There’s been a really strong burning oil odor in the cabin of my 2004 e46 330xi. Opened the hood and saw oil leaking out from the valve cover gasket. This car’s problems just keep coming.

Time to change brakes and replace rear shocks on my BMW 2004 330xi. Replaced brake rotors and pads on all four wheels. After I took off the wheels I realized both rear coils where cracked (yikes!), so I replaced those as well. Everything went straight forward as far as I remember.

One of our cars is a 2007 Toyota Highlander. We went to get the oil changed at the dealership and during the standard multi-point inspection they discovered a number of issues:

• The rear brake calipers had seized
• The transmission pan gasket was leaking
• The front passenger side CV axle had a boot that was leaking grease
• The rear license plate lights had burnt out

They gave us a quote for $4,700 dollars to fix everything. The car is worth less than that, so no thanks.

Back in 2018, I had had a growing list of problems with my old BMW 2004 330xi. The car had a slow oil leak, a slow coolant leak, a power steering fluid leak, rips in the boots of both front axle boots, and its front suspension was feeling really shakey. That’s a lot of problems, and the car was 14 years old at the time and its value was quickly dropping. Having all these things repaired would likely cost more than the value of the car, so my options were to either diagnose and do the repairs myself, or find a new car.

Unfortunately I’m a cheap masochist, so I decided to try to do the repairs myself.