filter is at the top of the motor, anyone know how much oil is going to spill out when removing to replace the gasket? i know i dont need to drain the oil out, i figure theres maybe 1/2-3/4 quart in the housing and top of motor?
seems like a ~2 hour job which isnt too bad.
when is your next oil change due? you loose enough, quite a bit is held in the housing. but ya 2 hours if you are counting the time for beer after.
Are you talking about a gasket between the housing and engine block? Never heard of that needing to be done before.
remove the oil fill cap so the oil level will drop a bit in the filter housing. Use a turkey baster to suck any standing oil and you should be able to pretty much empty it. besides that, it will depend on how messy you are with pulling the filter out.
thanks guys. next oil change isnt for a couple k miles, just changed the oil about 1k miles ago…why i didnt do this then? fml lol. didnt even think about using a turkey baster to suck the oil out, going to raid the kitchen. :tup: and yes theres a rubber gasket between the housing and block, pretty common for it to leak on these motors, almost as common as the valve cover gasket lol. its only $6 part so not too bad.
valve cover gaskets never leak, they never throw codes for the stupid thermostat, and there coolant bottles never grenade themselves.
these have problems with the coolant systems? huh. news to me. 
i had replaced practically everything in the cooling system on my car so i didnt have to worry, and what happens? one of the pipes that the whole intake manifold has to come off to get at had cracked and started leaking. that was fun. lol
I did mine and the damn thing wasn’t even leaking! It looked like it was and being a $6 part I took the risk. Pain in the dick because the threads for one of the bolts stripped out so I had to helicoil it, damn galvanic corrosion. Someday I’ll get to changing the ccv system, I have all the parts but it’s just easier to add oil when it ticks a lot. lol.
your car ticks? i have a little bit of “rattle” because i have yet to do the beisan vanos seals and rattle repair bushings…but i dont have a tick. interesting.
I’ve been replacing a LOT of these over the past year. I don’t keep a huge number of parts in stock, but I keep plenty of these. I also tend to recommend doing them as a matter of course when selling an air/oil separator job. Definitely a good amount of crossover labor there.
So, OP, if you need one, I have plenty.
Only when it gets low on oil. lol
hmmm… odd. I have owned my e46 for 11 years now and never even heard of the gasket problem. Thanks though, just means it’ll happen to me next week.