Welcome to legit street cars and welcome to another episode of legit flip in this video. I will be mechanically sorting out my manual transmission v8 powered e39 for only about one 000. Now i've already done a lot of work to the e39 to make it more valuable and, of course, i'll continue to break down the financials for you guys, so you can follow along, but in case you missed the other videos i'm into this car 1040, including gas. I'm keeping track of every single thing, except for my own labor, which is something a few of you guys had asked about in the comments section and i'll cover it at the end of this video.

But i will not be including my own personal labor in the legit flip series, but anyway i'll talk about that at the end of the video. For now i have a ton of work to do to this car. I'm gon na get really dirty, there's a good chance. I'm gon na break some parts.

So with that, let's get to work, are you kidding me come on? Oh wow, this isn't good. This is good this. This might hurt okay they're. All like this.

I've gone all the way around. I'm gon na have to stand on each one of these great start. Okay, let's try this again nice and easy. I did all the hard work, but now they're coming out, i'm sure this wheel, whoa whoa, it's it is just coming off.

I was totally expecting that to be rusted solid, where i'd have to do the mule kick to get it off, but okay i'll take that, of course, you know we're not getting away with getting all of these wheels off without at least one mule kick. That was easy, wasn't coming off with the hammer and yeah. This is definitely why all right, our first order of business, is to replace this guy right here. This is called a tension strut and in our inspection video we found not only was the joint loose, but the bushing is totally shot and you can see how much the entire spindle will move around if you're going over bumps and i was getting a thud noise Over bumps, so this is our problem: all right, we're gon na make life as easy as possible by spraying everything down we're doing the brakes as well.

So let's go ahead and spray all of that. Now. I've never done this job before, but it looks like this is a very tight clearance here to get this nut out. So, let's do something about it all right, good enough and we're just gon na gently pry, the bottom of this shock or strut, and it's going to go up and give us a little bit more clearance.

So that's about as far as we can get right now, but i think if we loosen up this sway bar link we'll get even more clearance. So let's do that. As you can see here, the sway bar link is just spinning, and these do have a slot for a wrench. It's just.

They have to be a very thin wrench to get in so now we can hold it and there we go now. We should be able to get just a little bit more room there. We go not a lot, but every little bit counts all right. The next step is not 100 necessary.

If you don't have fire at home, then don't worry about this, but we're trying to make life easy, and i know that these are lock nuts. They have nylon in them. So we're going to go ahead and melt that out. If you see that really bright tip there, that is the nylon it's oozing out.

I don't know if this is going to come up on camera, but it's all coming out like lava right now that stuff right there is on fire for a second. That is the nylon, so we got ta act, quick, all right. There we go had we not heated that up, it would have been very difficult to get with the wrench by hand, there's not a ton of room in here, but if you have a ratcheting 22 it'll save you a ton of time. Okay, so the nut is off and we are going to use a tool that will definitely damage the boot here on the joint, but we don't care in this case.

I use this a lot, but it's really hard to get in here, and this will probably damage the boot in this situation as well, but we're replacing this arm. So who cares all right, we'll go ahead and jam this pickle fork in there? It hasn't popped. Yet that's: okay, all right! We're just gon na give it a little red tat with the air hammer there we go yep that happens every time! That's how you know you got it all right, so we have the arm free of the spindle, and now we have to remove this bolt, which at the moment looks impossible because of the sway bar, but i think we can fix that all right. These have been soaking and penetrating oil, very important wow and they are loose like butter, doesn't seem normal to me, but i'll take it.

I already loosened up the other side as well, so we might have just enough room to sneak that out now. Okay, so on some cars, the thrust arms have a notch on the bolt and on the inside of the bushing. So if you ever want to remove those and not destroy them, because you're going to reuse them make sure to hold the head of the bolt and only spin the nut, which in this case is in the back and we'll just use the ratcheting wrench to make This quicker, oh, no, don't tell me. The center link is in the way, no e39 engineers.

Please tell me we don't have to loosen this up. Are there any e39 engineers in the comments? That'd be sweet. Okay, i just stuck the key in the ignition to unlock the steering and, let's see, if we move this, can we should be this guy out a little bit more. Oh, look at how close that is.

Oh we're forcing it we're forcing it right there. That's the sweet spot. That is the e39 thrust arm bolt cheat code. Whoa! Oh, it just fell.

Okay, i don't care here we go. We got the bolt out. Look at that! Remember this folks. This is the exact position of the steering linkage to get this bolt out with it off.

You can see how bad this joint is. Look at that a lot of play. Bushings are just totally gone and you can see how tight the new one is. You can't move it at all with your hand, i mean nothing and a fresh joint.

This feels so good all right. Let's go install this guy all right, so we're just going in reverse order. Install our joint there. We have a brand new shiny, washer, a brand new nut.

You want to replace the hardware for sure we'll leave that loose for now and then we're just going to slide the bushing in right here, a little e39 chevy in place. There we go all right and since we have the precise longitude and latitude for the installation of this bolt, this is a trade secret. Now you - and i only know i should be able to get this guy in a couple of love taps get in there and give this a little bit of persuasion there we go. This is a little blue loctite for this guy back here all right, so i'm going to tighten this joint up all the way right now, but i have not tightened the other end with the long bolt we have to do that with the car on the ground And i'll show you how you can do that towards the end of the video once we get this thing off the rack, if you guys run into a situation where the nut is not tightening and it's just spinning the entire shaft, it's because you need to counter Hold this six millimeter allen, but you might not have one that fits with the shock right here.

So let me show you a little trick. I have my spin jack underneath this joint, so we're just going to raise this up. You'll see the whole thing will move up. This is going to lock it in place and now we'll be able to tighten this, and if you guys are doing this on the ground - and you don't have one of these guys just use a normal floor jack, it works just as well all right.

This guy is nice and tight. There we go. Oh, no, we're stuck. The strut will creep down on you every once in a while.

Don't leave your tool and make it yet another suspension arm for the e39. There we go and then having your jack under the spindle will also make lining the strut back up easy. As you can see, it's going to go right into place. Actually here i'm going to go ahead and raise this back up for you guys.

You can see this clean mark here, so this is going to help you line this up perfectly where it was before i'm just going to jack it right up into place right about there. Now we'll go ahead and tighten this guy up. Okay, so we have the driver side arm installed and the passenger side installed and i left the sway bar completely disconnected so we could get that bolt out easily. So this job is not yet complete because we need to fully tighten this bolt and the reason we're leaving this loose until the car is on the ground is because if we tighten it up now and then put it on the ground, these arms are going to Move up and that's going to twist this bushing and put it in an unnatural position and then they wear out much quicker, but you don't need an alignment rack or anything fancy to tighten these with the car on the ground.

I'll show you guys a little trick. A little later and the grand total for the tension, struts was 180 okay. So obviously you can save a lot of money by fixing your own car, but there's a much easier way for you to save money when you're shopping online and that's by using honey. So honey is america's number one shopping tool because it automatically searches for promo codes.

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This requires no effort from you and on average, when honey finds you a coupon, you save 18, so go get honey, go to some of the stores you already shop at online and see what it can save you. So i just want to say a big thanks to honey for continuing to support automotive content creators like myself and for saving me a ton of money over the years now, with that, let's go. Do some breaks next up we're going to attack these front brakes? As you can see, the rotor is getting quite thin. This is kind of dangerous, so we want to make this car safe and replace these brakes, and also these rotors are warped.

So every time you hit the brakes, the steering wheel would shake back and forth. It was very, very apparent and when they start to get thin, they are prone to warpage. So these things are shot. Let's get them out of here.

Okay, first step is this little clip here should be easy enough, so scared, there's so much rust. Okay, we got it cool that is literally the easiest part of the entire brake job, but i'll take whatever victory. We can get. I'm hoping these bolts aren't frozen on me.

What am i going to learn only by cars from the south, all right? First things: first, caliper bolts, gravy, nice and easy and the bottom one a little harder, but it's coming, i haven't snapped it yet all right. I like, where we're going here, good deal. Yeah. Let's push these pads in a little sounds good baby, pry bar's not going to do it.

We need the the big brother pry bar. Oh, these pads are stuck. Oh there we go okay, cool, even aside from the warped and thin rotors, these pads, probably like 30 40. Something like that.

So another good reason just to swap these out all right, caliper bracket bolts, see what you're made of oh, nothing, nothing for me, buddy! That's right, i work out. I don't really work out, but one day one new year's resolution, i'm gon na start to work out then i'll be able to really break free. These rusted bolts. This is kind of a workout right, mechanics work out.

Naturally, every day in the shop we're on our feet all day, lifting heavy stuff breaking bolts loose so workout. This is an automotive channel, but it's it's kind of a workout channel too i'm working the lateral bis right now, maybe a little bit of the little tries. Okay, these things took longer than i expected, but here we are got ta clean this guy up all right. Next up, we got ta get this rotor off.

Let's see if this is going to cooperate all right - and this is always my favorite part of doing a break job, because i secretly wanted to be a baseball player right. I wasn't really too big of a secret. When i was a kid, i always wanted to be a baseball player. I just obviously wasn't good enough, so i'm a mechanic um, but just for a few minutes, every brake job.

I get to pretend that this is a bat and then i'm playing for the cubs and that we're in the world series. Is this really coming that easily all right, i'm gon na give it a good whack before i. I gently break this loose talking nonsense here. We go yes, all right, okay, i guess i didn't throw this in at all whoops.

I only thread that in just in case this pops off and hits you in the toes but uh. That was easy. This thing wasn't really that bad you'd think it would have been frozen on there completely, but wow there's nothing left of this rotor jeez salt, it's a killer! Anyway, i was hoping to show off my uh my batting skills there, but uh. I couldn't so next time.

Maybe in the rear, okay, let's spray, this guy down, give this a good cleaning a little bit of brake paste, not a lot that way. It's easy for the next guy to get the rotor off! You can go as crazy as you want with cleaning this up, but this isn't a show car, so we're just gon na clean, where the actual pads are going to rest and move back and forth on this bracket, and that is right in here. We're just getting the big pieces of rust and dirt out of here doesn't have to be perfect. Okay, so, with these looking pretty awesome in the world of midwest caliper brackets, this is considered pretty awesome um.

But after we clean them up we're just lubricating where the pad slides new dos brake disc, going on put our little holding screw back in there we go okay. Now our cleaned up, brake caliper bracket all right now, we'll compress the caliper piston use the old pad for this do not put the new pad on and then do this you'll destroy it. Okay, that's all the way grease this guy up and we'll get a little in here too pop this guy out lubricate this pad as well. This is going to reduce squeaky noises, don't want any of that and then just hit the area that the piston is going to contact or just do the entire thing like this and call it a day and we'll slide.

Our caliper back on then tighten up the two caliper bolts, all right with that tightened up. We are just going to put this rusted clip right back on and be honest, who noticed that half this brake job was on the passenger side and the other half was on the driver's side. Who noticed? Why did i do that? You may ask because they're both the same. That's why there's really absolutely no reason.

I was just wondering if you guys would comment and say, wait, a minute. That's the other side. I don't know what's going on there. I don't know, don't forget to install your really long brake pad wear sensor, and this is really easy.

It just snakes around the same way. You removed it, so you really cannot mess this part up and on the good old e39 you just plug the clip in there, and you clip that in here and close the door. That's it all right guys, nothing too exciting going on in the rear. The other side is done, uh it's coming apart, really nicely considering all the rust, so i've just turned the camera on to uh.

To show you my swing, i don't think i got a fair shot up front there and i just want to show you what i'm working with here. I was, i thought, a pretty decent batter when i played in my day i had a good stance like this knuckles lined up ready to go all right. Let's give this one a good whack bam. Oh, this is not going the way i want it to go.

Oh, it's loose! Oh, it's loose! Yeah! Oh, wait! A minute! I left this guy screwed in. We might have just broken the rotor. It's just too powerful of a swing people it's just too powerful. Oh yeah! I think i just broke this metal there.

We go. Oh yeah, we broke that off. That's okay! This was the inside of the rotor and we broke it off. That happens more often than you think.

Now what you want to do in the rear before you get the hammer out is make sure that this adjuster is all the way in. So you can turn this one way and it'll spread these shoes out and that will hold the rotor, but sometimes even after you adjust it all the way in they're still frozen on now, every once in a while. Someone will make a comment when they see me hitting a rotor with a hammer that it's not the proper method. Well, let me tell you you go to any shop.

You go to any dealer. Every mechanic has a big hammer in their toolbox, that's mostly being used to hit rotors to remove them easily from the car. I think i've done. I have no idea how many brake jobs i've done a thousand.

I don't know if that's realistic, but i've done a lot of brake jobs, never had an issue hitting a rotor. You can definitely do this plus it's probably the most fun part of the break job. You know why, because you get to pretend you get to pretend that you took a different path in life, that the coach didn't cut you from the team and that you had made it you'd made it far and that you didn't just become a mechanic. Not that there's anything wrong with that all right, so our brake job is complete new pads and rotors all the way around and the grand total for the entire brake job was 400, and that includes a brake, fluid flush which i'm completing right now you guys have Seen me do this so many times, so i bled out all the brakes, all the bleeders opened and now we're just filling it up with good synthetic brake, fluid so 400.

But now we are totally done in the braking system and this is going to be a good selling point uh when we make the listing for this car that it has all new brakes and fluid. I think that's going to be valuable to people, especially people that don't work on their own car they're, going to assume they'd spend like a thousand or 1200 bucks on a brake job, and now they don't have to uh. So, anyway, we're moving on up to the engine, we're gon na fix some oil leaks and a stuck fan clutch. So, let's just get straight to it before we put our cabin filter, housings back together, we're gon na replace the cabin filters.

So in the engine detailing video, i kind of vacuumed these out, they were sort of nasty, but it doesn't smell in the car. These are pretty clean uh. You don't have to do these for a flip job, but for 25 we're going to get the more proper filters. The good quality filters in here and we'll put this in the listing too.

We want to add value to the car in the listing, so we got to let people know what we replaced on the e39. These happen to be really easy to replace, so anyone can do this at home. Put our little cover back on. That's it! Next up we're going to tackle a cooling issue with the fan max, go ahead and start this guy up all right.

So some of you guys noticed this in the last video, but our fan is stuck on at all times if the engine's cold, it's on, if you rev the engine it's still on and when i went for a drive, i went full throttle and this thing is Just screaming so this is a classic case of a fan clutch just staying engaged. Now a fan clutch that's stuck on is my preferred method of fan. Clutch failure. The other way around when the fan clutch doesn't engage, means that you're going to overheat your engine, and you definitely do not want to do that - and this is a very straightforward, pretty easy job.

But it does require a couple of special tools and here are those special tools - and i just ordered these off of amazon and gave them a shot and they're, not good. We're gon na make this work, but i'm gon na leave you two links down below one link to this tool, so you know not to buy it and then i'll try and find a more reliable tool. Maybe that has more ratings or something. But let me know in the comments, if you guys have a link to a good fan clutch tool for these e39s, this one it sucks.

So you can see it's got these two holes right here and we're gon na put them over these, but they don't fit very well at all. The bottom one goes on and uh it's just not a good fitment, that's pretty much it so we're not really getting a good contact, but i think it's going to be enough, and this is reverse thread, so this is just a 27 millimeter. I have a wrench, but it came in a kit for like 15 bucks, so i just got it uh and now all we're gon na do is we're going to turn it okay. So this is really easy and then once you break it free this is really loose and you don't need that second tool, you don't really need any tools.

You can just spin. The fan like this just be careful when you get to the end that this doesn't fall off and damage your radiator, so just be prepared right before it's about to pop off. Okay, just like that, it fell straight down which is good. It's kind of hard to catch it right there at the last second, but what's really nice with this? Is we don't have to mess around with the fan shroud? We don't have to take any belts off.

Nothing gets in the way. This is a very, very easy swap, and this very well may be the original fan clutch on here. So let's bring it over to the table and swap our blades here is the old fan. Clutch very well could be original, and these bolts definitely need to be sprayed down.

So we don't run into any issues and anytime you can get to the back side of threads that you want to put penetrating oil on it's a great idea to hit the back side too. This actually might creep in there more than hitting it from the front, because it's got the head to kind of block the penetrating oil all right. Let's go ahead and swap over this fan and if you've soaked these, you can go ahead and hit them with the impact just make sure that your allen is properly seated. So give it a few taps like that, and i never have a problem with these.

They usually come out pretty nice. There we go. I didn't jinx myself cool there. We go out with the old, and here is our new one go ahead and line these up.

I'm going to put a little bit of blue loctite on these threads. That's a lot! Don't really need a lot of lactite, so we'll spread the love here and we'll spread the love again. That is more than enough. So we're starting all of these screws by hand first make sure it's lined up properly and then we just give them a tighten.

Now. Let's go over them by hand, just hold the fan blade. These don't have to be very tight, don't go too crazy. There we go last one all right, we're ready to go back on, oh and if you guys are wondering where i ordered all of my e39 replacement parts from it's, of course, fcpeuro.com great prices, excellent customer service.

They know what they're talking about and they have their amazing lifetime parts replacement guarantee. If you buy a part for your car and it fails or anything happens to it, they will replace it for free for, however long you own your vehicle, so i'll drop a link to fcp euro down below all right cool we're just going to reinstall this. In reverse order and remember we're spinning this clutch lefty loosey to actually tighten it because it's reverse thread. So it's kind of hard to get this started.

Your best option is usually to hold it on there and then just use the wrench to go ahead and start it just like this. Then we can be cool and just spin it on there we go. Don't forget your horribly made cheap tool that barely works, which you're not going to buy because i'll leave you a link for a better one and then we're just going to tighten it. Oh, this thing fits so bad right there, okay, cool fan, clutch is done all right.

So with the new fan clutch this spins much more freely before it was basically locked, so go ahead and start her up. I don't recommend you guys putting your hands anywhere near a fan, i'm just showing you this as an example. It won't make that crazy, loud fan noise when we just rev it up. So now all we hear is the engine, so this guy is still obviously gon na spin a little bit, but it's not under load.

It's not dragging our engine down at all times, and now it's just gon na activate when we need it. So the engine doesn't overheat and you'll get a little bit better fuel economy with this thing not engaged all the time as well. Okay, next up we're gon na remove these valve covers so we're gon na be able to take a good look at this engine. The top end, at least, and we need to remove these valve - covers because the gaskets are leaking really bad.

So first step here is definitely to disconnect the battery. We need to move this positive jumping terminal over, so we can remove the valve cover and you don't want this to arc on anything. So we'll go ahead and close. This cap so very important, disconnect the battery, and i think this bracket's going to get in our way just a couple of tens and we'll lift that out.

Let's get this one out too next, i'm going to remove these little clips here. They kind of blend in with the silver stripes you just pop them up from the bottom, don't lose them. I'm surprised every time i still see these on the engine, then we just have a couple of tens, and this cover just comes right off. Okay from there, we just need to remove each ignition coil, and so you just pop up this metal clip here, pull this right off, and then you guessed it.

We got a couple of tens and that's how you drop a 10.. That is how you drop a 10 millimeter nut right there. That happens to the best of us. Let me tell you, no one is immune to dropping a 10 millimeter socket or a 10 millimeter nut, but anyway here is our coil.

You can see it's got a little bit of oil on there and luckily for us we need to remove all of these coils anyway, because we're replacing the spark plug. So we have a little bit of overlapping labor next up we're going to do something. That's going to make you wonder why you even started this job. We have to remove this on the driver's side and one on the passenger side as well, and this is such a pain in the butt to remove, because it's held in by four injector clips on each side.

So what we're gon na do here is try not to lose these and i'm using a little pick just to push it off to the side, and now this is going to come right out. So that's the easiest one as you can imagine, the other ones are even more buried because we have things like the fuel rail in the way. So you can see there's another one of the injectors and then there's another one deep inside of here right there. So anyway, you're going to struggle a little bit with this part of the job, but just be patient and eventually you will get them and if one of them falls down in there, don't worry.

You'll, probably find it once you remove this big contraption, no go back. Just had it all right, so i pulled up each clip just a little bit. Let's see: okay yeah not coming at all great excellent, this one's coming loose, but each one of them has to or you're dead in the water ah-ha got it all right. Oh, what a pain, what a weird design that is, let's see how many clips i'm missing one: where is it ah found it, and what is this? Okay? I don't know some piece of random black foam.

Okay. So now we are free, we're free and clear. Finally, to remove this valve cover and yeah, we definitely had some oil here building up around the spark plugs no misfire yet from this, but it's a good thing: we're going to be replacing the center seal on this valve cover. Oh, if you want a better look at what's going on with these injector clips, so i just pried one end and then we're going to go ahead and put them back just like that and reinstalling.

This will be easy, you're just going to slide this over the injector and it'll snap right in and you'll be good to go, so you don't need to fiddle with this clip anymore. Okay. So now it's just a matter of removing a bunch of 10 mils and you're gon na have really easy ones like these, then you're going to have more difficult ones like these, where it seems impossible to get a good angle or to get on these bolts at All with a larger tool like this, so you're simply going to need a smaller tool like this, and you might have to do some work by hand, but usually once these are broken loose, you can go in there and remove them with your fingers. Okay, then you drop another one, all right, not going well with that.

Where are you dude? Oh? Is that you? Yes all right? I found it got lucky on that one all right, so i have all of the nuts and bolts out or loose i'm just gon na gently pry this right there and we'll see what gets in our way. I think this is. Is this the easy side or the hard side? I don't know it look equally as difficult coming out is always much easier than going in, because you don't want to nick the gasket and get it caught on anything got ta say that is looking like it might be kind of difficult right now you want to Kind of come up with your game plan. Now, when you have the old gasket on okay yeah, i'm not gon na lie.

I don't really know what my game plan is gon na, be it's just gon na be be careful. That's my game plan, but here it is, and let's see how is this engine all right check it out 119 000 miles, look at these cams and look at the lifters. They look perfect. You can tell this car had its oil changed on time and it is fairly low mileage, but you never know with some of these older german products, but something that many have mentioned would be the guides.

Now, i'm not having any issues with the guides whatsoever. There is no noise, there's no reason to suspect the guides are bad and in fact this guide here that i can see, looks perfectly fine a lot of times. When these go bad, you can actually see the cracks in them and then there's a little ridge on the wall that will break off. And these look perfect it's a little hard to see.

But there's another guide down there and i was able to get a mirror on the backside and it looks really nice as well so no reason to suspect any issues with the guides. There is a possibility. They've already been replaced. Something else i wanted to show you guys is this ignition coil has been sitting here overnight and you can see that it was quite saturated in oil and it's all dripping out, and that is all due to the failure of this center section of the valve cover.

So this is the gasket and you can see this very well might be the original and it's very brittle - and it's just cracking right before our eyes. So that's why this was leaking oil and, if you guys remember in the reveal video, this thing was burning oil. On the exhaust these valve covers were leaking really bad. There was smoke everywhere and yeah every you know, 10 or 20 years.

It really just depends. You got to do new valve cover gaskets. These are just cracking right up, so we shouldn't have any oil in this little valley. That holds the spark plugs and we do.

It hasn't caused any issues here, but in this case it may even make it easier for us to remove the spark plugs and just in case you were wondering what kind of car this is bmw stamped it right on the camshaft. You know just to make sure while they were assembling this bmw engine at the bmw factory, they didn't put like an audi cam in here or something okay, so i'm going to go ahead and replace these spark plugs. Now i want to clean up as much of this oil as possible before we get the new plugs in so with the old ones. In there, i'm just going to spray a little bit of brake, cleaner and then i'll just put a screwdriver around a little rag and we'll kind of get in here and just soak this up the brake cleaner, just thins it out that way.

It absorbs quickly you're, not spending all day cleaning, then after that, if you have shop air available to you, you can blow it out with this all cleaned out, we're ready to remove the spark plugs and, unlike some bmws that require a thin wall. 14 millimeter spark plug socket this one. You can just use a good old, 5 8 normal spark plug socket on, and here we are ngkr's and aside from them being a little bit oily from the valve cover gaskets, these spark plugs were firing just fine. These don't really need to be replaced, but the cost for this is 75.

It's easy to do since we're kind of in there anyway, and we are going to be doing a complete tune-up on this e39 in this video um for about 135 bucks. So i think it's worth it to be able to say in the ad that the tune-up has been performed and they don't have to worry about that for a long time so anyway, i'll be using a factory bosch, platinum plug. So let's go ahead and swap these out all right, then we just snug it up by hand and that one is done and the rest of them are pretty self-explanatory. They all just come in and out uh real nice and easy.

I don't suspect any issues um. So let me do that and we're going to move on to replacing this valve cover gasket, which actually comes in 13 parts per side. I'll, explain all right, so here's our valve cover and this first seal you see, does not need to be replaced. This is simply for that black plastic cover with the silver lines, so we don't need to touch that, but there are 13 individual seals on this valve cover that we need to replace and 11 of those are these right here.

So there's going to be a washer on top and these are rock solid. These are rubber and they're supposed to be flexible. Like this, you can see. This is solid as a rock and it looks bigger.

This is the right part, but this has just been smushed down for so many years. It's taken this new shape, but these are where the nuts and bolts go through, and these definitely need to be replaced so you're going to get 11 of these guys and they just pop in these holes like so, and that's it really easy to swap out so There's 11 total bolt holes and then we have the center valve cover gasket that i showed you earlier. So this gets swapped out and then you have your main valve cover gasket. So in this case we weren't leaking any oil from the bolt holes.

We were leaking most of the oil out of the back here. The seal had just failed and, as you saw, we had a lot of oil puddling up on top of the spark plugs so 13 total seals on each valve cover. You got to do them all. Some people will skip the ones for the bolts, but those definitely can leak, especially if they're this old.

Now, when you're cleaning a valve cover with big rubber gaskets, like that the cleanup procedure is pretty easy. I just like to use a wire brush and there wasn't our tv in here we're not putting any back. This will clean up in just a couple of minutes, so just wire brush all of the grooves when you're done with the wire brush and before you spray. It out it's going to look like this it'll have this kind of gray slimy stuff in there then just go around and pop out all of these little seals here and sometimes you'll run into a situation where the washer is still stuck on.

There. It'll kind of blend in so don't lose these metal washers and now these front three bolts on each valve cover actually have a different style seal, so you'll get eight of those and then three of these per side. So these are a different part number and everything and they can be a pain to remove, don't stab yourself. It looks pretty much impossible to get these out.

You could use a razor knife and spend a few minutes, but here's a little trick for you just take some side cutters and just split it when they're this hard they'll just snap and then you can go ahead and remove it easily. These three seals can be kind of a pain to get over this bolt. So i just lubricate them, then, once you get to slide over a little bit, you just muscle it on there you're good. Then, before we install the new seals, we just want to spray.

This with some brake clean and if you have shop air just blow these channels out and if you don't have any shop air just take a flat blade, screwdriver wrapped around a rag, and you can clean out the channels like this and honestly. Sometimes this works even better all right, so i've cleaned up the sealing surface of the valve cover, and now it's just a matter of installing the new gasket. Now there is a left and right hand side. So when you're ordering these make sure to order one of each and then we'll just pop in the center valve cover gasket.

So we don't get oil in the spark plugs anymore and you really want to push this down into the groove. So it doesn't pop out when you're trying to install the valve cover kind of like playing the piano all right. So now we're just cleaning up the mating surface, where the valve cover gasket is going to rest, break clean and a rag is your friend here, and what i'm going to do to make life easier is remove this hose right here. It just pushes right in really easy.

I think this is what was getting in our way yeah. So let's go ahead and just remove this entire fuel line all right. So now it's time to reinstall the valve cover just make sure that you don't knock this seal out of place, especially in the back take your time. It's not a bad idea to get a light in here.

Just make sure the seal is still installed. It can pop out mine did a little bit no big deal. I can feel and see it i'll make sure. That's perfect, okay cool, i think we're moving.

That line was the ticket and just feel in the back those round parts of the rubber seal. They need to fit into their grooves in the back of the head there and they do so we're good okay. So once the valve cover is on the engine, that's when i put these little seals on. There's really no reason to do it earlier because they might all fall out while you're trying to wrestle this guy back on so i'll just pop all these in and don't forget the three right in the front which do have a different seal once those are on This is what the little nuts look like these washers do come off, so don't lose these and, of course, we are starting everything by hand pushing these nuts in here it might be a little tight because we have brand new, fresh seals.

We don't want to tighten anything until these are all installed. That way. We know the valve cover is centered with all the fasteners threaded in by hand. We can go around and start to tighten with everything, snug we're going to go ahead and torque these very little torque.

It's seven foot pounds i'll, put the newton meters here up on the screen. That's about it! You will snap these. If you go much more and i like to do these center bolts first and then we can do the three in the front with the valve cover all tightened up. We're gon na go ahead and torque the spark plugs to 25 foot-pounds i've cleaned up and lubricated.

The boots here for the coils so now we're just going to go ahead and install in reverse order. Oh, and i eventually did find that 10 millimeter that fell. It took me about 10 minutes, but it did not get lost in the bmw, bermuda triangle now. Uh.

There are some grounds here that go to this coil, so just remember to get that back on there, and actually there are two that go here, so don't go and tighten this nut before you get these guys on and we'll go ahead and reinstall this fuel line. Now it just clips right in nice and easy okay. Now we just have to line up the injector connectors here. Getting these back on should be much easier than removing there.

We go, let's make sure they're all fully seated good to go. We have a plug right here, another plug here. Then it's just a matter of plugging in our coils, then we'll run this positive terminal underneath here before we install our bmw beauty cover. Don't forget your little caps here now, we'll just tighten up the cover here.

For the positive lug and congratulations, you have now completed your driver's side valve cover gasket all right, so the passenger side is exactly the same way as the driver side except you want to remove this intake tube right here and i'm going to do this. One off camera, because it's really the exact same thing, but i'm going to show you how to remove this because we're going to replace the air filter anyway. This is very easy: it's just a few clamps and a few clips. Okay, we have this guy right here and then there's a vacuum tube on the bottom.

All right that clamp, loosened up the air box. Just has clips that get released like this and then, if you look down yonder, we have a 10 mil and that holds on a little silencer and that silencer is attached to the intake tube like that. So this whole thing comes out together and, let's take a look, not the worst air filter in the world. I've seen a lot worse, but for a grand total of ten dollars, we're going to swap it out and this is going to get included in our tune-up.

So spark plugs air filter and fuel filter is what i'm considering a tune-up on this car and don't forget to vacuum out the lower air box and with that clean, we'll install our brand new and super clean air filter. While you have your air intake system out, i just want to show you that you can easily clean your mass airflow sensor. This is something i like to do every 20, 30 000 miles on my own car and in some cases you can fix a check engine light. That's thrown a code for a faulty mass airflow.

So a lot of times these are held in with tamper-proof torques. So there's a little point in the middle and of course they sell tamper-proof torque sockets. So i don't really know what they're accomplishing here and here is our mass airflow sensor. So what we're going to do is clean these filaments here and inside of here and don't use, brake, clean or anything other than mass airflow sensor cleaner.

A can is like eight bucks. I've had this for over a year and it'll last you a very long time and all you're doing. Is this really not much to it? That's it we're gon na let this dry completely and it's kind of hard to put a cost on this, because you can probably do i don't know 20 cars with one can. But let's just say this cost us one dollar all right, then we just pop it.

In the same way we took it out, tighten up our tamper, proof torx. This is going into plastic people. So don't go crazy. That's all you need, and that's about it - we're just going to install this tube in reverse order.

Don't forget your bolt here for the silencer on the bottom. All right don't forget to tighten up your clamp for the throttle body and you're done all right, so the other valve cover gasket and the other spark plugs all done off camera. I put these two little brackets on here and we're ready for the big bmw beauty cover, and i must say this is one of the nicer engine covers that i've ever seen. I really like this one.

Okay, next up, we got ta swap out an oil level sensor, which is on the bottom, so we're gon na do an oil change at the same time, and there's always something with these euro cars that you forget to order. I forgot to order the little mounts that go right here to hold the oil filter housing. These always break off. It's very annoying so i'll have to order up a couple of these little pucks right here, but as long as the last guy didn't over torque this, i should be able to kind of counter hold this there.

We go and break it loose, but yeah i mean these are designed to fail after you change the oil so many times, you're cranking on those they get brittle, they break it's annoying. It's a 36 millimeter. If you want to do it this way, there is a special tool, though so for now we'll leave this right here and you want to crack your oil filter cap loose before you drain your oil, so you get all of it all right, so i'm draining the Oil and i love when they put the drain plug on the bottom. I hate when they do it on the side and then, if there's something in the way oil gets everywhere.

Why is this that complicated just put it right at the bottom? You know you're gon na get all the oil. It's not gon na make a mess. It goes right into the pan and you're done. This is definitely something they did right on the good old e39.

Okay, this thing holds a ton of oil, so while that's doing its thing, we are going to work on this sensor, so this oil level sensor is no doubt leaking, but that's not the primary reason i'm replacing it. It's because believe it or not. This car had an alternator light on, but it was charging fine and my friend oj at fluid motor union had mentioned that these are wired in somehow he didn't know exactly, but basically a failing oil level sensor on one of these can cause the alternator light. Just a flicker on the dash, it was very quick in some cases you probably wouldn't even notice it, but i did because i was filming so very random.

It would come on maybe once a day something like that all right. So this oil level sensor is only 50 and any time you can fix a warning light on a dash of a bmw for 50 dollars. You do it and it's a very, very easy procedure, especially when you're already changing the oil. All it is, is the three ten millimeter bolts and we'll just clean this up a little bit all right, you guys know i can't pass up a good borescope opportunity.

So, with the oil level sensor out, we have a pretty unique view at the inside of this engine with all the covers on and right off the bat. It looks really clean in here and you can tell that they change the oil often, but what i really want to see is this: the bottom of the oil pan. That's we're looking at right now, so when those plastic guides fail, they will fall and hit the bottom of the oil pan and you can see them and i'm not seeing anything. So we are good to go there and wow.

This engine is just really nice. I'd love to know the service history there's a good chance. The guide, and maybe the chains were done a while back, but right there that little hole right there. That's where the oil drains out of - and this is pretty neat good to know that the valve guides are okay and if you're ever getting a ppi on one of these, maybe just pay for the guy's oil change and pop out this sensor and take a look.

It could save you like four thousand dollars or whatever it costs, to get chains and guides done at a shop all right, so we're gon na pop in our brand new made in germany, 50 oil level sensor. So if this leaks, if it fails in any fashion, this is another one of those items you guys can most definitely do at home. Very easy, i'm sure the dealer would charge. You know 300 350 for something like this, so just hold it in place just snug.

It up with the gun and then we'll just do this by hand. These are tiny. Just do one of these very little torque required here plug in our sensor and that's fixed all right, very important. Don't forget to swap out your copper washer if you buy a good quality oil filter, it should come in the box.

Give that a little snug okay, now that we did that we're not going to get too much more oil out of this filter, so we'll make a mess. Let's pop that guy off, let's take the old seal off, put our fresh seal on like that and screw back on very easy. A lot easier to do, though, if your mounts aren't broken, and it's a lot harder to tighten this guy than it was to loosen it all right, then you just got to tighten it like this holding the bottom. If your mounts are bad, definitely not going to be able to get the proper torque on this guy.

Just yet 25 newton meters is what they want. It stamped right on the cap. There we go okay, i got it to turn, that's good enough for now. Once i replace this i'll, give it the old torque all right next up we're filling this up with the good stuff, amsoil 5w40, fully synthetic.

This is the european formula i use this in all my euro cars, it's fantastic oil and a lot of people think it's really really expensive. It's definitely not the cheapest, but this entire oil change with a quality man. Oil filter was only 71 because i became an amsoil dealer, so i get this stuff right around wholesale and then because i'm a dealer i get to offer you guys up to 25 off, which is what i do. So if you click on my link down below sign up is one of my preferred customer.

You can get 25 off of all the amsoil products and just to let you know, i'm not sponsored by amsoil at all. They don't know who i am. I just signed up as a dealer, because i really just wanted a good deal on the oil next up, we're replacing the fuel filter. So we have to take this plastic panel off, and these are the nuts that i'm dealing with, so i've already sprayed them down with penetrating oil, but they might break they'll, probably break, and really all this means here is that this fuel filter could very well be Original, i don't think anyone's done anything with this in a long time.

All right this nut is either turning or we've snapped the stud uh we might be okay. Oh you got to be kidding me. Look at that like butter like disgusting, rusty butter, i'll take it. Okay, are we gon na get lucky with these guys? Oh come on really penetrating oil people, it really does work.

I've tried many different brands. I think they're all pretty much the same. This time, i'm using pb blaster wow. Let's just see what can we get away with here? Uh, we still need to get that one.

It's going to be. This thing is super long, wow, okay, it's kind of on the head there, nice unreal. We did it. I didn't think this was gon na happen seriously.

I thought these were all breaking. That should be good. Look at how massive this fuel filter is. This has got to be the longest fuel filter.

I've ever seen made in germany uh, i don't know - could be original, but look at these hose clamps, that's going to be fun. Okay, let's see what happens. Who knows what size? This was many moons ago. Well, this is totally rounded.

Oh, no! Okay! I can't get a screwdriver or a socket to fit on this any longer, it's completely stripped, so we have to move to these little guys. These are amazing by the way, definitely replacing this clamp. I've loosened up the other clamps okay, there's that go ahead and clamp. These hoses here, okay and that hose off there's a vacuum line on top, so we'll just plug this up here.

Okay, so sometimes you got ta kind of pry these out they take a little while you'll eventually get it, though there's one - and in this case the fuel filter itself is just going to break off inside of the hose, which is fine. Now we'll get our needle nose in here, give it a little twist to roux and there we go on some cars. You need to clamp the hoses coming from the fuel tank or you'll get a continuous stream of fuel um.