At the rear of the engine, removal of the rear main seal and rear coolant channel cover. Now you can see that the crankcase is symmetrical and the starter could also be mounted at the other side of the engine. This is actually the case where people use to drive at the wrong side of the road. Look at the block casting, you can actually see the outer cylinder walls castings and the hole of the central coolant channel:

Removed case of the rear main seal:

Removed cover of rear coolant channel:

The engine from underneath. This is a highly interesting picture. You see that 2 pistons are sharing the same crank journal and that its actually a four bolt main block (you look at the main bearing caps). Obvious the reason why the bottom-end is so very strong. It almost never needs a rebuild:

Cor removed just one lower rod bearing cap, to examine the bearing surface and the crank journal surface. They looked immaculate:

A close up of the bearing surface. Folks, this is a bearing surface after 270.000 km (170k miles) in a heavily neglected engine. One more proof the bottom end of the v12 is an extremely tough design. Don't you just love those BMW engineers?:

Disassembly of the oil pump. If you look closely, you can see the pump is actually 2 pumps integrated (Eaton tandem type). One scavenger pump for oil pick-up, and one for the actual oil pressure supply:

A close-up of the oil pump. You'll see some crud build-up:

Back to the heads. Removal of the valves. He used a special tool for this:

He removed the camshafts for a rebuild (he didn't replace them, more on this later). You can see that the camshafts don't have separate bearings, but running directly in the heads:

Valves removed (from 1 head). Cor marked each valve so he was sure the valves where reinstalled in the same position:

One lower outer spring retainer got damaged while disassembling. It must be replaced or else the forged steel could severly damage the soft alloy of the cylinder head:

Close-up of an inlet valve. It looked like new after 270.000 km, so he didn't replace them:

Cor just slightly regrinded the valve stem surfaces when reinstalling the valves because some carbon build-up. The blue box contains the grinding paste:

He did replace the valve stem seals. This is one seal, the little orange 'tube' is to prevent damaging the new valve stem seal when installing:

The valve is installed, so he covered the valve guide with the orange 'thingy' and installed the valve stem seal:

If you look closely, he made an error in the first 2 pictures of the valve stem replacement. Translation of text beneath: 'the inner and outer valve spring retainer must be first installed prior to the valve stem seal installation':

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If you would like to add any comments, remarks and/or corrections to this procedure, feel free to email Mike Oswald and we'll put it on our site. Share your experiences with us so others may benefit from it.