I heasitate to use the word “build” on my X5 rabbit hole just yet, because what I’ve been doing is mostly deferred maintenance, research, and spending money of course.

I decided to go with 285/75/16 tires and after much angst pulled the trigger on a set of 16x8 Method Racing Wheel model 701s, in bronze of course because all those subaru guys can’t be wrong. They are zero offset wheels with 4.5” backspacing in a very convenient 5x120 bolt pattern and 72.6 bore. Frankly the bolt pattern and hub bore sealed the deal since spacers and adapters seem like they will cause my brain cell undue damage. I’m only a little concerned about brake clearance with the 16” wheels.

The end result will be a tire that is 1.9” taller, .9” farther away from the inside and 2.1” of poke. I think they will fill up the wheel well very nicely, and it remains to be seen if I can run them without a lift. I’m going to try, but will put a lift on the thing if they rub excessively, or if it looks odd. My goal is to keep it daily driveable and retain some decent manners on the highway, while ensuring I have decent odds of not getting stuck in Midwest muck while bird hunting.

My daughter and I have fixed the seat memory, replaced the Original and very opaque headlights, and painted and installed a new trunk lid grip. The instrument cluster has been swapped with a 4.8 car’s cluster and the DME reprogrammed with work with same.

Up next will be a trip to our local Navy base to put it on the lift and do the rear subframe bushings, fuel filter, oil change and air filters. Then I’ll revisit two of the windows for the umpteenth time and replace those absurdly delicate clips.

In the works in a couple weeks is a hood and roof respray by a local hot rod shop in a charcoal/grey (on the flat-ish side), decide on tires and install the new wheels, and install a Kenwood receiver and Sirius receiver units, and run the antennas. I’d like to get a sharkfin from a later model car/aftermarket unit and install it on the trunk spoiler but will need to run the cables end to end somehow. I’m sure this is doable, but like most things BMW will be painful and result in the loss of lots knuckle skin. I’ve got time to research it tho because almost everything at Crutchfield seems to be in back order.

Progress update after my parts all arrive and I get it on the lift.