After I replaced my trouble-free 100k mile 2004 X5 3.0 last year with my dream X5 4.8is, I think I may have let the 11k miles, pretty blue exterior, and nearly untouched cherry interior cloud my judgement. I will admit that I was simply in denial about what a lot of people seem to think is the transmission shifting at funny points. Some call it 'hunting.' Like the tranny will shift up to second after a stop as normal. It'll head into 3rd shortly and then it happens...

Under fairly normal acceleration- (for me) in just regular old lopey down the road mode- not sport or Steptronic Manual- it would apparently shift down again for no good reason. It didn't do it ALL the time. Lord knows if I hammered the gas, you only had two things to do- Hang on and watch the gas gauge dive for empty. No funny shifting under full load.

But I don't drive like a maniac all the time. After almost exactly a year and 11K miles of trying like hell to modulate the throttle, I finally gave in and asked an old friend. Actually, I have about 10 years on him, but he's worked his way through the service ranks of a local BMW dealer. He's an old '02 and E30 guy as well. Good people.

On describing what was going on, I mentioned one of the things I'd tried in the last month or so to offset the issue: Turning to manual mode in Steptronic. But then, I noticed once recently that it did it again! Well now wait. HTF can it shift if the dang thing is IN third gear? Did the dash indicator lie? Did it just shift- under light acceleration/no redline without telling me? Not possible. This is actually a contributing factor as to why I was there. It was puzzling. It simply could not be transmission, I gathered. Could it be TPS? Could it be something in drive by wire? WTF?

Well, it turns out that my friend had experienced this same issue with another customer's car some years back. His was a 545. The two drive lines are pretty similar but some of the coding is different. Since he'd used the same method on many other N62's, this he thought would be the key to my solution.

Five mins later, he returned reporting an unusual setting found in the GT1/current BMW coding: Under Minimum Valve Lift, he reported that the setting on my 2004 X5 4.8is was 0.10mm. He called to a coworker to be sure, but neither had seen an N62 set this low. The correct setting is 0.30mm and not recommended above .8 for the X5. He doesn't know why.

He's changed this setting he said to address all kinds of N62 drive-ability issues- across the 5's, 7's, and the 6's, too. He said he's seen disappear the rough idle issues that some folks immediately say are guides (or something). The funny shifting or hunting of what looks like the transmission in a 5, 6, or 7 with this motor can also be affected by adjusting this setting.

I am happy to report that I noticed IMMEDIATELY the difference in drive-ability on my X5. It feels like a WHOLE different experience. It's no more crisp or faster or ANY of the crap that people like to say, but what it is now? Smoooth. Not as smooth as the 3.0 I had, but still.. VERY nice. Well worth the visit.

And, just in case anyone wants to head to a dealer and see if this solves the issue, I have a screen shot of the diag screen. Just for you guys! I hope it helps anyone seeing the same issues!

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