Crankshaft sensor is a PITA to replace

[AceEngineer]

Got a code last week telling me the crankshaft position sensor was going bad in my E83. To prep for the fix I watched all the videos about replacing it on uTube, which were not much help. My Bentley manual was also not real clear about the difficulty either because some of the illustrations were not an E83. After looking under the car as suggested by a video, I decided that going in from the top was the longer but better way to go because from the bottom it is a job done blindly by feel only. The sensor is under the starter on the side of the block. Removal of the intake manifold is basically the whole job, but what a PITA. There is a wiring bracket on the side of the manifold that is held in place by 2 6mm T-30 oval Torx head screws. They are the most difficult to remove and replace because you can barely see them within the rats nest of cabling. The Bentley manual shows these with "wiring removed for clarity", Ha Ha, no indication how difficult removing them really is. Every time you drop one of the screws it falls down into the belly pan and has to be retrieved from under the car. Going in from the top turned out to be the right decision though. When I had everything exposed , the sensor was covered in dirt and dust. If I had tried to replace it from the bottom, I am sure that I would have dropped dirt into the crankcase trying to replace it blind. Exposing it from the top meant I could easily clean around the sensor before I pulled the bad one plus properly torquing the aluminum bolt holding the sensor would have been impossible from the bottom.
Job done, my baby now runs like new, no rough idle, no occasional none-start without accelerator application. Now, if the Covid thing retreats and I can travel this summer, I am going to plan a trip to see my brother who lives on the coast highway in Oregon, with a stop to see my kids in Vegas and a drive thru California's redwood country. I now have my Toughbook mounted in a Havis docking station in my car. It has an aircard with a data simm which give me a full time internet connection, plus it has GPS installed. I also mounted boosted antennas for both GPS and internet on the car plus an interior camera all connected to the docking station. The internet connection is real useful on a road trip and I can run Google Maps for nav.

AceEngineer