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Heads up: Priming the engine with oil in certain repair scenarios
A heads up to everyone: BMW TIS instructions for replacing the oil filter housing (common repair on the B series engines and apparently becoming more common as they age) have a step that directs to prime the engine prior to running it, to get oil moved around and parts properly lubricated prior to a real engine start. This is a logical consequence of the fact that you have to remove the oil filter housing -- thus interrupting the oil circuit -- to replace the housing.
This step is easy to miss. And I'm sure pretty much nobody does it. I didn't (I didn't break my engine, but I wish I would have caught this regardless). It doesn't help that on the B series engines even if you want to do the priming thing, the "manually turn the engine by manually rotating the crankshaft pulley clockwise" approach is far from straightforward (instead of a giant hex bolt you can apply a breaker bar and socket to, you have that four-bolt-heads-in-a-square thing to reckon with).
There are other scenarios where one might interrupt the oil circuit, and this note/heads up would apply to those too.
BMW actually put out a TSB in 2016 for "all engines" -- that includes the B36, B38, B46, and B48 because in 2016 they were part of "all" -- that contains priming instructions. You can find YouTube videos out there that discuss and demonstrate this for engines like the N55. Nevertheless, it's so basic that you could run it on a B series engine as well.
I got to thinking about this, and digging into it, while helping a couple of folks deal with the oil filter housing thing.
