Burning Oil Smell in my 535i

Ever find yourself just enjoying your car and suddenly you smell something unusual that you wonder if it’s your car or the hulking pickup next to you an oversized exhaust? For some time I’ve been smelling a faint burnt oil smell whenever I accelerated down an on ramp or when coming to a quick stop.

I began to wonder if my exhaust manifold was leaking because there was no oil spots on the ground. Figuring that it’s always better to treat things up front so that they don’t become catastrophic and leave you stranded somewhere – I took it into the shop.

It didn’t take them long to figure out that the valve cover gasket was leaking in the back so I had them replace it and change the oil. The first week or so you get an even stronger oil smell coming in because the gasket change will cause some spillage. This probably also explains why I was losing about a quart of oil every couple thousand miles which is not bad for a car with 116,000 miles on it.

It also explains why cold starts are smoother now – I suspect that oil would leak down into the spark plug channels after a drive and cause rough starts in the morning until the oil was burned off.

And maybe it’s just me but the engine sounds tighter – there must be a name of that syndrome for car enthusiasts that gets the littlest thing fixed and all the stars seem suddenly aligned with the car.

The car is aging – now nine years old, but it still surges ahead beautifully (actually, explosively when the turbos kick in). There always seem to be niggling things but hearing the exhaust pops as it cracks off crisp shifts when you get on it is so so satisfying.