Hey Everyone - I just wanted to let you know that I had the valve stem seal job completed on my 05 4.4i. My symptoms were, as described by others, after idling for a few minutes and revving the engine, I get a huge plume of blue exhaust and it smelled really bad.
I contacted a guy named Anthony (he's on bimmerfest) based on his thread on that site before New Year's and asked him many questions which he answered completely and timely. He had a cancellation for New Year's weekend so I jumped on it and I'm glad I did.
I'm from northern NJ so I drove to LI where he lives. He drove me to the train station and I was back home early afternoon. All the time he had the car, he answered every email and text I sent in a timely fashion and gave me complete updates. The X5 was finished Saturday afternoon but I picked it up Sunday morning - Anthony waiting for me at the train station. I picked up the car and now no more blue exhaust! He gave me all the old parts (gaskets, etc) and he showed me my seals vs. the new seals and I could definitely see how the oil was getting past the old seals as they were much wider than the new ones (X5 has less than 70k and mine wore out!).
When I started my journey back home to NNJ, I immediately realized the X5 had more "pep" and the throttle response was tighter. I'm not saying its a night and day difference but its definitely noticeable!
All in all, I'm very pleased and very glad I can recommend Anthony highly! Unfortunately, the N62 has this issue and for those of you mechanically inclined, you're lucky - you can save money on an expensive repair. But for those of us not mechanically inclined, its nice to know there's a good dude like Anthony around!
His email is
[email protected]