[asphaltgambler]

A few years ago working at another Euro independent shop. New customer brought in a BMW E38/740 sedan with @150K on the clock. The vehicle clearly had no love in the last 70-80K. It needed everything. One of many iusses addressed was intake/oil seperator/valve cover gaskets. Upon tear down there was an odd head-size bolt in the last spot on rear of intake.

Now after doing many of these, I know that bolt was removed sometime prior and dropped or lost. I go on a search mission w/mirrors and lights - cannot find it. I remove the intake assy and then crawl up into the engine compartment with my flash light to do a CSI on all of the intake ports to make sure there is no debris hanging inside there. When I come to last rear port (where the odd bolt was) nothing there but remember seeing both valves just open.

I clean and install all the new parts, hit the key and awefull sounds are coming from the engine, then dead miss. .........................guess I found the missing bolt. I pull the spark plug and using a bore-scope I discover that not only bent valves, but a hole punched through the cylinder wall. I go to the manager and give him the whole story.

Later it is decided that we will 'split' the cost of fixing this. If I do the labor the shop will pay for the parts. I R&R the engine assy and tear it down to the last nut, I send the block off to a friend who makes a one-off sleeve for the cylinder. It is pressed it cleaned and returned. I find a piston and rod assy on Ebay, shop gets all the gaskets and hardware and gaskets.

I get everything thing back together and running all is well. My total actual time was over 60hrs. My next paycheck they docked me the full amount of parts..................................