[smellfish]

Friday-

I set out to change the infamous oil filter housing gasket and figured I'd change my coolant at the same time. After 6 hours in the shop I had the gasket changed and the coolant refilled and bled. I dicked around with passenger side intercooler connector for damn near an hour of that. I think it's still off given the boost leak and underboost code I now have. My gasket was in decent shape for 67,000, only minor signs of deterioration. Also, the last person to change my coolant used mostly water. What drained out was entirely clear and had just a hint of glycol. Sweet.

Saturday-

I realize I had forgotten to reattach the boost pipe to the throttle body. I remedy this, uninstall my Procede (to be updated to 2.5), re-accomplish the coolant bleeding procedure, and go for a drive. Now I am making around 3 psi, as compared to the 0.1 psi on Friday. Still have an underboost code. Checks.

Sunday -

I come back from a trail ride and notice my car is sitting in a pool of fresh blue coolant. I investigate and find the area around my bleeder screw coated with dried coolant and the undertray soaked. Apparently the screw was not on tight enough and me romping on the car the day before caused a boil over. No big deal, just tighten and refill. Wrong. The bleeder screw is now snapped off, threaded below the surface.

Questions-

First, is there a good technique to get the factory charge pipes back on the intercooler? The passenger side one is a bitch and I'm sure it's still leaking. I refuse to buy the "special tool'. I'm going to have another go at it and coat the seals in anti-seize this time.

Second, any thoughts on how to get the broken bleeder out? My ghetto side says to just fill it with epoxy and call it a day. The other choices are to buy new parts, $80 for the reservoir and $5 for the screw, or get the broken part out. I'm reluctant to drill it as I've done broken bolts before and they suck. It also appears to be too far down to score and turn out with a screwdriver.

Rant-

Why did BMW make this part hollow? How many tenths of a cent did that save?

[335i101]

Take it to BMW buy the screw from the parts department...(5bucks) then go to the service dept. And ask if someone can quick look at yur car.

Say that it was leaking coolant, so u bought the screw then you noticed the screw was broke off. They will pop it out and fix it....cost me 20.00 about 3 weeks ago...it is pretty common.

[txusa03]

if the part that broke off has the o-ring, then the other part should be easy to unscrew. Then again this never happened to me so i don't know if my statement is true.

[968tomr]

These don't torque down tightly, so you can just take a blunt pointy object (I used an icepick like item) and slowly turn the bleeder screw out. Replace with new part and move on with your life.

-Tom

[smellfish]

For whatever reason I couldn't turn it out so I ended up pulling the reservoir and drilling the broken bit out. Picked up a new bleed screw today and installed/bled everything. We'll see if she hold pressure tomorrow on my way to work.

Strangely, there was a lady picking up the exact same piece for her X5...

[ENINTY]

The bleed screw is hollow to allow for expansion over the temperature range the plastic screw will be suject to. If the screw was not hollow, it could crack the coolant reservoir. Common design practice. The problem was someone over-torqued the screw at some point and it eventually failed...

[smellfish]

Screw is in and working. One problem down, one to go. I still have a 30FF and now a 30FC code. 0 boost. I refit all the intercooler and throttle body connections but no luck.

[smellfish]

Fixed! Ended up being a split vacuum line behind the oil filter housing. Checked this thanks to the thread below. Replaced it with some hose I had from my SR20 build 6 years ago. Back to 9.0 psi between stop lights.

Hoarding and E90Post FTW!

http://www.e90post.com/forums/showth...ght=boost+leak

[hxs80]

I just went through this this weekend but mine broke 6 days after the gasket change and coolant flush.

As to your ghetto comment, I had to do that to get home! It worked pretty ok but it still bubbled out a bit.

As to your cheap part comment... when I went to buy the new screw the cashier told me, "Actually, you want this screw to break. It would be more expensive if the reservoir tank cracked." I was like, what?! What kind of logic is that? So I bought two. I guess this supports ENINTY's comment.

I was searching around and I saw that there are bronze alternatives but from what I've read, I'm inclined to just suck it up and have extra screws around.

I agree with you though, horrible design. As I posted, on another thread, I think one should just go ahead and change this screw as part of the coolant flush. Better safe than sorry I guess...with my luck, I should change every screw, gasket, and o-rings I come across as I work on my car...

[ENINTY]

The problem is not the screw, but rather the person who is tightening it. It's a plastic screw with an o-ring. It only needs a few inch-pounds of torque to seal. If you tighten the screw to where the o-ring is slightly compressed and it still leaks then you need a new o-ring. You don't need to torque the living shit out of the plastic screw.