Danny's X5 4.6 Thread

[dannyzabolotny]

Originally Posted by smokeyyank

Nice! Glad you got it hammered out.

Thanks! Yeah, I'm glad I was able to fix it and get it back on the road.

Anyways, after I got it running, I drove it to work and realized just how filthy it was!



Later that night I went to one of those 24-hour self-service washes to try and clean the X5 up a bit. This is what it looked like before the wash, after 5 months of sitting outside. It was a pretty sorry sight, almost like a neglected stray dog.





And this is what it looked like after a quick wash. By no means perfect, but a huge improvement:







The Ammo Skin sealant had done its job and protected the paint from the majority of the sun and bird droppings. There are a few spots where the bird crap etched into the clear coat a little bit, but that's something I can polish out once it cools off a bit. It's too hot to do any real detailing!

A few days later it was back in its natural habitat:



12.8 mpg, haha. I don't anticipate it getting much better since my commute nowadays is mostly street driving. Plus I drive it with a lead foot, because why the heck not?

After two days of driving the X5, I noticed that the right side of the dash was blowing hot air instead of cold air, so I replaced the heater valve. It's the valve next to the engine on the driver's side— it often goes bad on the E53/E38/E39. Thankfully a new one was only $205 and I already had it laying around from a previous order (I had intended to replace it back in January but then the X5 broke down). I don't have any pictures of that job because I did it while half-asleep at midnight one night. I will say that I spilled a bunch of hot coolant everywhere, so that was not fun. It only took about 15 minutes for the whole swap, and the problem was fixed 100%. Now the vents all blow cold, just as they should.

Fast forward a few days and the AC suddenly stopped working, which was really fun with it being 109º outside. I then went to my friend's house where we used his AC gauges to check the system. It turns out that the AC system was dangerously over-charged by whoever had previously charged it. The high side was really high and it was causing the compressor to go into a failsafe mode which is why the AC wasn't working properly. I assume it's because this X5 was last charged in Seattle which has a much colder climate and different air pressures— Phoenix is a pretty drastic change in climate, especially in terms of heat. We evacuated the system entirely, did a vacuum test to check for leaks (no leaks!) and then filled the system with an appropriate amount of R134, using a commercial grade fill tank (not the canned crap). That solved the AC problem, and we noted the duct temperatures were 44º with a 110º ambient temperature outside. So the AC works extremely well now, to the point of where it actually makes me cold. I'm glad I got that sorted out, because tomorrow it's supposed to be 120º here in Phoenix.

[Nyc Dito]

She cleans up really well!! Nice work!

[dannyzabolotny]

Originally Posted by Nyc Dito

She cleans up really well!! Nice work!

Thanks I actually detailed her even further this past weekend, I just haven't had a chance to take any good pics yet. Did a thorough wash with Ammo Foam, dried everything off, put on another coat of Ammo Spit spray wax, used Back To Black on all the plastic trim pieces, Invisible Glass on all the windows, and Ammo Mud tire shine on the tires. She looks really sharp now!

I went to the weekly car show on Saturday afternoon. It was pretty empty initially but as the sun set and the temps dropped it got pretty busy. Lots of cool cars there as always. My buddy's Imola Red 740il is parked next to my X5 in this pic:



I also did another quick repair last night. Over the weekend I noticed that when I was at a red light or otherwise idling I would feel an occasional bump. It almost felt like somebody was lightly nudging the car from underneath. I tried shifting into P and N but that didn't affect it, so I ruled out the transmission. I then tried turning off the AC which didn't affect it either. I then pulled out my laptop with INPA and started scanning for clues. There were no obvious errors or codes, but I did notice that the engine RPM fluctuated ever so slightly when I felt the bumps, so I narrowed it down to being an engine issue. The digital readouts didn't tell me anything new, so I switched to the analog readouts to try and make some sense of it all. The roughness graph is what clued me in to what was going on.

Most of the cylinders looked fine, but cylinder 7 was quite a bit rougher than the others:



I noticed that every single time I felt a bump, the cylinder 7 roughness bar would jump up. Now that I narrowed it down to a specific cylinder, I went through my mental checklist of what could have gone wrong. The spark plugs are all brand new NGK Iridiums installed about 1000 miles ago, so that wasn't the issue. The injectors were all good too, so I ruled that out as well. The only unknown was the ignition coil, which dated back to 2002. Before the X5 broke down I had ordered a new Bremi ignition coil just in case, since it was only $35. I fished that out of my parts box and replaced the cylinder 7 ignition coil with the new coil. It was a little tricky with how hot the engine was, but I got it done without burning myself. After I replaced the coil, I started the engine and would you look at that, it's now buttery smooth!



It looks like the original ignition coil on cylinder 7 was on its way out, but it wasn't bad enough to throw a misfire code yet. Swapping the coil seems to have solved all of the problems and I have not had any issues since then. I'm sure I would have eventually gotten a CEL for the bad coil, but it was nice to fix the problem before it became more serious.

[Overboost]

She cleaned up nice! Some headlight lens restoration should be on your list. I used the $30 3M Headlight Restoration Kit and the results were phenomenal.

She looks identical to mine except for the 4.8 pipes poking out.

[dannyzabolotny]

Originally Posted by Overboost

She cleaned up nice! Some headlight lens restoration should be on your list. I used the $30 3M Headlight Restoration Kit and the results were phenomenal.

She looks identical to mine except for the 4.8 pipes poking out.

Yep, that's the next thing on my list! I have the same 3M kit, I just have to do it one of these nights. Though I'm tempted to wait until it's not as hot— it's 116º today and 120º tomorrow.

I still have a few other things I need to fix, like the driver's seat memory module so that I can actually have seat memory as well as working steering wheel adjustments. Then once I'm able to move the steering wheel out of the way I'm going to send off my cluster to get the pixels fixed, they're a mess right now.

[Overboost]

Originally Posted by dannyzabolotny

Yep, that's the next thing on my list! I have the same 3M kit, I just have to do it one of these nights. Though I'm tempted to wait until it's not as hot— it's 116º today and 120º tomorrow.

I still have a few other things I need to fix, like the driver's seat memory module so that I can actually have seat memory as well as working steering wheel adjustments. Then once I'm able to move the steering wheel out of the way I'm going to send off my cluster to get the pixels fixed, they're a mess right now.

I feel ya. My Business radio screen has so many dead pixels I can't even read it anymore, cluster is good. I am waiting for a 3 day time frame I can be down so I can pull it out and send it to California for repair.

[dannyzabolotny]

Just rolled over 215,000 miles on the drive to work this morning. I normally daily drive my 2000 540it, but it's been really hot here in Phoenix so I've been driving the X5 more. For some reason the X5 has a way better AC than the 540it— it can actually make me uncomfortably cold even when it's 115º outside.

[Overboost]

Originally Posted by dannyzabolotny

Just rolled over 215,000 miles on the drive to work this morning. I normally daily drive my 2000 540it, but it's been really hot here in Phoenix so I've been driving the X5 more. For some reason the X5 has a way better AC than the 540it— it can actually make me uncomfortably cold even when it's 115º outside.

Love to hear about the high mileage X5's. My X just hit 147,000 and my E46 is 199,750.

[dannyzabolotny]

Originally Posted by Overboost

Love to hear about the high mileage X5's. My X just hit 147,000 and my E46 is 199,750.

I love my high mileage cars. My E39 540i touring is at 192k miles now, and I intend to get it well past 300k. I put 18k miles on in just a year, and that's with other cars in my household. Now I'm racking up the miles on the X5.

The only trouble is that if I were to ever sell the X5 I'd have an extremely difficult time due to the mileage. People still think 150k is high mileage, so 215k is unfathomable. It took me a really long time to sell my 03 540i/6 because it had 198k miles.

[Overboost]

Originally Posted by dannyzabolotny

I love my high mileage cars.

The only trouble is that if I were to ever sell the X5 I'd have an extremely difficult time due to the mileage. People still think 150k is high mileage, so 215k is unfathomable. It took me a really long time to sell my 03 540i/6 because it had 198k miles.

Yeah, I put more money in my BMW's than they are worth. Just put $5K in each of them this year alone. That being said, I do not have a car payment and love driving both of them. I can't afford to sell them now...