I'd promised the gruupe a few pics. For me, the challenge with this job is getting the fan out (I cannot imagine attempting this with the fan in place, and I'm a little guy). The rest of this job is extremely basic... remove old parts, install new parts. I have an E9x Bentley and that was handy (belt path, bolt torques, etc, highly recommended for anybody who owns a 1er).
It's been a long day and I'm not smart enough to understand how to insert text in between pics, but these (below) are shown in the order as taken (starting with the intake plenum removed). The left-side intercooler duct attaches to the left-bottom of the fan with a rubber grommet of sorts. And with that, the fan does not pull straight out (the frame of the fan butts up against the intercooler duct and you just can't past it). It would have been so easy for BMW to design this for removal, but apparently all Fritz thinks about these days is cost at manufacture time. Ugh. But I digress. Apply silicone liberally and pull and tug and pull and tug and eventually the damn thing comes out.
With the fan removed, this is a super simple job. As I mentioned above, I didn't have a torx bit big enough for the tensioner, and so I was quite glad to have the special tool from ECS.
Getting the fan back in was as difficult as getting it out... the frame of the fan will not drop past the duct. But keep on trying and eventually it goes.
I first did this without jacking up the car and removing the bottom tray (I'm 6MT)... and thought I had the lower tabs fitted properly. I put the car up in the air last weekend to have a look at draining the coolant from the water pump (lost interest in that) and found one of the tabs not in place. And so I recommend checking that before you get everything back in place (don't try this with the car on stands unless you are 8' tall, do the job to the point where you're ready to get the intake plenum back in place and then put the car in the air to look at the bottom fan tabs).
My sweetie is leaking oil (I know what to do but don't want to spend the time) and it's time for fresh coolant (same)... and so off to the dealer I go for both. I use a BMW credit card for $Ks a month and have plenty of accumulated points for me to get this done at $0.
