The timing covers on the front were leaking profusely from both engines. As others have mentioned, “they do that.” That’s disappointing and annoying, but I’m not here to solve age-old BMW problems. The engine my car came with managed to completely coat the inside of my skidpan with about 5 miles of driving so, hopefully I can do better than that? The way these timing covers seal with a fiddly “profile” gasket in some places and a super thin paper/composite gasket in others is problematic. I’m normally not one to use RTV on gaskets, but it seems like anything might…
Forward progress. I’d forgotten, initially, to loctite the bolts that Josh said to loctite. I remembered to do it before the lower oil pan though, so I went back and did that, as well as the oil pickup bolts since apparently they’re problematic as well. I went ahead and doubled the lower oil pan gasket and hope that it works out. Other frustrations–the Bentley manual talks about an oil supply check valve that goes in the block, but neither of mine had any such thing. Some internet searching found lots of other perplexed people. Apparently the part is listed, but…