Up next in 10
BMW E36 Oil Filter Housing Gasket Replacement
27K views
Jan 29, 2023
BMW E36 DIY on replacing the oil filter housing gasket, vanos oil line, and the oil pressure sensor. You don't necessarily need to replace all of these parts, however they are easily replaced if you are already replacing the oil filter housing gasket. Replacement of the oil houing gasket is pretty quick, should take under 2 hours. Parts needed to remove: Alternator (2 bolts, 2 wires on the back) Serpentine Belt (From the tensioner) Airbox Disconnect Vanos oil line Idler Pulley (if applicable) Tips: Power steering pump will come off with the filter housing. Disconnect the battery prior to removing the alternator. Keep the bolts in order, they are different sizes. Rub some oil on the new gasket, helps make a good seal.
View Video Transcript
0:00
Hey E36 Fanatic, Steven here. Today I'm going to be doing a job on my oil housing gasket
0:08
Basically I've been refinishing a lot of the different parts and gaskets on my car lately
0:13
and I already pulled off the entire intake manifold and I'm just going to change it while I'm there
0:20
Now don't get worried though because you don't need to remove your intake manifold to get at
0:26
your old filter housing gasket. Basically all you got to do is remove your
0:30
alternator and a pulley and the belt and it's it's relatively easy to do. Like I
0:37
said I'm just doing this job while I'm in conjunction with the intake manifold
0:42
removal. Another thing to note is that you so if you've been running your car
0:49
recently and you're just changing it the same day that you were running your car
0:53
it's probably going to be best to go ahead and take out all your oil before
1:00
you do this job because you're gonna have a ton of oil leak out but if you're
1:04
like me and you did this job when your car had already been sitting for like a
1:08
day then you'll be fine you don't need to change your oil while doing it because
1:12
it's not going to be much if any at all of oil coming out of it. Another
1:18
thing to note is that you're going to want to disconnect your negative terminal
1:22
on your battery before you start messing with your alternator. That's just a good thing to always do
1:28
before you start messing around with with electrical. Another thing that I'm going to be changing is the
1:33
oil, the Vanos oil line. It's a really good thing to change while you're doing this gasket because
1:39
you got a lot of access to it when you pull your oil filter housing off of. Typically what it'll do
1:45
is over time it'll start weeping and if you've never changed it before it's probably got a ton
1:50
of old oil all around it. That's a good sign if you want to go ahead and change it to change it
1:56
along with the job. Another thing I'm going to be changing that I'm going to be showing you all is
2:01
I'm going to be changing the oil pressure sensor. It fits into the back of the oil filter housing
2:06
It's just another good part to change while you're doing this job. Also if you like some of my videos
2:12
I also got a blog with a bunch of posts on it now so if you want to check it out I going to have a link to it in the top right corner This video is about an oil filter housing gasket which is located inside of here
2:25
You got to pull off the oil filter housing to get to it and there's a gasket there
2:30
It's a decently common failure on these vehicles. So first thing you need to do is you need to take your belt off
2:37
I hope you've got a diagram of how it runs. runs. This is also a good time to change out the tensioner pulley if your tensioner pulley is going
2:47
bad or the idler pulley since you got to pull the belt off. And next thing you got to do is pull your
2:52
alternator, which it is a 15 millimeter I do believe. Okay, so once you got these long bolts
3:01
out, you're going to have to disconnect the wiring. You're going to want to go ahead and pull this
3:06
whole thing just makes it easier to actually remove your oil filter housing. Okay, so smaller black wire is a 10 millimeter. The bigger red one is a 13
3:16
All right, so I'm going to set this aside and pull the alternator out
3:22
Okay, so the two lower studs are smaller than the upper ones. As you can see right here
3:29
these two are smaller than these two up here. So I'd take note of that. It looks like the two up
3:35
the same size two lower ones are smaller and let me see there are six bolts holding it on
3:43
and then one bolt holding it onto the power steering that you need to remove
3:48
and then you need to disconnect the vanos line which is probably a little more difficult with
3:55
upper intake on or the intake manifold on for me it's going to be pretty easy it's a 19 millimeter
4:01
oddly enough my bolt was already loose so that's pretty odd to me well it was unless it's really
4:13
torqued that low it's supposed to be torqued really lightly then wow that's odd to me but okay
4:19
so really i mean this was hand tightened on this vanos line right here so anyways
4:28
Like I said you going to want to mark all your wires and everything where it going so you don make any mistakes when you put it back Okay so here the gasket
4:40
After I pulled those bolts off, the thing came right out. However, the power steering pump came off too
4:47
I figured the power steering pump would be bolted to the frame somehow, to the engine block, but it is not
4:55
It's just bolted to the housing. That's odd. I figured it would be
4:59
but anyways so here's the gasket that i'm changing this one right here and it is pretty brittle
5:08
i didn't notice much of a leak coming from it but how brittle it is and all this oil that's been
5:17
building up down here that the the new walls or the is already is just from the housing but
5:24
it looks like it had been leaking a bit so i'm glad i'm changing it i'm going to clean out
5:29
this haul area. I'm probably going to spritz it really good with carb cleaner and get a lot of
5:35
this junk out and I'll put it back together. Okay so here's my old one. There's no big cracks in it
5:43
or anything but it's definitely stiffened up quite a bit. It's on its way to being plastic
5:49
and this car has 140 something K on it and I've noticed the gaskets have tended on this car to
5:57
hold up pretty well compared to a lot of other people's experience. I don't
6:02
exactly know why they've held up pretty good but I mean typically with this many
6:07
miles on it in the age this thing should be a lot more brittle than it is. So
6:11
here's my new one and went ahead and got a thing of oil. It's just cheap oil
6:17
because I'm just using it for the gaskets. You want to wipe a little hole
6:22
on the gasket when you're putting it in and everything just to make sure it seals good. And so on this car this was relatively easy to remove. It wasn't nearly as bad as some of the
6:35
articles I was reading on it. I didn't need to remove the fan clutch or anything. I didn't need
6:40
to remove any pulleys. However apparently on some cars they have an idler pulley on the top. This
6:45
one does not It just got the the tensioner pulley So and the whole power steering came off with it and the oil filter over here came off with it so now what i about to do is i going to put that new gasket on
7:01
and then i'm going to reinstall this thing okay so here's my new one i went ahead and bought a
7:09
new vanos oil line because as you can see it's been leaking like crazy the old one
7:14
you're going to want to replace even if you're not replacing it you're going to want to replace
7:18
the washers at the bottom because all you have to do is remove the bolt at the bottom here to remove
7:25
this and also I'm going to replace the oil pressure sensor right here so I'm gonna what I'm gonna do
7:36
is I'm gonna bolt it back up first and then I'm gonna remove this and replace that now if you
7:43
didn't put your bolts in order and you're wondering how they go back in biggest bolt
7:48
goes in here. Smaller one on the top went here. And then the two bottom bolts are the shortest
7:58
The two middle ones are the same. So they're going to be the same. They're all 13 millimeter
8:08
And this is also a good time to change your tensioner. I've already changed it as you can
8:12
see it looks new um so there's no point in me changing it again and i'm not really going to do
8:18
anything else with this besides change out this sensor right here so i'm gonna go ahead and bolt
8:23
everything back up all right i've tightened the bolts back up and everything and like i said this
8:30
is a lot easier to change than one would think at least on this vehicle it is now the only thing i'm
8:37
to do is I'm removing this if you're crazy like me and want to change everything this is a 23
8:44
millimeter I think but it's not to work that bad so you can get it off of 24 and this is your oil
8:50
pressure sensor sending unit I'm pretty sure this one's bad so I'm gonna pull it and then all you
8:58
got to do is bolt back up your vanos line right here and make sure to use new washers on it or it
9:05
will leak more than likely and it is not torque very high at all so remember that as well
#BMW
#Vehicle Modification & Tuning
#Vehicle Parts & Services
#Vehicle Repair & Maintenance