What is/was broken on your E53 today?

[Crowz]

Originally Posted by andrewwynn

Replaced the left front CV axle on Lumba2 (wife's x5). I've had it for more than a year (I bought both sides but after replacing the right side the problem I had was cured: shaking while in reverse and not moving).

I took it out in pieces as it was in my way to remove the front bearing. I cut the inner boot and pulled out the outer 3/4.

After I was done removing the bearing I proceeded to remove the inner part and that was a beech! What finally worked was getting a crowbar on opposite sides and pull. There is just a tiny space before it goes into the differential where I could get the crowbar on one side and the other side I think I pried on the bump that is about 1/2" from the end.

It fought me tooth and nail. It took maybe 40 minutes to get it out. It shot out about a foot once it released!

I used the method of only removing the two bolts that hold the wheel carrier to the strut and discovered that it's far far more difficult to push the axle into the hub if even ONE of those bolts is installed. I fought for a few minutes to push the axle into the hub and no go. I pulled out the strut bolt and it went all the way in without effort!

A tiny bit of sideways force from the CV boot caused a huge headache!

All back together and no more moaning and vibration in the steering wheel.

That car is like whack a mole with bearings. I replace one to find out it was masking the noise of another one! There is only one more I'm planning to preemptively strike and replace before it starts moaning.

This last one instantly got noisy when I upgraded the wheels from 235 to 255. Flipping which race of the bearing was holding the load. The same happened to my car when I switched temporarily from 255 to 245.

Very happy that the bearing and CV finally done I've had the CV for a year and the bearing has been getting worse slowly for a few months. It was pretty subtle only really moaning above 70 and very difficult to tell for certain which corner.

Sounds like what I went thru getting the cv out of the passenger side. The old axle came apart on me pulling it out of the front end. When it finally came out it landed about 5 or 6 feet from the car.

I WILL buy an axle puller before I do another one.

Well let me rephrase that. I will buy an axle puller that fits. I bought a front wheel drive car axle puller from autozone but it was way to small to fit the bmw's cv axles.