Hello all! New member here and I just picked up a 2006 4.8is last week in California. I enjoy working on cars and I've always had a soft spot E series BMWs. In the past, I had an E36 325is 5-speed and an F30 335i 6-speed, both of which I loved. Since I'm up to the task of maintaining an old BMW V8, I figured it would be a fun change. Anyways, I live in Louisiana and took the risk to try and drive the X5 home from California immediately after purchasing it.

That didn't work out so well for me hahaha. The water pump blew up in the middle of New Mexico at 2am on a Sunday (classic BMW, right?). It happened at 99,945 miles so juuuust short of 100k. I had it towed to a hotel and tried finding a u-haul + trailer to tow it the rest of the way home with no luck. Everything between Deming and El Paso was completely sold out of u-hauls and rental cars. So my brother came down from Colorado Springs and towed me back to his house.

The battery and tires were also crap. So while I was stuck in Colorado, I had the entire cooling system overnighted to me from FCP Euro, replaced the tires, got a new battery, and replaced the front brake pad wear sensor because it was intermittently giving me a warning light. I got it home successfully this past Saturday.

Next items on the list (already have all parts in the garage):

- Radio screen replacement. Seems like every E53 I looked at had crappy screens, so I'm guessing this won't last long. I'll probably look into a more permanent solution like an Android radio in the future.
- All power steering hoses and reservoir. It's currently leaking.
- All fluids: Oil, transmission fluid, front diff, transfer case, rear diff, brake fluid, power steering fluid, and coolant has obviously been replaced. All OEM, of course.
- All filters: Air filter, oil filter, a/c microfilter, transmission filter, fuel filter
- OEM coils and spark plugs
- Random stuff like gas cap, E70 rear wiper and new front wipers, and transmission seal kit

Future items will be to remove the ridiculously dark tint and get more normal tint that I can see out of, new OEM kidney grilles to replace the aftermarket ones that don't fit and fall out every time I shut the hood, refinish the wheels, and do a nice paint correction + ceramic coat. It doesn't currently smoke at all, but I do want to do the valve stem seals and AGA coolant pipe replacement to address more of the common issues with the N62.

On to the pictures from the trip. 24 hours into my ownership and it got to ride on two flatbeds haha