Sorry to have taken so long to report the progress, but I've been pretty busy lately.

3 weeks ago I decided to bite the bullet, it was about 10 celcius outside, I first managed to squeezed the front of the truck in the garage, leaving the garage door opened all that time, I have a build car that is on jack stands so space was limited.

The goal was to replaced the 10 parts included in the drive train. It took me a good deal of time since it was my first big job on the X. I spent about 10 hours to replaced 8 out of the 10 pieces kit, man it was a Pita, rusted bolts, stuck ball joint but also the lack of finding the proper puller, missing tools, time spend to go back an forth to local store but also the learning curve so to speak.

I spend a good deal of time trying to get the frigging outer tie-rod out of there, I heated the bolts 3 times extensively with the torch, used some heavy duty stuff to penetrate the rust and even using a 4 feet pry bar to extend the wrench, the nuts didn't moved a tinny bit, the tie-rod ended up torned, grrrr. I had to say that at this point I was getting mad, but as usual it never last more than the time to realize it doesn't serve any purpose, perhaps beside letting the pressure out. Lol

The driver side took much longer, mostly because of the time spent on the tie-rod and the stuck ball joint. When I did the passenger side, I skipped the tie-rod, so it only took me about 4 hours to completed the job.

All in all, i'm very satisfied of the job, I also learned a good deal and saved a bundle. The same day I re-ordered a kit including inner & outer tie rods, that where installed 4 days later by a local shop who also did the rear link & truck alignment. If anyone have questions please feel free to ask and I will be more than happy to help.

Now I'd like to know what do you guys think about the Bilstein shock for the X5 ? I have the feeling that it is time to replace the 2004 shock. I have done some extensive search and it seem that we have a couple of option, so please correct me if I'm wrong. I found the GR2, Munroe, Bilstein, OEM, SACH which seem like OEM, or 2 coil-over option. Looking at these options, it look like the Bilstein might be a good option as I was told is an improvement over the stock shock.

The X5 has the air in the rear but standard shock in front. Coil over seem way over kill, as much as I like the X, I would rather add the 3G to a deposit on a more recent X5 but still I like to have a decent suspension. I want to keep the truck for another year and then move on to either an 2010 X5-M or the X5 with the 4.8 or 5l depending on what I can find on the market and the available fund at that time.

On a side note, I have a set of 2 brand new Movetech outer tie rod that I'm selling for 50$ + shipping or BO. That's about it for now.