RE: Oil Leak and Overheating

["David Orr" <orrs@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Chris,

    I have an 88 528e and had an oil leak around the front of the engine.
I checked the bolt in question and it was fine. Mine turned out to be
the oil sending unit. It was pushing oil up the enclosed wires and it
was leaking out behind the distributor at the front of the engine.
follow the wires from the oil sending unit and watch the area with
the engine running. Clean the front of the engine with a solvent if
you can't find it.

To do the bolt just remove it, clean it with brake clean or carb cleaner
and apply some silicone and put it back in.

As far as over heating, do you hear the fans running while you are hot?
To test the temp sensors if they are one wire they usually ground themselves
when hot or they open the circuit. If there a two wire unit they probably
short the two wires together. Again check them with an ohm meter. If you
don't have an ohm meter you can get one from Radio Shack for under $10.
Also check your thermostat, how long has it been in the car? You can
check it by dropping it in a pan of water on the stove and see if it
opens when the water gets close to boiling. It's just as easy to put
a new one in at that point. Also check your radiator, the cross flow tubes
may be clogged, you will have to remove the upper radiator hose and look
in with a light. A radiator will be a little more expensive to replace.

Good luck, let me know what you find.
Dave Orr

-----Original Message-----


I have what appear to be two unrelated problems. The first is an oil leak
that appears under the front passenger side of the engine. After I have park
my car a puddle forms under the alternator from pooling of oil in the
mounting bracket. I am not losing a lot of oil, but it happens all the time.
It does not happen though when the engine is running, only when the car is
parked. I have heard that one of the two bolts holding the crank sensor is a
common culprit; how do I remove and seal this bolt?
The other problem is overheating. When the AC is on it is more frequent, so
I jumped the aux fan switches and they worked fine. How do I check the temp
switches that the jumped wires operate? Could this also be a thermostat
problem? Even if I am not using the AC I will overheat if I am waiting in a
long line of slow moving traffic.

Redscare
86 535i
195000, rebuilt and bored out at 180000
--
to be removed from bmw, see /bin/digest-subs.cgi
or email "unsubscribe bmw" to majordomo@domain.elided