It's an old BMW, it's been doing that old BMW thing of burning oil on the exhaust for the last little while. Due to there being oil in spark plug sockets 3 & 4, I thought it might be the valvetronic gasket leaking. Looked a simple enough job, safe to do early in the week before a weekend away. (Looks like the valvetronic gasket was original anyway, spotted a April 2006 date on it, car is late 2006.)
Swapped the valvetronic gasket over easily enough, only to find the coil plug wouldn't re-seat on plug 3 (from front) happily. Eventually worked out there's a heat shield around the coils in the rocker cover, held in place at the bottom by a round clip, which had come adrift on mine (I think I must have pushed it out trying to mop some of the oil out with rags.) Eventually coerced the heat shield out with an Allen key and a small flathead screwdriver, refitted everything fine and went out for a test drive.
Nothing quite like a mostly empty road, and a warmed up N52 screaming up to the redline heading towards a deep red summer sunset on the horizon. Cor.