This is a common problem, BMW knows about problematic crank case vents(those are just the hoses in the pic). Dealerships were supposed to check and replace hoses and valves accordingly although most will only change the hoses and wait till the actual valves burst leaving a nice oily mess in your engine bay.:rolleyes:

ncx,

I realized these two hoses are for upper and lower cylinder heads. It's hard to remove the hose from the rear firewall, there is not much room to place a small tool back there.

You have to remove the plastic shroud where the microfilter sits, do a search, one of the members here posted instructions on how to remove, it's not hard to do, the hardest part was putting the clamp on the bottom hose, but no big deal.

Anyone clean the gunk out of the little tube where upper and lower cydinder valves?

Just replace my sparkplug with NGK PLATIUM the car runs much smoother, especially startup noise went away. A Big thumb up for Japanese sparkplugs.

I thought this was it

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts...17&hg=11&fg=15