When Snowmen Attack: X5 Gasket Troubles

When Snowmen Attack: X5 Gasket Troubles

It’s never good when you’re adding multiple quarts of oil to your engine every day. For one customer, winter wasn’t over just yet, as his car had fallen prey to a snowman of sorts.

 

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A customer came into Fluid MotorUnion recently, and he mentioned that he was having some oil problems. Specifically, he was missing a lot of it. His X5 told him he was low on oil, and it took NINE quarts to get the engine to the correct level. Each time he filled it, the oil would disappear in a day’s time, which made it virtually impossible to keep on the road. Once we got the car up on a lift, we noticed that the entire underbody was covered in oil. That’s not a good sign.

 

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It took a fair amount of cleaning to get that oil out of the way, but we needed to do that in order to help pinpoint the location of the oil leak. Although, given the amount of oil it’s losing, it wouldn’t be too hard to find a spigot like that. Once we cleaned everything up, we found the leak – it was coming from the “snowman” gasket, one of the billion gaskets on an X5, albeit named in such a silly way because it looks, well, exactly like a snowman.

 

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The oil leak wasn’t getting any better, so we went into the motor and replaced the faulty gasket. Seeing as how replacing the snowman gasket isn’t a superficial job, the customer opted for other service recommendations at the same time, including upper timing cover gaskets. After all, it’s better to spend a little more now, rather than waiting for another gasket to fail before ripping the engine apart yet again. Work smarter, not harder.

 

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Once the work was done, everything was nice and leak-free, and we sent the customer back into the wild. If you’ve found an oil leak, or have concerns about your engine’s performance, give Fluid MotorUnion a call at 815-230-2900 and we’ll make sure your summer remains free of leaks or other pesky engine problems.

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