Oil filter housing casting plug

[ricardo jamin]

Hi everyone,

My E36 m3 is developing a leak. I traced it to oil filter housing gasket, I can see it seeping oil when engine is running. I chat with my mechanic and he told me to also check the casting plug on the oil filter housing. He told me some model/year also has issue with the casting plug but could not tell me the which.
Anyone has info/experience about this? Google result return mostly taking about m52 and m54 engine.
If this casting plug is indeed a problem for S52, I don’t want have to re-do the job in the near future.

thanks.

[Rob Powers]

Hi Ricardo,
First off, the oil filter housing is the same for all of the 3-series S50/52 and M50/52 motors.

If you’re ever in doubt, you can double check this kind of thing at realoem.com. Look up your car, find the part number as it applies to your model, then backtrack to the first page and paste that number into the part # application search. Pretty handy way to find cross-reference parts!

If you’re not seeing any oil leaking along the casting plug area of your housing, I wouldn’t mess with it. You should be able to see pretty easily if you have a leak back there once you have your housing off.

I found this write-up of someone who hacked a solution on a 528i with an M52:
http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showthread.php?t=414315
Slightly different part because of the attachment point of the P/S reservoir, but basically the same idea.

The gasket replacement itself is pretty straightforward, but you do need to remove a bunch of parts to get to it. If you’re not draining your oil first, be sure to at least open up the oil filter lid so any oil drains back to the block before you take off the housing.. it will be quite messy otherwise.

[Andy Daniels]

If you’re ever in doubt, you can double check this kind of thing at realoem.com. Look up your car, find the part number as it applies to your model, then backtrack to the first page and paste that number into the part # application search. Pretty handy way to find cross-reference parts!

Somewhat OT, but anyway… The parts catalog at bmwfans.com is even handier for this. It links directly from the part diagrams to the part details, including usage.

[ricardo jamin]

Thanks for reply Rob.

Good point about we’re sharing the same oil filter housing as non m car.
Weird thing is all the result that i found were taking about non m. So I was hoping it doesn’t affect the m car.
I finally had the time to check under the hood under day lights today. The casting plug seems to be OK. Looks dry and didn’t see any leak when the engine run and revved. So I think I’m going to leave it alone.
My mechanic actually sent me that same link to me too. However he doesn’t recommend doing that. I trust him because I usually bring my own parts so it’s not that he’s trying to sell me a part I don’t need.

[ricardo jamin]

cool, I didn’t know about bmwfans before. I think I like the layout of it better than realoem, at least from the 5 minutes of using it.

BTW its bmwfans.info. weirdly for me bmwfans.com takes me to a mazdausa site.

[Rob Powers]

Andy- Thanks for the reference to bmwfans.. I’m shocked I had never heard of it before. I like the quick cross-referencing nav. I wish they had chosen a smaller/nicer default font instead of Arial 17px bold. Other than that though, it’s nice to have an alternative site to use in case one or the other is offline.

(FWIW, You can get the same graphical category listings on realoem by clicking the “switch to images drilldown” button at the top. Much easier than blindly clicking through all the categories to figure out which drawing has your part.)

Ricardo- good to hear that your casting plugs aren’t leaking. Good luck on the gasket swap!

[Andy Daniels]

BTW its bmwfans.info

Oops. Absolutely right. I’d edit my post to correct that, but I can’t find a way to do so on this new WordPress-based forum.

Their gaudy interface is pretty new. The older version of the site (still accessible) was a bit more sedate. I use them both—RealOEM’s text-based view is nicer on slow links and small screens.

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