E39 540i low compression

I've spent most of the weekend cleaning parts, now most parts that I removed are shiny and ready to go back in. Next I'm going to thoroughly clean the engine bay, then the block deck, then the heads. When the heads are clean, I'm going to take them apart and clean/relap the valves. That obviously is a lot of cleaning, but I get a lot of satisfaction out if it, it is really nice to see everything nice and shiny.

I'm really happy that I've decided to go deeper then just the valve cover and the valley pan job. I've found that the gaskets on the timing covers, that used to be made of rubber at some distant point in the past, now appear to be made out of hard plastic and came off in little pieces. Also the oil pan gasket was leaking and was very hard as well, so were the valve cover gaskets. I've also found that not all bolts in different sets that I had to remove were equally torqued...