Added bonus; what the hell is the point of that gasket? It goes nowhere.

Because German! Ve love to over-complicate things!

Welcome to the club! :rofl:
Make two long studs to align it to put it back on. Saves time. Since the battery is disconnected, with the oil bracket on, pressure wash the entire area. I cleaned off so much gunk off mine. Grab a mechanic mirror with a light on it. Harbor Freight has them. Check the bracket seal all the way around.

I went through about 4 cans of brake cleaner on mine haha. Pressure washing inside my garage would have been some kind of messy!

Water cooled alternator or oil leak from the alternator bracket. Hmm, kick in junk or punch in the lips. Take your pick.

I finally started my motor swap today. I’ll update the overland thread with some pics as I go along.

Today was a half day devoted to prep. I pulled the cowl, drained the fluids (other then the front diff), labeled and detached lots of plugs and vacuum tubes, pulled the intake track entirely, pulled the splash guard and other subframe covers and dropped the middle exhaust section (headers back).

Things went smoothly other than one of the copper header nuts decided to strip. 45 min of surgery with a sawsall paid off and I was able to pound the stud back through/pry off the nut remnants.

Lots of broken and/or very fragile vacuum tubes to sort out and the need for a giant hex bit (22 mm maybe?) to pull the front diff drain plug were my lessons learned for today.

Tons of oil all over the bottom end. I suspect the oil pan covers and the rear main for starters. I also think the front diff is leaking from the casing, but can’t find a gasket on realoem for it. Anyone done this work?

In our X5s? Nothing. But some iterations of the N62 have an oil cooler coming off the alternator bracket I guess. I don't know which chassis utilize that, but that's why the gasket it there. :rolleyes:

I am still "looking forward" to having to do this gasket in the future. I was going to knock it out when I did my motor mounts. I took a look at what was involved and said, nope, hard pass. Kicked the can down the road...

Per realoem, it looks like the 4.4i is set up the same as my 4.8is with the oil cooler thermostat exiting out of the alternator bracket. I had to replace that dang thing because the threads for the oil cooler line mounting bracket were stripped :(

https://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/sho...diagId=11_3338

Oh, well duh. There you go. At least I feel better about it being there. I guess. :bustingup

Maybe. MAYBE. I mean, why not just put that oil cooler connection directly into the block and cast an alternator mount in the block as well to eliminate the stupid bracket? Lol. But then that wouldn't create oil leaks and cause people to come into the service department and pay thousands to fix!

It's nuts to combine the oil cooler with alt bracket. Makes me wonder if there isn't a faster fix. Possibly loosen the thing enough to put a metal plate with rubber face that can go in from the side without having to remove the whole thing. It's a disaster of a job. Glad I have m54. OFHG is our version but it's 10% the effort


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