Wondering what are the common leaks points for this engine.

I am actually looking at a ML so I know it's not the right category but the W164 section seems pretty non-DIY compared to the C and E class sections of MBWorld. So please don't move this topic.

I saw a ML350 at the local auction here and it checked out pretty good except for a few oil leaks which is leaving me curious.

First odd thing I noticed was that the oil was overfilled for some reason. Doesn't seem to smoke on start up or have any oil in coolant so assuming no head gasket issues.

I noticed a leak in the passenger side valve cover which seems like an easy fix. Also saw a leak on the oil filter housing so assuming it needs something like a gasket, both I've done before on many BMWs so these are no problem.

Bigger issue is that it looks like the oil pan gasket is leaking because it looks oily and looks like some oil leak near the transmission housing. Wondering if these by any chance can be the camshaft caps on the back of the cylinder head? The car is a 2011 so wondering if MB used an updated part or does it still leak from those areas.

Here are a few photos.



Hard to tell but there is engine oil in this area.

Hard to tell but there is a oil seepage here.

 

Here are more photos.

 

cam seals & oil air separator

overall pretty easy fixes

 

So the leak is coming from the top down and makes it look like a oil pan leak / RMS leak?

 

Be careful, I had bought a suv with extra oil put in because the valve seals were leaking, it was over filled for that reason, plus one of the cats were clogged making it worse. The only way to test the valve seals I know of is to start the car cold, let it sit idling for 15 or so minutes and then rev the engine real good( don’t be timid but no need to red line). If smoke pours out of the exhaust forget the car, it needs valve seals and that’s expensive. Bring a simple hand held scanner to see if readiness monitors are complete, if non of them cleared I can pretty much promise you they had just recently deleted fault codes and the car has issues.

 

I assumed the only engines that had valve seal issues were the V8 BMW engines, didn't know the M272 was prone to that issue. The easy way to tell if the valve stems were bad was to do a cold start, if it smoked on cold start they were bad, but the smoking stopped when the car warmed up.

I went and saw the car in person again, the oil was overfilled before start but after I started it and waited 5 mins to cool off, it was at the correct MAX level. Assuming it was just sitting too long.

 

I looked at the Carfax and it seems that the cam seals and PCV was replaced by the MB dealer about 4 years ago, about 60K miles ago.

How often do these cam seals? PCV ? start to leak? They need to be serviced every 60K?

 

From the pictures it also can be and probably is engine cooler gasket and vacuum pump gaskets all easy fixes, and oil could of just migrated down to the bottom, in case of vacuum pump leak, so not necessarily transmission leak at all..