roadkillrob

I thought my BMW's where bad needing just about every seal at 100k, my C63 last year at like 35k had a leaky drivers side VCG - took a look and was back lower corner, 2 of the bolts where actually not even finger tight, so torqued to spec figured louse QC but whatever, a year later and 3500 more miles and it is back to leaking, so guess I will replace it (ordered already from FCP with bolts).

But seriously how do they make a gasket so **** - 5 years and 38000 miles and seems that is about average for people, lots of people replacing them before 50k. So much wonderful engineering and over engineering in these cars but no german engineer it seems is able to engineer a decent gasket, seems people with anything Japanese loose their minds if they get an oil leak before 250k, in our lovely German cars by 250k they just do their own oil changes constantly!

Anyway, had to vent a little and will give me a chance to inspect the cams and buckets as well as learn some new swear words getting that lower rear bolt out on the drivers side!

Jasonoff

There's a 6.2L beast stuffed into a small engine bay. You know how fkn hot it gets under there, especially inches from the headers? No gasket can survive heat cycles like that especially if the mating surfaces are not torqued down properly.

My VC gaskets were leak free after 7 years and ~100k km (when I did my HBs) but they were no longer pliable anymore.

roadkillrob

Ya will be interesting to see how hard they are when I get them out. My 335i with the turbo's sitting right under it get hotter for sure and it is still holding out. I think since it was was not torqued properly at some point that probably caused the issue, retorqueing helped for a bit, but damage was probably done.

Jasonoff

How do you figure? The heat comes from exhaust gases.

sventastic82

I owned several German cars a few VW's, E36 M3 120k miles, E46 M3 142k mile, 2010 C63 115k mile and now a 2013 C63 35k miles and never had a leaking gasket/seal. Maybe the reason why you have leaking German cars is because some American want to be car mechanic worked on them and wasn't able to tighten the bolts in the right sequence and to torque. Could be very difficult to convert Nm to ft-lb.

roadkillrob

I have the full history of the car and there is nothing showing for a valve cover or gasket change, but there is an incident where there is an oil change and then the car is back the next day and they replaced the oil filler cap and the hood insulation, so seems maybe someone messed up the oil change and didn't put the oil cap back or it was damaged, but no valve cover listed as changed.

roadkillrob

Maybe it doesn't make that much of a difference, the amount of fuel being burnt in each cylinder will basically dictate the head generated, but the temp of the manifold is a function of that heat and how quickly the gases can flow and exit the manifold (and the ambient airflow around it) with the turbo built into the manifold impeding the flow and being a bit cast heat sink, it definitely feels a lot hotter in that area which is very tightly packed, but maybe it ins't a notable difference in actual heat in that area.