[Ghostriderf80]

Last year I drove to Germany and had a great trip through Europe several times. My car consumed literally no oil. Once I got back to the UK somehow it started to consume oil. I thought well maybe I ran it a bit hard in Germany. LOL

So I drove for the rest of the year with minimal oil consumption ~ about 1 L per 7K. But I kept smelling burning oil. I checked many times under the hood what was going on, till I finally had enough.

Went to BMW bought a new gasket and began to take it all apart. Once I got to the first part near to oil fill cap, I noticed a small pool of oil around the injectors.
Then up on closer inspection a crack in the valve cover dissecting the whole valve cover.

I figure the slow oil consumption was the vapours escaping and losing oil.

Plus I think there are other cracks as I smelled burning oil on the manifold.
Car has 62K on it always well maintained.

Will have to change the gasket and valve cover. Parts on order.

[roundle]

You are probably better off replacing the engine valve cover unit--it's just going to crack again. They are not that expensive and include all the gadgets already installed.

Odd that you had a bad experience with your GSR. My 2001-which I bought new and drove for 120K miles--was an absolutely great car.

[Ghostriderf80]

Ya I got down to the bottom of it, there is a pretty big crack, I used JB weld to stuff the crack, but I am not convinced that it will gold in the oil and grit. It says high heat etc but skeptical here.

Worse of the dealer gave a wrong valve cover gasket to go w my motor. I think for this sort of trouble we're going to get the valve cover at cost or at least pretty damn close to parts price.

Have you seen the valve covers crack too after being glued? Heat cycles?

In regards to my GSR LOL OMG what a nightmare. It was from a blown up clutch to valve lifters, to cracked manifold, seized suspension. Car sucked. It made me miss my old 1980 rabbit. But then again look at how they are doing in F1. Says it all.

[Ghostriderf80]

Replaced valve cover with a new one. It came with everything including gasket, bolts, etc.
Only thing I had to change over is the coil pack guides.

Most of it was plug and play.

However because I had to remove the fuel rail you need to be careful with that and to tighten everything in sequence.

Only issue is now I am getting intermittent misfire - likely loose coil pack. I read the errors and cleared them. Looks like it was air in fuel lines.

Car runs strong and there is a good vacuum inside the valve cover now.

No smells no oil.

Total cost 272 GBP from dealer plus 29 GBP for special tool to remove the three tall bolts.

Difficulty level to get this done - easy.