[atarivers]

This is one of those "thank goodness for my warranty" stories. A week ago I pulled into my garage, shut the door separating it from the back stairs behind me, and went upstairs to get ready for dinner. As I stopped to sort through a stack of mail I noticed a strange burning odor. Sniffing around, I followed it back downstairs to the garage. When I opened the door to enter the garage I was horrified to find it was filled with a haze of noxious smoke!

For a moment I was afraid the car had caught fire. Of course there would have been a lot more than a haze if that were the case, but it was bad enough that I had to open the exterior garage door to air it out. The smell lingered until midday the following day - the smell of burnt synthetic oil.

I was somewhat relieved to see there was no oil puddle beneath the car after leaving it for a week. When I brought it in for the service appointment this morning, the advisor gave me the usual "it might be covered by warranty" but "if it's a plastic bag from the freeway stuck to the exhaust that's another story". It was not a plastic bag.

Here is the punchline - valve cover gasket, allowing oil to leak onto the hot exhaust pipe and cause the noxious fumes. This is the sort of thing I used to deal with as a student with my 100,000 mile beaters. Anyway, I got a rental car instead of a loaner. My dealership is so busy that there is a rental car agency on their lot that services the dealership almost exclusively. The counter girls asked me what was wrong with my car (2014 X3, 30,000 miles). When I told them they both immediately said "I think there is a recall for that". I wasn't aware. At any rate, I'm happy I wasn't far away from home with a long drive ahead of me. That would have been very inconvenient. This is not a good look for our beloved BMW.