Hoping someone can point me in the right direction. I had an oil leak from the oil filter housing, so I had a shop about 45 minutes away do the work. I know that is a PITA job, and I paid a BMW/Independent shop to do it. All seemed fine when I picked the car up, and all seemed fine on 75% of the drive home. 75% of the way home, I'm on the interstate doing 60-70.

Once I got off onto a secondary road and went maybe a mile, I got a yellow coolant warning. I have a P3 gauge, so I switched that over to coolant temp to see exact temps. It was around 240. It usually hovers between 218-222, so 240 was high. I started doing some of the things to lower the heat, like making sure the A/C was off, and turning the interior heat to high while blasting the fan. Still, there were a couple of times where I got a red coolant light, although never for more than 5 seconds. When the light went red, the temp was at 247. Highest I saw was 252, and that came down immediatly.

The only other symptom, is that even though I had the interior heat blasting, I wasn't really getting very much heat. It really only gave me heat when it was way up in the temp range, in the 245 range.

So, I nursed it the last few miles and got it home.

Waiting for it to cool down enough to check coolant levels, but there is coolant in the overflow tank.

Any ideas? What, in the process of changing the oil filter housing, could they have screwed up? Does that job drain coolant? Do I have a bubble in the system from a bad or no bleed?

 

Update - It is fully cooled down now. When I first turned it off and looked at the coolant tank, there was coolant visible in overflow tank. Now that it is cooled down, there is no coolant in the tank. I'm assuming it all got sucked back into the engine/coolant system

 

Have you bleed the system to get the air out.....

 

I have not. And to be honest, I don't think I'm going to. If this is an issue connected to the system not being bled correctly, I want the shop to correct it. Just in case I have any internal damage (head gasket, etc), I want them to be responsible. I feel like ff I intervene and begin fixing things, they can claim it was something I did. At this point, I'm likely just going to have the damn thing towed back to their shop on Monday.

 

Yup, there is coolant going through the oil filter housing, so if they replaced the house, they had to drain and fill the cooling system. Sounds like they were unable to bleed the system properly, and there was air still in there. I would call them asap to let them know what happened on the ride home.

 

Yep, I did that. Even though I knew they were closed, I called and left them a voicemail explaining what happened. I also took a time stamped photograph of the empty coolant tank.

 

To close this thread out, I have the car back now. I had it towed back to the shop, they checked it over, and confirmed that they had screwed ups and left a bubble in the system. They checked everything out and said there was no damage, no head gasket issues, etc. They flushed the coolant and refilled, this time a very experienced tech made sure it was 100% burped. As a "make up" for the crew up, they delivered the car back to buy house as a courtesy. That was appreciated, since they are about a 45 minute drive away.

They were impressed with the P3 gauge and how I had been able to nurse the car home using the gauge to monitor the exact temp.

 

Thanks for the follow up! Sounds like the P3 gauge paid for itself right there

 

Sounds like you found a shop that will stand behind their work. Mind sharing their name and location?

 

Not at all. The name of the shop is Kadunza, and they are located in Knoxville TN. They specialize in BMWs and MINIs, although they may service other German cars, I’m not sure.

they made a mistake, owned up to it, and went above and beyond to make it right. I’ve had them do a bunch of stuff to my Clubbie and this was the first time I had any issue at all.

 

Wow I'm glad that was all that was wrong with the vehicle.....

 

Yeah, I am relieved. It’s running great now, and not leaving any drips on the garage floor. I had multiple oil leaks before. The valve cover was leaking a little, the oil pan gasket was leaking a little, and the oil filter housing was leaking a lot! All fixed now.

iI also had them install a HPFP that I had purchased a while back. It was really the only N14 known issue that hadn’t been dealt with, and I had noticed an occasional stumble, but not one that ever generated a CEL. I had planned to do the HPFP myself, but I had them install it in a moment of personal laziness. 😊

wow, what a difference. The HPFP had not failed completely, but it is obvious now that it had been costing me smoothness and power. It runs like a different car now.