Walkthrough
Failure Symptoms:
Oil leaks near the front of the oil pan or near the right side of the engine against the oil pan or near the bell housing of the transmission where the oil pan meets the transmission. NOTE: leaking down the front of the oil pan could be several other issues(Front main seal, timing cover gasket, or valve cover gasket) Make sure to inspect if the leak is coming from above the gasket of the oil pan before diving in.
5 Series (1988-1995)
Floor jack x2, jack stand x3, screwdriver (flat-blade), 17 mm socket, 13mm socket, 12mm socket, 10mm socket, 8mm socket, Rubber Mallet.
Tools to make your life easier: Car lift. This can eliminate the need for 2 floor jacks and 3 jack stands. You will still need 1 jack stand however.
Oil-pan gasket, Clutch fan wrench.
Let me start off by saying that Bentley is either *wrong* on this one or the described procedure doesn’t work for cars with some age on the motor mounts…
1: Unbolt the Power Steering pump, Viscous (Clutch) fan, and its shroud (Bentley can only help you up to this point.)
2: Jack up from the subframe, and put jack stands at front jack points for safety and to distribute the load. (Or lift on a car lift if you have access to one.)
3: Remove dipstick: remove the bolt on the brace, and yank it out like Arthur from the sword in the stone.
4: Remove all ~27 bolts. There are 25x, 10mm bolts that go through the gasket, and there are 3x, 8mm star (torx) bolts that come in from the transmission bell housing.
5: Disconnect the wiring harness that goes to the oil leveling sensor (on the bottom oil pan with 3 bolts connecting it) I dug through 3 inches of oil cake to find mine.
6: Tap the oil pan with a rubber mallet until it falls onto the subframe or yank it down from that nice ledge on the front.
7: Unbolt and remove the pickup tube (2x, 10mm bolts), inside of the oil pan once you have the pan lowered to give you a bit more clearance.
8: Now you are going to try to remove the oil pan pulling it out the front end of the car, Bentley made a funny on this one, they say to remove through the rear, hah Bentley makes funny jokes sometimes.
9: Don’t try too hard! Chances are you’ll be just short of enough clearance like I was and so many others! If so, read on!
10: Remove the 17mm upper passenger side motor mount nut. I did this without any u-joints (pro-tip: get your longest ratchet down there and then tighten a crescent wrench at the end of its handle; with this contraption, you get a lot more leverage and there’s just enough room down there for this contraption without flex joints or extensions.)
11: Remove that little ground wire connected to the motor mount if it bothers you, but it is not needed.
12: Obtain a third jack stand or something else that is strong enough to support a good portion of the engine’s weight and place it underneath the passenger side motor mount arm as close to the motor mount as possible to give you room to pull the pan out. Or lower the lift with the jack stand under the passenger side motor mount to raise it a bit.
13: Lower the car a bit (main floor jack on subframe) and your jack stand or other supporting device will keep the passenger side of the engine suspended off the mount.
*With the passenger side motor mount off the motor by only 2 inches I was able to slide my oil pan out without a fight!
14: Clean both surfaces to remove any old residue from the old gasket and when you place the new one in place, use a very small amount of RTV on the 2 corners of the new gasket to hold it in place while you put the pan back on. Now just do this all in reverse to get it back together.