Head gasket?

[Dan17]

Hi everyone,

I was replacing the serpentine belt on my 2015 120i at the weekend and I noticed a fair amount of oil on the front of the engine. I also noticed a couple of mice needing in the engine bay too so I managed to evict them before they ate the wiring loom.

Anyway, based on this picture alone, do you think it is the head gasket? Mileage is 60k btw.



TIA

[d_a_n1979]

Dan17 said:

Hi everyone,

I was replacing the serpentine belt on my 2015 120i at the weekend and I noticed a fair amount of oil on the front of the engine. I also noticed a couple of mice needing in the engine bay too so I managed to evict them before they ate the wiring loom.

Anyway, based on this picture alone, do you think it is the head gasket? Mileage is 60k btw.



TIA

IMO clean it all off; run the engine for a good few days and the see if you can see where it's appearing from

HG would be drastic; rocker cover gasket would be normal for a BMW

[Dan17]

Thank you, I will do that.

[E-bmw]

Link shows no pic ATM, but if I am guessing correctly it shows oil on the engine, the likelihood is extremely small as cylinder pressures are way above oil pressure, so that would likely get out first, water will obviously (over a period of time) deteriorate any gasket, so oil would be the last of the 3 to get out in general.

As was mentioned above, clean it off and look again, but rocker cover or oil filter housing gaskets are MUCH more likely to be a source of oil.

[DKIE92]

How does your oil filter housing look like? It’s more likely to be that.

It doesn’t look like a bad rocker cover gasket as the oil would drip down from it to get to that area. The rocker cover area however looks clean.

How long have you had the car? It could be there was a rocker cover leak but the engine wasn’t cleaned up after it was fixed.

[Dan17]

Thanks to all for replying.

I've owned it for just over 4 years but I've never looked down there until I replaced that belt.

I will give it a clean at the weekend and try to find the source, definitely no sludge on the oil filter cap or any other head gasket symptoms so hopefully it's something simpler.

[Dan17]

Luckily this didn't take very long, as I started cleaning I noticed this little thing move, it's loose and I'm fairly sure the source of the oil.

Before I tighten it up, can anyone tell me what it is please?

Thanks.

[Dan17]

It's just here on the bigger picture..

[d_a_n1979]

Dan17 said:

It's just here on the bigger picture..

Is that not a block drain plug for the coolant?

Have you looked on the diagrams on RealOEM to see what that labels it as?

[I-am-the-reverend]

It's a blanking plug for a timing chain tensioner rail locating pin. Very similar to a caliper pin. The plug has an O ring and will just want nipping up.

[Dan17]

I-am-the-reverend said:

It's a blanking plug for a timing chain tensioner rail locating pin. Very similar to a caliper pin. The plug has an O ring and will just want nipping up.

Thanks people, duly nipped up, hopefully that's the end of it 🤞