OUrs was upgraded to that version ....... but apparently still no guarantee. I also highway drive a lot now and still get the cheese wiz. Not as bad as before.

Way back when....................I started getting the cheese wiz on the dipstick and not long after the thing hydrolocked.................. in the middle of the highway. That was last January.

i 1st saw this in a 5series i had a while back.... i thought the head was going and got the oil changed and sold it dirt cheap to a who wanted it to export it overseas about a week later. i saw him a few weeks ago and he said the car was up to 300,000 miles almost - -

97 528ti


i had had pics of it on my photobucket album.. will look today..

p.s. mine looked 10 times worse

I'm getting that too! And I don't drive short trips, and i push the car hard at times so you would figure the moisture in there would burn up. I don't know..I'm going to probably get an oil change today.

we can install block heater to keep the engine warm
i will post pic and instruction that some ppl already done it.

here is the link.

http://forum.e46fanatics.com/showthread.php?t=621330

are you sure the engine block heater is the solution to the problem?

Same here. I've driven her 300+ miles in the past 3 days and still cheesey. I just don't get it. I wonder whether this is a problem at all since it comes every winter and is gone by late spring. :confused: I never would have know it was there but I had to add a quart of oil and I took the cap off and said "Whoa!".

No, it isn't a solution, but on the other hand it probably can't hurt. If you read the E46 thread that was linked above, posters who installed the block heater noted that their vehicles didn't warm up any faster in the morning. What the heater did have an effect on was how easily the engine turned over when it was very cold (-30C and colder, for example) and what sort of protest noises the engine made.

Since the heater is difficult to get (not available in the US, and BMW doesn't list one, so this is a BMWCA locally sourced item it seems) you may want to use stick-on pads on the oil pan. They accomplish a similar thing to the jacket water immersion heater.

If I wanted to avoid the CCV problem, I would spend more effort maintaining the CCV and associated lines every few years than installing a heater, personally. Heaters do lessen the mechanical stress due to a very cold startup, though.

True, but is it gone from the CCV valve and lines? It goes from the engine when it gets warm out, but it is what is left in the remote lines that typically causes the problems.

Thanks JCL for all your info. I think you are right. Basically I took the X to the dealer today and I had alot of the 'cheese', very similar to that in the pictures. The techs and advisors all said it is a very common problem caused by short drives. It could also be caused by other issues, but most common is the short driving. Apparently a 20 min-30 min drive is still too short?

I ended up changing the oil, and I guess I will take it out for a longer drive every now and then until the weather warms up again.