I had a leaky valve cover gasket and the paint is peeling and looking like crap, so I decided to just pull both covers, polish them and reinstall with new gaskets.

My first question is, wouldn't it be easier to just remove the fuel rail instead of messing with the injector clips? They're nearly impossible to get at! That would clear up a lot of room for reinstall. I don't know what BMW was thinking making those wiring boxes. A loom would have been 10x cheaper and easier to work with.

Second, I can't find anywhere that shows how to get at the VC on the left (driver's) side on the X5. It seems like there's a lot of stuff in the way for reinstall. What do you do about the cable going over the valve cover? And what's this little hard plastic hose that goes over the valve cover right next to the cable? It pulled out from somewhere underneath and I can't figure out what it is. The other end was open to air and I'm not sure if it's supposed to be. How do you work past the hoses in the back on reinstall?

While I was doing this, I also found that the PCV hoses were rotted pretty bad, so I'm replacing those. I can't seem to find info for replacing that for the 4.4, only the 3.0. I figure while I'm there, I might as well upgrade to the better, less likely to freeze PCV.

I was happy to see that the internals were very good looking. Makes me a little less bitter about buying the X.