I started a post a couple of weeks ago about my drivers side window which was stuck in the down position, which turned out to be a broken regulator. While I had it apart, I was curious whether a trick the E46 community discovered awhile back applies to the X5's regulators as well, namely, that the weak part of the regulator tends to be where the plastic clip at the end of the cable where it attaches to the metal runner (not sure of the technical term for the piece) tends to pop out of the runner, and that this can sometimes be repaired by simply wrapping a zip-tie around the clip to hold it to the runner. Taking it a step further, some E46 owners, myself included, have proactively wrapped a zip-tie around the vulnerable piece before it has broken to hopefully prevent it from breaking in the first place. An ounce of prevention vs. a pound (and several hours of work) of cure.
Well, I'm happy to report that the same trick does work on the X5's regulator. This is a picture of piece of our X5's old regulator, where you can see where the clip has broken out of the metal runner:
Unfortunately, it was too badly broken to repair.
This is a picture of the new regulator, before I put it in the car, where you can see where I've wrapped a pair of zip-ties around the spot where the clip presses into the runner:
I wrapped zip-ties in the same locations on both of the runners
And finally, here's a picture of the new regulator installed in the car, with the zip-ties visible:
Hopefully, with this bit of reinforcement of the weak part of the regulator, I won't have to deal with replacing the regulator a year or two down the road, as many X5 owners have had to. As you can see, it wouldn't be difficult to wrap the runners with zip-ties with the regulator in the car. When I finish up my Porsche 968 track car project (hopefully in the next week or two), I'll take the door panel of the passenger side door and proactively zip-tie its regulator, so I hopefully won't ever have to deal with replacing it.
I hope this helps others with regulator issues.