Tag: gasket

BMW N55 Engine Rebuild Project Part 6 – Valve Cover Gasket & Oil Pan Gasket

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Hello and welcome back to Part 6 of my BMW N55 engine rebuild project that I have been working on for a few weeks now. By the end of this video, this engine is finally starting to look like a real engine and not just a pile of parts around a block. I can almost hear this engine start up for the first time and purrrr with all its new parts, or at least I hope it will! In today’s video I’m replacing the valve cover gasket and installing the valve cover itself as well as replacing the oil pan gasket and installing a new-to-me oil pan. More on that later.

If you’d like this project to succeed, don’t forget to hit that like button for me and of course the YouTube algorithm. Now, back to the project!

I won’t be going into details on how to get to this stage as I’ve shown the steps in my engine removal video. I suggest you watch that video for more details on which parts to remove to get to the valve cover. Basically, you’ll remove the intake housing, fan cowl and move the coolant expansion tank to the side. No need to disconnect it. Then remove the air duct that feeds the turbocharger and now most of the stuff is now out of the way, so you’ll just have to remove the gas pressure lines after disconnecting the battery; of course, and any vacuum and electrical connections. Now the valve cover can be unbolted. If you will be reusing it, make sure to unbolt all 26 bolts in the correct sequence and remember that these bolts are attached to the cover itself and will not peacefully come out past the plastic part.

With the valve cover removed, we can inspect the surfaces on the cylinder head and remove any bigger debris with a plastic razor and use a scotch brite pad for anything remaining. The valve cover itself has 4 different gaskets that should be replaced each time the cover is removed to avoid any oil leaks. Replacing them is very easy, remove the old stuff, clean out the channels of any dirt, insert new gaskets and we are ready to go back on the cylinder head. In my case, I had to install the spark plug housing which came off during the rebuild. With everything ready to go, the cover simple can be lowered making sure everything is aligned and torqued to spec.


Torquing these bolts to spec and in the correct order is probably the most important step as this plastic cover can easily warp or even crack if not done correctly. Refer to the diagram for the correct sequence and then  hand tight or use a power drill on the lowest setting on all of the screws. For round two, each one gets 8.5 Nm in the same order. DO NOT go back to the first ones to check torque or retorque them again. They have to be done in that order and left alone.

If all went well, simply re-assemble whatever you have taken a part to get here and enjoy your new valve cover gasket!

Now onto the Oil Pan gasket and install. As I mentioned earlier, I had to get a new oil pan as the engine I’m rebuilding is from a BMW X5 and the oil pan and pick up tube are different on that car. This one is a lot more complicated to do at home if you don’t have your engine out, but it is possible if you drop the front axle support and remove the front differential and power steering pump. With correct access, this is a simple job just like the valve cover. Just as before, cleaning all of the surfaces is very important to prevent leaks and then we can drop the gasket on the engine block. In this case, there are no guides, so you have to be very careful when installing the new gasket as it will move around if you’re not careful. It took me 2 tries before I got it perfect and I had perfect access, so I imagine it’s a little bit harder while working under the car. With the gasket aligned and the oil pan sitting on top, we can insert new aluminum bolts in a couple of spots and screw them in a few threads. Now comes the important part. If the engine is out, you’re supposed to use an alignment tool to make sure the oil pan is perfectly aligned with the block. If the transmission is still attached, you don’t have to worry about it as it will align itself to the bellhousing. Here is what I did. Then hand tight a few screws to keep it from moving around. All screws on the oil pan are torqued to 8 Nm and then 90-degree rotation for the short ones and 180 degree of rotation on the long ones.

Well, look at my engine looking all spiffy now with the new gaskets and ready for more parts. Thank you so much for watching part 6 of the N55 engine rebuild project and I’m looking forward to seeing you in the next parts where we install the front and rear crankshaft seals, install the injectors, the exhaust manifold and drop the engine in the car. Leave a comment down below and let me know what you think of the progress so far and if you’d like to follow the project, don’t forget to subscribe. See ya next time!

BMW N55 Engine Rebuild Project Part 4 – Cylinder Head Gasket Replacement

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Hello everyone and welcome back to the SimpleCarGuy channel. This is part 4 of the BMW N55 engine rebuild project where I install the new head gasket and reinstall the cylinder head back on the engine. In the previous videos I have taken the engine out of my BMW 335i, tore it apart and found that it was not rebuildable… some time later I found this engine for cheap locally and have replaced the main bearings, crankshaft, piston and installed new rod bearings. Now this engine is ready for the cylinder head to go back on.

I chose not to do much work on the cylinder head except to clean it up a little bit and remove some carbon. After inspecting it, I didn’t see excessive wear or anything of concern and honestly, I’ve used most of my budget that I had for this rebuild on bolts, seals, gaskets and all the replacement parts.

Clearly my engine is out of the car and it took a decent amount of work to get this far but I’m not sure I’d recommend doing this with the engine in the car if it is at all possible. BMW  also recommends taking the engine out for this job and that’s why you see so many valve cover videos on YouTube, but I couldn’t find any as far as the head gasket. Anyway, this series is meant more to document my journey with this car and rebuilding the engine as a hobby mechanic and hopefully help someone in the future do the same or at least start doing DIY jobs at home. Also, now would be a great time to hit that like button for all the BMW DIYers and for the Youtube algorithm.

Check out my video where I disassemble a BMW n55 engine and take the cylinder head off to get an idea of what to do to get to this point. If those specifics aren’t your thing, I’m highlighting the basic steps in this video.

Step 1, remove the engine from the car by removing the exhaust system, draining all of the fluids, removing the intake, radiator, all of the piping and disconnecting it from the wiring loom and transmission. Wow, that was easy! The engine is out now!

Step 2, mount the engine on the engine stand, removing the exhaust manifold with the turbo, injectors, gas lines and anything else attached to the cylinder head. We are moving right along!


In step 3, we undo all of the bolts from the valve cover, remove it and install the timing tool onto the camshafts. Now we can undo the central bolts and remove the camshaft adjusters.

That’s it! Now we only have 14 big bolts holding it in place and after muscling those out of the way, we can lift the cylinder head off the block! No body said this one was easy, but now we are finally ready to replace that head gasket.

Now starts the most tedious part of the job and that’s getting everything nice and clean. This doesn’t look that hard on video, but it sure takes a while to do. I’m mostly just removing the carbon build up as much as I can to help the engine breathe a little better and have the oil flow a little smoother.

Removing remanences of the old gaskets is the most important step; otherwise, your new, expensive gasket will not make a very good seal and you’ll have oil leaks after all of this hard work. I didn’t use any metal tools while doing this as it’s very easy to damage the mating surface, but I did use a brass spinning wheel on the valves to get rid of all that build up carbon. The brass tool is approved for aluminum, so I had no concern using it on hardened valves. Having this great access to the pistons, I gave them a quick clean as well. MUCH BETTER!

Now that all of the parts are ready, it’s a good idea to wipe everything down and make sure there is no oil and dirt in the blind holes or anywhere the gasket will touch. Then, it’s time to actually install the gasket. I decided to go with the ELRING head gasket as they are the OEM for BMW and I’ve used their products before. It simply drops on top of the block, making sure all of the holes line up and the head can go on top. It’s heavy and you should really have a buddy help you out, but I work on this stuff at night and I like being in the way of the camera, so here we are. Once everything looks good and it’s lined up, it’s time to grab a torque wrench and the angle gauge and torque our head bolts to spec.

These bolts drop in easy, but make sure the washers are there. Very easy for those to fall out and get overlooked. You’ll need a special long torx bit set to reach the bolts and set correct torque values. I got mine on Amazon and if you’re interesting, check out the link below, these work great.

There are 3 types of bolts here. We have the M11 and M9 bolts, those are the ones that go in the middle and are torqued to 30 NM, then 90 degree angle of rotation and another 180 degrees on second round. The 3 third type are the M9 short bolts that go on the side where the timing chain is and are torqued to 22nm. I don’t think I have to explain how important it is to do this to spec, just imagine the pressure between the block and the head when the engine is running. And the last thing to do to finish the job is to put back the stopper bolt for the eccentric shaft and the oil spraying nozzle that we removed to get to the bolts.

That is all for part 4 of the BMW n55 engine rebuild project, in the next video I will be installing the oil pump, the timing chain guides with the timing chain and timing the engine. If you’d like to see that, subscribe to the channel and I’ll see you in the next one. Thanks for watching.