Under the Hood

I almost paid the dealer $1,050 to change six spark plugs.

If you've ever owned a BMW past a hundred and fifty thousand miles, you already know the one job that makes a grown man set his coffee down and just stare at the engine. It isn't the water pump. It isn't the VANOS. It's one gasket. And it's the reason a dealer can look you in the eye and charge you a thousand dollars for a part that costs thirty-five. I'm Glenn. The 328i in my garage is a 2008 with a hundred and ninety thousand miles on it, and I've done almost every one of those miles myself. I'm no mechanic. I spent thirty years running land surveys up and down the Cascades, and that car is how I got to half the ridgelines in central Oregon. It's paid off. It starts at nine degrees. My wife Carol quit asking when I'd replace it about eighty thousand miles ago. I keep it running because keeping it running is the whole point. Here's what nobody tells you about the BMW 328i. The oil filter housing bolts to the side of the block, and BMW built the intake manifold straight over the top of it. Three bolts hold that housing on. The front two you can reach. The one at the back you cannot. It sits buried underneath the manifold, behind the runners, where your hand goes in and your knuckles come out bleeding. Last fall I picked up a spot on the driveway after the climb out of Sisters, a little seep that turned into a stain the size of a dinner plate by the time the weather cooled. Oil, not coolant. Filter housing gasket at a hundred ninety. The guys will tell you not to sit on that one, because that oil finds the serpentine belt, and a belt that starts slipping on one of these cars turns a thirty-five-dollar gasket into a much worse afternoon. So I started in on it on a Saturday. Belt off, oil drained, filter housing bared. I could see the back bolt. I could touch it with one finger. I could not get a tool on it and turn it. A swivel socket on two extensions flexed and wandered off the head before it ever took a bite. A stubby flex-head ratchet had maybe five degrees of swing before the handle hit the manifold, and five degrees gets you nowhere on a bolt you can't see. A universal joint bound up and walked sideways every time I put a hand on it. A wobble extension I bought at the parts store gave me the angle and gave the socket somewhere to drift. Three hours in I'd moved that bolt about a quarter turn, a hair at a time, and I had a knuckle wrapped in a shop rag and the corner of the head starting to round. I sat down on the garage stool and listened to the whole noon hour on the radio without moving. Monday I called the BMW dealer in Bend. The service writer told me getting to that back bolt was where the labor went. A thousand dollars, give or take, for one gasket. He said it the way you'd read off a weather report. I told Carol at supper. She put her fork down and said, "A thousand dollars for a thirty-five-dollar gasket. No. They're making it harder than it is." She was right. They were. A few weeks later I drove up to the big BMW meet they hold every summer, the one where two hundred people park with their hoods up and spend the afternoon under each other's engines drinking gas-station coffee. Three cars down from me a fellow about seventy had a 2009 BMW 330i with two hundred and sixty thousand on it and a tool chest in the trunk. We got to talking about the leak. He listened to the whole thing, the rounded bolt, the dealer quote, all of it. Then he said, "You ever use a chain bar?" I told him I didn't know what that was. He reached into the chest and handed me a flat blue bar about the length of my forearm. Told me to press my thumb on the end. Something turned inside it. Not a wobble, not a hinge. A chain, sealed in the bar. "The chain carries the turn around the corner," he said. "It stays dead square on the bolt, so it can't rock and round it. You put the working end where there's no room and you keep your hand where there is. The only reason that back bolt is a dealer job is there's no room to swing a ratchet at it. Nothing to do with the bolt. It's the room." He told me to order it from the people who make it, not off Amazon, where they sell bars that look the same but have a universal joint inside instead of a chain. Without the chain it just flexes, same as the two hundred dollars of tools already in my drawer. The maker sells from their own site, wildbeartools.com. Eighty-nine dollars. It came Thursday. Saturday morning I went back at the car. I slid the working end in under the manifold, set the socket on that back bolt, and put a ratchet on the other end where I actually had room to pull. It seated flat and came loose on the first pull. No walk. No rounding. Housing off, old gasket out, new one in, buttoned up before Carol called me in for lunch. The manifold never came off the car. Eighty-nine dollars against a thousand at the dealer. It paid for itself the first time I used it. But that's not really why it stays on my bench. It stays there because a man who's done a hundred and ninety thousand miles of his own work shouldn't have to hand his car to a stranger over one bolt he can see with a flashlight. I've used it a couple dozen times since. The valve cover bolts everybody warns you about. Alternator and bracket bolts where a ratchet has nowhere to swing. A thermostat housing bolt on Carol's brother's 528i. It lives on top of the chest now, where I can reach it. If you run a BMW 325i, a 328i, a 330i, a 528i, or an X3, you already know the leak I'm talking about. The filter housing. The bolt at the back. You don't have to pay a dealer a thousand dollars just because you can't reach it. The maker sells direct from their own site, not Amazon, not the dealer. The knockoffs look the same. They don't have the chain. They don't work. https://wildbeartools.com/products/extension-wrench