If you are at 83k and have a valve cover leak on a 3.0i, this is probably a separator issue. Change the valve cover, the separator, all the separator hoses and the drive belt.

Unless you know for sure you have a new separator, I would change it. It will only cause the valve cover gasket to fail again. At 83k on an '01, the separator is not long for this world, and valve cover gasket leaks are a tell tale sign. You could pull the butterfly in the intake manifold and see how much oily goo is on it to confirm, but I would go ahead and do it.

You could do the valve cover gasket yourself with a metric socket set from wal-mart, a crescent wrench, a tube of RTV, and the gasket, which is a $40 or so part. But like I said, if the separator is bad, you will end up doing it again soon.

If you wait for the low oil light to come on, you will be down nearly half the 8 quarts you are supposed to have. Do not wait for that instance to take action. These engines consume oil by design, and by the time the low oil light comes on, you are very close to doing damage.

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2001 E53 3.0 5pd