[alex2112]

Hey all, haven't posted here in quite a while but I just ran into an issue with my '07 328i, N52 engine with 112k on it. For the last couple of years I've been garaging my BMW for the winter and driving a winter beater. I always keep the car on a trickle charger for the battery.

Today had been about 3 months since I started/drove the car, and I needed to move it out of the garage because I'm having new doors installed. When I went to start it, it cranked fine but wouldn't turn over. It just kept cranking and with every "turn" of the engine, it would kind of kick and shake the car almost as if it were trying to fire up but couldn't. I stopped it and tried it again about 2-3 times but it was doing the same thing. Finally after the third attempt, it finally turned over but a large amount of smoke poured out the exhaust and it ran very rough for a few seconds with some very noticeable ticking coming from the engine. After about 10-15 seconds of this it settled down and was idling normally.

The car has no SES light on, nor were any other errors shown on the dash. The car does have some other issues I've noticed that I need to fix. It has a slightly leaking valve cover gasket, where I'm noticing seepage on the sides of the engine but the oil level is still ok, and it has a slightly leaking oil pan gasket. Could the valve cover gasket have cause this problem of starting it but fouling something up or could there be another issue at fault?