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Originally Posted by jst2878
My only sign is leaking from the valve cover bolts. How do you know if you have to replace the oil seperator or just the hoses?
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To my knowledge there would be no reason to only do the hoses. Additionally, taking the hoses off and putting new ones on is nearly as much work as, if not extremely difficult to do without, pulling and replacing the seperator unit itself.
I would always do the whole thing. The parts are cheap compared to a new shortblock.
As far as the opinions on bad sperators goes...
The seperator issue, as I have stated before, is a matter of design and a choice by the engineers to make a system of servicable, replacable (read: need to be replaced occasionally) parts versus the standard built in, no service required variety. Though no service required is an upside, the performance and function of built in systems usually leads to two or so cylinders receiving the brunt of blowby, running lean and heating up while the other cylinders run as normal. This adversely affects both maximum performance and normal operation, fuel and oil consumption.
It is not a perfect system, but for what it was intended to do, it is not bad. Basically it is an active catch can with extra ports on it, but no external drain for the blowby...it all goes back into the system. It is arguably more like a 'race' purpose system than your average no maintanance system. Of course this excludes the low temperature problems with moisture and so forth that plague people in the North...the lack of heating provisions in the first iteration of the system is pretty sketchy.
It's a matter of design. If you do not want to accept the maintainance costs (and I am not speaking of critical failure type costs, only replacing parts that should be serviced, and this is one of them), then yes, it does suck and you should trade it in. You are not going to like BMWs in general, as they make design choices to use replaceable, servicable parts where others do not for the sake of performance.