I'm having a few days where I'm not gonna need the car and won't be very busy, so it was a good opportunity to replace those leaky valve cover gaskets.
Since I was doing that, I decided it might be a good opportunity to repaint them and make the engine look nice again. Plus work on a few things like replacing various other gaskets, improve the air/oil separator system and clean the variable valve timing solenoids, amongst other things.
So first I had to take off the covers, which was a lot easier and quicker than I thought, the only really annoying part is to remove the windshield wiper cowl, but nothing difficult now as I already did it a few times.
Then disconnect the wiring for the spark plugs and remove the coil packs as well as some other stuff that was in the way:
Then I just had to remove all the screws that hold the cover in place. I was pleased to see that all screws were the same, which will greatly help putting things back together. All the screws were easy to get, as long as you have a small 1/4 ratchet and some short sockets everything is relatively accessible
I had to carefully bend the dipstick tube in order to give the cover more room to be removed:
The covers gaskets were stuck so I had to pry them with a big screwdriver.
They gave up the fight easily and revealed the camshafts underneath:
Everything seems in fairly good condition, I saw nothing to worry about, that's cool.
I then removed the VVT solenoid, which didn't seem to be dirty or clogged.
Same story on the other side:
I ended up with a bunch of cool, but dirty parts on my bench. All the seals were completely toast and desperately needed to be replaced, they were hard and brittle:
At first the plan was to do the paint myself, but I've done it before and it's a bit of a hassle if you don't have an oven to properly cure the wrinkle paint, plus painting in my shop is always a hassle since the garage is so small, so for once I decided to subcontract this task to a professional painter. It wasn't terribly more expensive than doing it myself either (about 120 Euro in total).
I've sent the covers to a shop near Guangzhou, and they are being prepped for paint as we speak.
Next thing is to see what is going on with the oil separator. I'm not very experienced with this thing, but I'm having what I assume is excessive amounts of oil finding its way into the intake plenum. I don't think this is normal, the role of this thing should be to prevent this from happening.
So I took it apart to inspect the diaphragm (the orange thing):
Seems mostly good, but you can see that the center of the diaphragm has a clearer circular mark, which is a bit of damage due to friction with the black plastic part on the left.
I don't think this is the issue though, but I'm going to try and find a replacement for it while I'm there anyway.
Next was to remove the filter :
Took me a while to figure out how to separate those two pieces without destroying everything, but once you figure it out it's easy. Anyway, as you can see the filter fabric is completely collapsed. I think it's the problem, the fibers have been clogged with oil debris, so it's not permeable to air enough to do it's job anymore.
So... what should I do?
This filter is not sold as a separate element, you have to buy the entire system that costs about 200 Euro here in China.
I'm certainly not gonna pay 200Euro for a small diaphragm and a bit of sponge, nope!
After a bit of research, I found out what this fabric material was, and managed to source a supplier for it, so I purchased a few square centimeters for 2Euro.
Then I took a picture of the diaphragm and used the search by picture functions of taobao (the chinese equivalent of temu), and found out that this diaphragm is also used in a few BMWs. or at least it looks like the exact same but in a different color. So I've ordered one for a whopping 3Euro, including the plastic cover. So, If all goes well and with a bit of luck, I might be able to repair this thing for 5Euro instead of 200+. At least that's the plan, I guess we'll see.
I've also checked the spark plugs on the right bank and they all looked okay. I'll still have to check the left bank.
This was also a good opportunity to clean all the parts:
Another thing that I'm doing is to replace every single O-ring I'm coming accross + keep all the dimensions and reference for them in my 3D software so I can find these later.
I've ordered every one of these O-rings so I'll replace them all, of course I'm not buying the super expensive official since they clearly don't age impressively well, I chose to find ones with the same dimensions but intended for industrial applications. The material I chose is Viton FKM which is the best possible O-ring material, only second to FFKM. I wanted to use FFKM at first, but it was shockingly expensive. Anyway, new O-rings should come in a few days, let's hope they will last longer.
Also, I'm trying to come up with a plan to test my injectors flow + pattern. Will probably try to build a small injector testing machine for cheap.
. I was out driving today and my MSP and sky hook warning lights came on after I went over a pothole so there may be something brewing, although when I restarted the car the warning lights had disappeared...
). Anyway our 2 wheeled buddy is fine, just a sore butt, I offered him a new bike as an apology for his trouble and all is well.
