Alternator died awhile back and I had all the standard oil leaks going on as well with my little R56 S. Decided to just take the front off and do oil filter housing, turbo lines, alternator, etc. . . I have big hands and it was just easier to pull the whole front off. It's been apart for nearly a year because life got in the way. I've been re-watching youtube vids and such to give me an idea of how to put this all back together as I'd pretty much forgotten. Also decided to do timing chain and obviously cam cover gasket, oil pan gasket, serpentine belt, tensioners, water pump, water pipe, thermostat housing. It's ALMOST back together but I have these four little torx bolts that are kind of freaking me out because I don't know where they go. I've looked at what I've got left to put on the car to finish up and these don't appear to play a part in that process. Obviously they go somewhere on the car. I may have bought something that came with new bolts and used those upon reassembly, but I honestly don't recall, so here I am asking the collective who no doubt know a whole lot more than I do.

Thanks in advance.

Gar

 

They look like they have a very specific design / use so hopefully someone else who's had their's apart will recall.

 

Those bolts are the for the hood latches on the radiator support.

 

I think they're too short for that application but I'll check. I currently have the longer ones in there with a wider head buy same size torx bit. If they are for that application then I have four extra longer ones to wonder about! Thanks for the replies.

 

Those go in my tires when I drop one on the driveway.

 

Take a picture of the other bolts in there location and I'll tell you.

 

Looks a lot like the bolts Yoshimura_1 mentioned, #2 in this RealOEM screenshot ---

 

Thanks oldbrokenwind....... I've removed the bolts from several cars when putting the front end in service mode...

 

Yep. They do seem short, but they're obviously the bolts intended for those. I still feel a lot better, as the bolts that I'll take out to put those correct ones in are much more generic torx bolts used for less than critical applications. I don't feel like I've missed anything, but those four bolts absolutely had a bespoke application. Thanks so much for finding it for me. Got my walnut shell blaster together tonight. Tomorrow I get the intake valves done and I'm pretty sure I can get in fully assembled after that and back on the road after almost a year!.

Thanks again.

 

What other bolts do you currently have in that location or removing...

 

These are what I did put in, but I'll swap them out for the correct ones. I'm not sure where these ones actually go now instead That's o.k. I got the intake valves all walnut shell blasted yesterday. A bit of a messy procedure but boy do they look great now. I unfortunately noticed a possible oil leak, which means this all might have to come apart again. Looks to be near the oil filter / cooler assembly, which I put all new o-rings / gaskets in and put together. I'm just going to fill the cooling system with D-I water and run it after I get it put together and see if I maybe just spilled some oil when I was filling it up, or if I've got a real leak.

 

Hard to actually see how gooey and carbon filled my intake valves were but they were really ugly. The first blurry pic does show it a bit, the second picture is when they were almost clean, but needed one more blast. The one on the right is pretty good but you can see a good amount of build up still on the far side of the left one. All eight of them looked like the nearside of the right one when I was done. Hoping it runs a bit better now. It's almost like I just polished the ports!

 

Did you put the torx screws back in the radiator support .... Those look like the one that go on each side

 

I'll have to have a look. Trying to figure out what you mean by "each side" The little plastic things that hold the radiator and evaporator in place at the top corners I think use similar looking torx screws but they are threaded for plastic, not machine thread. I'll have a look at the rest of the support but having a hard time finding anything I've missed.

 

I'll get a picture later for you so you can see where it goes.

 

I put the proper bolts in the hood latches and found out that the four torx bolts with the larger collar go into the fender liners to hold them in place, along with the myriad of plastic rivets, so mystery solved!

Now I get to take it all apart again to replace defective new alternator.

Yay! . . .

 

So I got everything together and my bride and I have been driving the Mini regularly for the last few months. It's running great and I believe that cleaning up the valves with the walnut shells REALLY made a difference in smoothness and acceleration. All that said, I STILL have an oil leak. I don't think I did anything wrong. I replaced all of the o-rings in the oil cooler / oil filter housing, turbo feed line, cam cover gasket, oil pan gasket, etc. . . I can't tell for sure, but the leak appears to be coming from the oil cooler / oil filter housing. I loathe taking the car apart again, but there's only one way to get a good look at things. I may try a thorough power washing and then close inspection over the next couple of days, but I'm kind of at my wits end. It's not a big leak and everything is much better than before, but considering the time spent on the car, I really want it to be bone dry leak free. Any ideas on what I might have missed?