[VaSteve]

I was seeing a drip of oil in the garage which translated to the driveway now that the car is spending the winter outside for my 944 project. I thought it was the pan gasket, but Clarke tells me that the oil pan gasket leak is uncommon. An oil filter gasket leak will run down the slanted engine and look like it's coming from the passenger side.

If you remove the airbox, you can look at the (drivers) side of the engine and see the mess it makes. The gasket is $6 or so. Clarke (who is a professional mechanic at Manassas Motorwerkes) tell me that this is a job I can do in about 2 1/2 hours. The challenge is on! I started in the morning and was done in time for lunch.

I followed this guy's directions:
http://forum.e46fanatics.com/showthr...filter+housing

But, I have reposted and annotated here. There's about 12 pages of discussion on e46 Fanatics. Not sure why.

1a. jack the car up. It'll help
1b. disconnect negative batter lead
1c. remove air filter housing and MAF.
2. remove fan and fan shroud. (you don't have to do this step, but it makes finding the lower alternator bolt easy) - do this. You can't take off the belt with out removing the fan.
2a. Remove the belt. Untension it with a 16 mm socket and "
pin" the tensioner out of the way through the holes.
3. unbolt Power steering resevoir and lay over by the strut tower
4. remove the alternator. This step was a pain. Bentleys says to remove plastic cover and then remove main battery lead. On my car, the main battery lead nut IS made out of plastic. I think it was 17mm and was torqued on pretty tight. Don't forget to remove the electrical plug as well.
-The top bolt is hidden by the idler pulley cover. Just pry off cover w/ screw driver and remove 16mm bolt. The bottom bolt is just below the tensioner pully. 16mm as well. Did, you pin the tensioner out of the way? With both bolts removed, the alternator didn't want to come out. I had to wiggle it and pry for a good 10 minutes to work it loose. The alternator bottom bracket 'pinches' the oil filter housing. Just pry it off with a prybar or big screwdriver. I saved 9 minutes.
5. remove the Power Steering pump from the oil filter housing. There are 3 13mm bolts. The top 2 are easy. You have to get beneath the car to get to the bottom one. It mounts an angle bracket from the PS pump to the oil filter housing. You don't have to get under the car at all. See my photo below.
6. remove the oil filter housing. I read one DIY where they left the PS pump attached and just pried the pump from the engine block. I tried this at 1st and couldn't even begin to get the gasket off. It would be insane to attempt this without taking off the PS pump. It's 3 bolts. Leave the easiest one (longest) in until last.
-there are 6 13mm bolts. easy to get at. The VANOS oil banjo fitting on the back of the oil housing was 19mm. Not too hard to get to. remove 2 electrical connectors from the housing (you might want to label these, I was guessing when I put them back on). In true BMW style all the bolts are different lengths. As I pulled them out, I painted the heads with numbers to make it easier to put back in.
-a soft wrap w/ a rubber mallet seperated the oil filter housing from the engine block pry it
7. remove housing gasket. This was pretty tough. I used an ExactO knife to pry part of the gasket out to start it. The gasket was very hard and getting brittle. You'll see from the pic that I broke it in a couple places, but SLOWLY pulled all of it out in one piece. The groove where the gasket fits has "tangs" to hold it in place. Press the gasket all the way in. Hose everything down with brake cleaner or similar.
8. Install everything in reverse. Torque for the filter housing bolts is something of a mystery. I went w/ one source and torqued mine to 22Nm.
-New banjo nut and aluminum washers for the Vanos hose are a good idea