I have changed out the batteries on this and a few other E53 X5's over the years. It's been hit or miss as to the success of just pulling the old one and installing the new one. Some of them tolerate the swap fine, others need to be hooked up to BMW's supercomputer to "initialize" them whatever that means. I have never dealt with a vehicle so sensitive to voltage.

I'm going to look for chafed wires on the '05 with the amplifier problem. Maybe I'll get lucky. As far as the '06 goes, I'll do the fuse pulling trick and see if that lights the radio back up in the system.

Elvis, most of the collection was sold off a couple of years ago, but they still have two near zero mile 2006 4.8is models in the storage facility, a few Z8's, an a couple early M6's, along with some muscle cars and a couple Benz's.

They really love their E53's and that's why there are a couple of extras. I start them and drive them a few miles every month or two.

BTW, that hidden features link is pretty cool. I know about most of that stuff but there were a few I'm going to pass on to the owners.



Gar