[Mike_H_]

I'm replacing the oil cooler on my ZTK package M240ix and the brackets are protected by "bash blocks" and am seeking advice from anyone who may have removed them.

While every video and installation instruction I've found drills them out, they appear to have a tri-wing fastener that a tri-wing bit should remove.

If anyone has removed this fastener without drilling, please share how you removed them.

If these prove to be too difficult to remove, I will drill them out and reinstall the bash block with an M8 rivet nut.

UPDATE: This requires a special bit similar to a "trident security socket insert" which I don't have and don't know what size would be required. Not sure why BMW would choose to use such a fastener on this except to force going to a BMW dealer for a relatively simple repair. I'm going to follow the lead of Mishimoto (and others) and just drill it out and reattach it with a bolt. I'll be using a rivet nut

UPDATE 2: The rivets holding the "bash blocks" are very soft and drill out in about 2 seconds, if that. The rivet nuts are an excellent way to reinstall. I used M6 inserts and bolts with high performance medium thread lock, the M6 bolt requires an 8mm socket.

The oil cooler sits right at the nose of the car and is easy to reach on 10" lift race ramps, everything you need to undo is 10MM.

My local BMW dealer wanted over $2k but had no oil cooler and said it would be a few weeks to get one. I found a BMW dealer across the country that had one, so I bought it.

The replacement takes about 30 minutes if you have everything laid out and organized, it's about as challenging as changing the oil, and an oil change is part of the job since a few quarts will drain while changing the cooler, if you can change your oil, you can change this.

I paid $604 for the oil cooler (part number 17218666121) with $39 shipping. If you search MOST BMW dealer websites for the oil cooler for the G42, it won't come up, but if you search by part number it will, and when it does will show it fits the G42 (same cooler that's in the ZTK package for the G42 M240i, G20 M340i, G22 M440i). Bimmerworld also has it, the issue was finding one in stock.