The X5 was put to work in the month of December; road tripping through California, driving up (and down) to Tahoe in snow, many mountain biking trips and lot's of aggressive driving on tight mountain roads!

After the trip the X5 received various upgrades with the focus being on the interior.

Here are some pics from the winter trip....

Dawn patrol in Napa Valley


Aggressive mountain driving was aggressive. This was from driving the Oakvilla Grade which connects Napa Valley to Santa Rosa. A rough and tight road. Had to dial it back a bit.



Not the best pic but my first roller in the X5!


Visiting my good friend up in Truckee. He hates that I call the X5 a "truck" since he owns a Duramax buuuut I tell him, "it's got a tailgate, it's a truck!" lol


Always fun to see the people who have no idea what they are doing and try to navigate snow in FWD economy cars on crap tires.


Bikes and Beer in Berkeley


Fun fact about the 1Up bike rack is it has 3 positions: down to carry bikes, up for storage, and a 45 degree option which allows just enough clearance for the tailgate to come down. Nice


More dawn patrol



Onto the upgrades! My X5 came with heated wheel but I ditched the feature since I found a nice deal on a Napa M sport wheel with paddles. I finally came across a deal on a heated X5M wheel in nice condition. The X5M uses the same paddles as the E9X M3 so there are more aftermarket options for paddles and I went with a generic set of aluminum paddles. The look is a bit aggressive but I wanted a longer paddle and these are aesthetically more pleasing than some of the other options.

Annoyingly the OEM paddles were not communicating through the steering wheel controls so they needed to be spliced into the wiring up stream. I pulled some OEM connectors from the junkyard so the paddles are PNP.


Before/After


Installing P3 vent gauge which has a bunch of useful metrics


The access panel on the side of the dash is a great place to tuck the controller.



I FINALLY got around to upgrading the interior lights to LED.



As most of you E70 owners are aware, the console trim wears poorly and I couldn't justify the $120 price for a new OEM piece and stumbled upon this cover on Amazon. Fit/finish looked good and for $23 it was worth testing out.




Time to update the Nav screen and interior trim. Screen is a WAKAA and I sourced some OEM Shadow Brushed Aluminum trim from Latvia.




Little hack when working on the back of the door panels: do this!


End result. I love it. Next and maybe the last big interior mod will be Merino leather dash doors and hopefully I can find a pair of Merino comfort seats. I have the massaging/cooled seats and the leather sucks (so does the cooling).