Valve Stem Seals - Possible "Short Term" Fix
 

Before I get down to saying this will fix all your problems, this only worked for me. I still feel the real solution is having your Valve stem seals replaced but that's at a big expense and maybe this will work for you as it did for me (So far).

So I bought my car about 7 months ago without knowing the history. I had oil leaks all over the place, and turned out that my car-timing was off as well. I brought it to a reputable BMW performance shop and they replaced all the VC seals, upper and upper and lower timing covers ect ect basically all the rubber on the top along with adjusting the cams. I no longer have any oil leaks but they were curious as to why the Cams needed to be re-timed. They figured because somebody was in there doing valve-guide seals since the car showed no signs of any smoke at all. Great i got everything fixed and turned out dodged a major failure point for these cars... or so I thought.

After driving a week I noticed some smoke out the tail pipes whenever I came to a complete stock and then acceleration. Turns out I had the Valve stem seals issue. I talked to my shop that did the work and they said now that all the gaskets have been replaced and I am getting proper vacuum in the engine is showing where it was probably was leaking prior.

I started searching on how this worked and why they went bad. Turns out the rubber gets hard over time allowing oil to slip past and be burnt up. That's when i started looking into oil additives.

Car - 2006 BMW X5 4.4i

Step 1 - Changed oil with Rotella T6 5w40 - I run this in my 570WHP 335i and 550AWHP 535xiT wagon with great results. (I don't care what oil you use, and that it says for diesels ect ect. This is not a oil debate thread this is what just used in my car, use what you want)

https://www.acklandsgrainger.com/ima...2HD81_AS02.JPG

Step 2 - Added 2 bottles of Locus Oil Stop leak. While doing the oil change I also added 2 bottles of Lucas Oil Stop leak. I make sure that when I put this is, I was not overfilling the oil so I used less Rotella T6 to meet the recommended oil quantity.

At this point I drove around for about a week and did not really see much of a change at all to the smoke. I was a little disappointed but did not have that much faith in the Lucas oil even though the reviews were great. This lead me to keep searching and on to
step 3.

http://shop.advanceautoparts.com/wcs...8_pri_larg.jpg

Step 3 - Added 2 bottles of ATP AT-205 Re-Seal Stops Leaks, 8 Ounce Bottle. First thing that came to my mind was "Snake Oil" but than I started researching this stuff and found the reviews amazing. I found across a thread on here were one guy put this in his car and also helped him. I did some more research and decided it was worth a try. 1 bottle is good to support up to 6 cylinders, I decided not to chance anything and just put in both bottles. I did not drain any oil prior to doing this.

The manufacturer says to drive the car up to 5 hours to start seeing results, it took about 8 hours of driving for me to really notice a difference. As it stands now I have about 10 hours on the car with the ATP AT-205 and the smoking issues has all but gone away. I am always checking in my rear-view to see if this is the case and last week had somebody follow me doing pulls and stop and goes to confirm the smoke has gone.

Again I just wanted to share this in hopes it can help somebody else as it did with my car. I don't know if this is going to be a long term solution or not but we will see. If you have any questions let me know, I ordered the ATP from amazon. I can't say if it was the combination of Lacus with APT but thought i would throw that in here in-cause somebody want to try as well. When I go to do a new oil change, I am going to use Rotella T6 and only 1 bottle of ATP and 1 bottle of Lacus this time just to make sure everything still seals why chance it. If the issue does come back I will update with the results.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...L._SL1500_.jpg

These snake oils are debatable...

Great informative post. I am guessing you have personal experience using both products and they did not work??...

Like I said in the original post. I am not claiming this is a 100% proven way to solve leaky valve stem seals, only that it did work for me (for now). I have only 1k miles on the car after putting the above said products in. The X5 is a winter beater basically an awd that can get me to the Mtn for skiing. Valve guide replacement is a heavy cost and if this works in the meantime why not. I know a lot of people suffer with this issue and not sure if this have been tried by some as a last resort. It's a very inexpensive to test as each product is only about $10 a bottle.

I will update this thread as I put more miles on the car.

I don't know about all the stuff in my engine,I just use Castrol titanium 5 30w and change it every 4k miles ,and use chevron injector cleaner every 2 months.
Since I bought my 4.8is it has really improved the cold start up misfire[where it happen for 3 year ].
Also clean out the CCV and replace CCV and tubes. That should do it and use 92octane fuel.

Im one of the people who spent countless hours researching this motor, and trying every possible fix under the sun short of fixing them, im still not 100% convinced fully. Something else is compounding the issue in these cars.

Quick zero dollar fix i have been running for about 4 months now is unplug the exhaust vanos connector on left bank ( by airbox). Since it is easiest to access by taking the front "ram air" piece off.

The only time i will ever get smoke now and it is very light at that, is if i let the car hot idle 5 minutes + and rev it hard. Lets say you are sitting in traffic, as long as you pull away and not stomp on it immediately the smoke is non existant.

I have also tried idling it hot in driveway for about 30 min, same amount comes out at hard rev.

Back at 65-70k i used to get big clouds after 1-2 min. At 107k now. And with my setup having that unplugged does change a few things in motor, but car overall feels even stronger then before. I run 10-30w in the motor now, and stopped caring about it.

Upallnight also posted about success with that product ATP 205 stop leak.
http://www.xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-foru...ghtmare-3.html

I stumbled upon the AT-205 product on amazon and read quite a few of the reviews. I guess it worked for many peoples leaks. One thing that came up often is that the longer it's in there the better it works. I guess for some of the seals/gaskets it may take some time for the product to do it's thing.

Thanks for sharing




4.8isX5, is there any harm to unplug that connector? Are you saying you felt your car had more power because you unplugged it?

Blackbeast, yes when unplugged. I do alot of work on X5s and i have to say every 4.8is i drive always feels different in some way from one to the next. In my case its hard to tell if it would do the same on yours since im running a fairly freeflow exhaust etc, can affect what it does on my car vs a more stock car. I will say though compared to the others mine definetly has more pep and throw you in the seat effect.

Folks, that ATP 205 stop leak stuff certainly works, no kidding. I have no smoke after sitting idling for 25 minutes.

ATP 205 is basically a conditioner for seals. Seals and rubber gasket over time becomes hard due to the many heat cycles they are put through.

Think of it as a conditioner for dry skin. If you have dry skin and put conditioner on the skin it will soften the skin, but you must continue to use the conditioner or else the dry skin will return.

I used it with some success on an old Audi. If the seals are not physically damaged, but has lost some of their elasticity ATP 205 may help.

I believe some of the High Mileage oil out these days have similar conditioner for this same purpose. That why I run the high mileage oil in the X.