CCV Valve - Oil Separation Failure due to cold weather...anyone else?

[upallnight]

Originally Posted by davintosh

I've been reading up on this issue a lot lately, but this is the first time I've seen this thread. Read through the whole thing, and... Wow. The engine fire scares the crap out of me, because my wife is the primary driver of the X5.

We only bought the X5 last September, and I've noticed the sludge inside the valve cover and on the dipstick, and an oil usage rate that's higher than I would expect (the M30 engine in my e32 with 200,000 miles on it doesn't use any oil between changes). I recently went through the maintenance records that the previous owner provided, and what I read scared me about as much as the report of the engine fire. The records I have go back to about 70,000 miles; it now has about 150k on it, and show that the oil separator has been replaced three times, most recent time was about a year ago. In addition to the OS, the valve cover & gasket have been replaced twice, and the intake manifold once (with the heated unit.)

From what I've gleaned from my reading, BMW still hasn't come up with a real resolution to this problem; that's pretty disappointing.

When I changed the oil yesterday, I took some extra time and did the vacuum trick to try & suction some of the sludge out of the OS pipes. Got a little bit of sludge out of it, but not much. There seemed to be a lot of moisture in there though; not sure what to think of that (coolant level hasn't changed since September.) Does anybody know of any new information on this issue?

I bet with your E32 you don't go 15,000 miles between oil change. With the free maintenance program that BMW offers to entice new owners the normal oil change interval is 15,000 mile or until the oil service light comes on. Less frequent oil change only benefit BMW because they won't be shelling out additional money for additional free oil change. With people using their cars to make shorter trips this is harder on the engine because the engine never really get hot enough for a long enough time to burn off any condensation.

Don't get me started on the "Life time ATF" that is in all their trans, whether it's a ZF or GM.

[DTMdan]

Just to make sure, can the Cold Climate Version be used on 2000-09/2003 3.0 models?

*Edit: Nevermind, found the insulated kit: BMW E53 X5 M54 3.0L > Engine > View All > ES#25781 Oil Separator Repair Kit - Basic - 11617534237