consumption, 1/2 qt per 3000 miles plus a minor leak at rear of motor, just above the round cross member/bar (maybe a 1.5 inch circle on the garage floor over night).

I've been reading a lot of posts on www.bobistheoilguy.com and several posts there support using a product called AutoRx (www.AutoRx.com) to clean the internals of your engine through a very controlled procedure and then the minor leaks are resolved through rewetting the seals (assuming they were sludged).

My question.

With a 9 year old engine, with 147,000 miles is there anything I should do to improve the odds of getting maximum mileage and performance out of the car as "she" ages. Keep dino and 3000 mile interval? Go syn? change weight?

I plan on keeping her for a very long time.

Our driving conditions are:
Winter: 25 - 30 F
Summer: 95F
Driven daily 20 miles highway with some city
Weekend 100 mile trips all highway
Garaged at night: 65F
Very little warm up time. Start and back out garage and go.

Lar

[Teh Prof]

Whatever you do, don't go synthetic now. Conventional wisdom says that will trash your seals, as they are keeping together now because of the dino oil.

Auto-Rx is a good product. Cleans up everything and is said to do good things for your seals, too. I'd give it a shot. You'll need at least three bottles. I'd get five or more if I were you.

[triggrhaapi]

most likely the minor leak is caused by the two half moon shaped cutouts in the top of the cylinder head where the valve cover meets it. I would change all your valve cover gaskets and use small amounts of 3-Bond 1209 sealant on the corners of the half moon cutouts. Most likely this will fix your oil leak.

[Daryl Baines]

Larry Horne,

I agree with M3UOND Auto-Rx will clean seals and ring packs if the seals are not broken it will stop leaks follow the instructions on the Auto-Rx web site good luck.

[Larry Horne]

I took this weekend to get into the oil leak and here is what I found.

I cleaned the engine good with degreaser and drove it a few miles to dry off. Got home and looked at the seal between the oil filter housing and engine block..........Why you ask because the BMW parts guy Jeff said to. There was already a weeping spot showing up.....not pouring out but I would not have thought it should show with only 3 miles of driving.

The plan was to replace the valve cover gasket and bolt gromets (15 total) but since I saw the other leak I went back to the parts shop Saturday morning and donated another $100 in parts.

So I went to work. You have to remove the plastic covers on the top of the engine (covering coils and injectors). Then remove the air filter box and cold air intake including the altenator cooling tube. Remove the alternator belt (oh replaced the tensioning pulley too, noisey) and alternator. Remove the power steering pump and move it aside. Good practice to clean the area around the filter housing prior to removing the 6 bolts which need to me marked and returned to their original spots.

The pre-formed o-ring style gasket was hard as a rock. Definitely needed replacing.

The next thing was to remove the valve cover. Remove the coil packs and place out of the way. Then remove the 15 (10mm) nuts and grommet assemblies. You have to remove a few grounding straps to the coil packs first.

The pre-formed valve cover gasket was BRITTLE! Especially the interior part that seals between the cover and the spark plug access holes, not much oil in the plug holes but this gasket was definitely shot!

Cleaned everything nicely and reinstalled all parts, torqued as instructed. I could not find torque values for the oil filter housing bolts in any manual I had. Used similar bolt and application information here. A little RTV on the 1/2 circle cut outs on the back of the head and the 4 corners.

So far no indication of leaks, at least from these 2 areas.

Next job. Replace transmission filter, gasket and fluid........no such thing as lifetime fluid!

end

[Larry Horne]

Daryl and M3UOND,

I may give it a try depending on how the weekend's repairs went. I have not looked at the site in depth yet but have either of you used the product? M3UOND is recommending 5 or more bottles? Thats alot of cycles.......

Lar

[Teh Prof]

I have used the product. I suggested the five bottles in order to keep 2 oz of maintenance fluid in there with every oil change. I didn't have oil leakage when I used the product; it was more preventative maintenance after I saw what the product could do for your engine.

[4evrwyntr]

ummm..... Call me dumb, but what is Dino Oil?

[Teh Prof]

Dino oil is fully non-synthetic oil.

Made from decomposing dinosaurs.

[Larry Horne]

I haven't read the site thoroughly but the cleaning phases all say use dino............once you are complete it recommends staying with dino..........did you go syn or stick with regular?

PS ....... just checked and still no drops on shop floor........fingers crossed.

Lar

[Teh Prof]

I'm actually going through my second cleaning cycle now. When I finish it, I'll likely go back to full synthetic.

[Furious]

the profile gasket (which i think were talking about) or also called the valve cover gasket is a common place to leak, like trigrhappi said they tend to leak at the half moons when the gasket gets old, brittle and dries out. its a a very easy DIY actually, once you take the valve cover off you can throw the gasket out, and clean the interior parts from any sludge using a varsol type product, than use a scotchbrite pad to get any debrit off the edges and also to smooth out the edges for a proper and certain seal. than use a sealant to make sure that the gasket sits and seals properly (i used durko which is was recommended by BMW)

here is a link to my engine swap day 1 and day 2 have stuff about the profile gasket.

http://www.bimmerwerkz.com/forum/3-s...highlight=swap

[Daryl Baines]

Larry,

I have used the 3oz of Auto-Rx preventive maintenance program after the cleaning and rinse phase were completed and as a personal preference I am using only non synthetic oil this has worked great for me good luck.

Daryl