I was running some errands in the X5 last night, and when I went to get out of the vehicle at one of my stops, the inside door handle made a funny "pop" and the door wouldn't open. I was able to get out by rolling down the window and pulling on the outside handle.
When I got home I pulled the door panel off and found the plastic part on the
door latch mechanism broken where the Bowden cable attaches; the area circled in red below:
I was able to cobble together a fix for it with some Gorilla Glue and a wire tie, and it's holding so far, but I don't think it's going to last forever so I'll probably be ordering a new part soon. The trouble is that you have to order the whole flippin latch at a cost of ~$170. The rest of the mechanism works fine; it's just the plastic that's broken, and it just irks the crap out of me when things like this break. Yeah, I understand that the thing has probably gone through many thousands of use cycles in the vehicle's ~170,000 miles, but why would they engineer a plastic part in a high-stress area like that in the first place?
Ok, I'm done venting; has anybody else had a similar failure in their door latch? Or is mine somehow flawed?