Valley Pan Repair....
 

I’m at 84k now (I bought the 03’ X 10 years ago already!) and my Valley Pan has the infamous coolant leak down the bell housing. My left bank valve cover has a slight oil leak along with the timing chain cover. So, I’m having all the leaks repaired now along with the Intake Manifold Rear Cover and any hoses he can get at while he’s back there and has it all apart.

Question is whether I should just go ahead and replace the water pump and thermostat while it’s torn apart anyway. There are no leaks coming from it, the tech checked it out and there is no play in it.:dunno:

Might as well. It is easily accessible at the point it is at now. Might be ok now, but you have what maybe 15 20 K miles more to go? So depending on how many miles you drive/ year, you are either going to have to do it next year or the year after.

well he most likely remvoed the water pump to get to the valley pan if you have a m62.

so yes, replace water pump and t-stat. also a good idea would be to remove the rear cross over pipe and clean the area and repalce both gaskets for that pipe also. they are thick paper gaskets and they like to leak into the bolt holes and corrode the 6mm (10mm head) bolts to the point they will break.

while all that is off may be a good idea to replace all the intake bits that go bad as well as the rear coolant hoses behind motor, they are right in reach with intake out.

It's in the shop today:

Water Pump & TStat
Valley Pan
O-Rings
Intake Manifold Re-Seal
Rear Manifold Oil Cover
Rear Inter-Cooler Gaskets & Hoses
Left Valve Cover Gasket
Left Timing Cover Gasket
Power Steering Return & Suction Hoses
CBS & Alternator Belts
Oil & Filter Change
And any Coolant Hoses that need replacing while this is all torn apart......

Very nice list there. Any idea how many hours of labor to do all of that?

About 8 hours in labor...

Are you not removing the right side valve cover?

it's not leaking or weeping. I had him check over the entire engine compartment.

Next are the thrust arm bushings.

Well i mean once you are already down there... it wont ad much more money

That's quite the laundry list of repairs! I'm curious how it all worked out, and what the repair bill came to?

I'm a pretty recent owner of an '02 4.4. Part of what attracted me to the vehicle was the relatively low mileage (111Km/69M). I understand that it's 11 years old, and going to need some TLC, but I didn't expect there to be so many gaskets/o-rings/seals/bushings to be failing at this point in its life!

My first repair was a cracked coolant reservoir. Not too big a deal. The BMW spcialist Indy shop that did the repair also gave it a "once over", to let me know what else I'd be in for (much of the items listed by the OP), the one ray of light from the tech, was that the Valley Pan gasket had been done. Great!, I thought, at least there's that.

You can probably imagine my dismay when I back out of my garage (about five days ago) to find a small puddle of coolant, about 1' in and 1' back from the passenger side tire. Seriously!

It's happened a couple of times since, but in smaller quantities each time. Yesterday, after about an hour of highway driving, only a couple of drops.

Are there any other possible explanations for this leakage, and its location? Could it at all be related to the recent reservoir replacement (i.e. over filling coolant)? Thanks in advance for the input.