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Old 12-17-2021, 11:45 AM
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Henn28 Henn28 is offline
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Join Date: May 2021
Location: Louisiana
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Yesterday was a marathon, and very painful. However, my x5 is back on the ground finally. Still lots of work to do, but there is light finally at the end of the tunnel.

The front diff is a nightmare to get back in. It won't come out on the motor with the steering rack in (or I didn't want to risk it as it was hitting the rack on the way up) and I screwed up by not putting it on when the motor was a few inches off the mounts, like it was when I saw the interference and pulled the diff. I ended up having to do the full Bentley manual routine of pulling the motor mount nuts, lifting the motor a few inches and dropping the subframe a few inches until I could work the diff back up into place. Its heavy so a helper is super nice to pop a couple bolts in as you bench press it up into place. 2 hours wasted because I forgot to put it on at the right time in the motor install sequence. The only thing I didn't do per the Bentley manual was pull the (left) motor mount. This is to get the bolt into the diff, because of course BMW puts the one long bolt right where it will hit the mount/subframe. However, if you pop it into the diff while you are working the diff into place and before it interferes with the mount/subframe, you'll be fine. All this while on your back bench pressing a 50lb diff into place.

After I put the motor and subframe back into place, and torqued it all down (again) it was time to finally put the suspension back on. I needed new tension arms and ball joints, so the axles came off a few days ago, despite my initial desire to keep the hubs on. The bushings were shot, as were the ball joints and I needed to have them pressed out by a local suspension shop. Getting the right axle pedestal back on was easy but getting that axle clip to seat was a real PITA, as was driving the axles back on the carriers despite lots of PB blaster and then grease. It finally took a mallet and a short piece of 4x4 to get the nuts in to where they had at least 3 turns and could safely pull the hub onto the axle without fear of stripping. The right axle threads were also stripped for the first several turns (where the staking cutouts are) due to the shop that changed it a couple years ago driving it on to early with an impact I'm guessing. I got the nut to catch finally after lots of struggling.

After that it was relatively smooth sailing to tighten all the suspension bits down and install the wheels. I'll torque everything to spec when I can get back to the car next week hopefully.

I'm a bit unsure how to get to 300 and change foot/lbs for the axle nut. It's at around 150 or 200 now so I could put the wheels on and safely drop the car. Short of buying a monster torque wrench is there a way to get to 300 lb/ft? That is a crazy number.
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Current
Original owner 2002 E53 X5 4.4i to 4.6i swap
1993 Mopar 318 Jeep Grand Cherokee - original owner
2015 V6 Jeep Grand Cherokee - the nice car for my wife
Former
1972 Audi Fox
1986 Saab 900S
1996 BMW Z3
1998 BMW E36 M3 Sedan
2004 BMW E46 M3
2006 Audi A3 Quatro
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