The story of "Swamp Thing"

[c-bass]

Originally Posted by Homerlovesbeer

I'm loving your posts C-bass! Very entertaining

As a new X5 owner here (2004 4.8is) some of the abbreviations you refer to I don't know but I sure appreciate how well you manage to fault find and diagnosis issues that crop up.

How did the Russian "lift kit" work out?

Feel free to ask whenever you see any term you're not yet familiar with.

I haven't installed the lift kit yet but it will happen when the weather gets better and I don't need 4x4

[EODguy]

Originally Posted by c-bass

Sometimes I feel it's like patching holes in a screen door.

I know what you mean. I sometimes just send my wife out to explain to the what will happen if the wife loses her shit....

50% success rate

Sent from my SM-A528B using Tapatalk

[crystalworks]

Originally Posted by EODguy

50% success rate

Acceptable conversion rate.

Nice work c-bass. Read every post.

[c-bass]

Originally Posted by crystalworks

Acceptable conversion rate.

Nice work c-bass. Read every post.

Thanks,

For some reason the views counter has been stuck at 22,013 from what I can see and I figured people were over it after a year long pause.

It's good to know that some people are entertained by my posts.

I'm still a few months behind in posts so there's more shenanigans to come as well as Swampy being actively used I'm sure will provide plenty more "content" whether I like it or not.

[workingonit]

Originally Posted by c-bass

...For some reason the views counter has been stuck at 22,013 from what I can see and I figured people were over it after a year long pause....

[c-bass]

Originally Posted by workingonit

Attachment 83051

I don't even pay attention to that message it's been there so long and the other posts I see do increase in view count, but who knows.

Either way It's not that big of a deal. I was just curious if anyone was following along anymore since I basically stopped updating....and I HATE when people do that

[c-bass]

I've spent several hours in the last couple weeks trying to find pictures I'm positive I took. Now the only question is where I put them.

In the mean time this is the type of weather we've been getting here














Woke up one day to the car encased in 1/4" of ice.

The next day it was +6 Celcius

Few days after that it was back to frozen and snow

That's happed 3 times in the last couple weeks. Not very typical weather for these parts at this time of year.

Anywho...

After spending a week or so driving swampy around a bit locally the brake feel seemed to improve slightly but it still wasn't great.

BTW just wanted to point out that me saying the brakes in Swampy aren't great doesn't mean it's unable to stop or unsafe in any way. They're just not as responsive as the Wife's X.

I wouldn't be on the road putting other people at risk.

Having said that, I gave her one more round of solo bleeding with ISTA and the pressure bleeder but I didn't see any bubbles. At the very least the fluid is all nice and fresh by now so that's a service item off the list.

a few days later as I was coming back in the evening from a friend's place I was doing about 50mph and out of nowhere a deer jumps 20 feet in front of me and we had our first real world brake test.

I'm happy to say Swampy did a much better job than I was anticipating and the deer skipped off into the darkness.

I'm still going to give the brakes at least another round of bleeding but this time I'll do what ISTA says in the instructions with 2 people and hopefully get a bit faster pedal engagement, but for now "That'll do pig, that'll do"

[Fifty150hs]

Originally Posted by c-bass

I've spent several hours in the last couple weeks trying to find pictures I'm positive I took. Now the only question is where I put them.

In the mean time this is the type of weather we've been getting here














Woke up one day to the car encased in 1/4" of ice.

The next day it was +6 Celcius

Few days after that it was back to frozen and snow

That's happed 3 times in the last couple weeks. Not very typical weather for these parts at this time of year.

Anywho...

After spending a week or so driving swampy around a bit locally the brake feel seemed to improve slightly but it still wasn't great.

BTW just wanted to point out that me saying the brakes in Swampy aren't great doesn't mean it's unable to stop or unsafe in any way. They're just not as responsive as the Wife's X.

I wouldn't be on the road putting other people at risk.

Having said that, I gave her one more round of solo bleeding with ISTA and the pressure bleeder but I didn't see any bubbles. At the very least the fluid is all nice and fresh by now so that's a service item off the list.

a few days later as I was coming back in the evening from a friend's place I was doing about 50mph and out of nowhere a deer jumps 20 feet in front of me and we had our first real world brake test.

I'm happy to say Swampy did a much better job than I was anticipating and the deer skipped off into the darkness.

I'm still going to give the brakes at least another round of bleeding but this time I'll do what ISTA says in the instructions with 2 people and hopefully get a bit faster pedal engagement, but for now "That'll do pig, that'll do"

That weather looks nasty!

What kind of pads are you running? That could have an effect on feel.

[c-bass]

Originally Posted by Fifty150hs

That weather looks nasty!

What kind of pads are you running? That could have an effect on feel.

I'm not sure of the brand but it's more how the pedal reacts when I step on it.

It's more "spongy" than the wife's X before it starts to grab.

The brake pedal used to go down to the floor after I sucked all the air in so this is a HUGE improvement but I feel there's still something left to purge.

[c-bass]

A week or so after all that deer excitement the temperatures dipped significantly and I was about 30 min into an hour long trip when I realized my feet were really cold the windows were fogging up a little bit and the HVAC fan was blowing about 3/4 of the way up.

Hmm...must be because of the cold right? So I turned the heat up and kept driving.

Another 10 minutes goes by and I don't feel any change. I waved my hand in front of the vent but didn't feel any immediate warmth like I normally would. Hmmm...

So I crank the heat to the max temp and there's still not a noticeable change in temp. Hmmm....

I'm thinking heater core or whatever else is more expensive or difficult to deal with, because why not right?

I get to my destination and after letting the car cool down a bit (which didn't take long in those temperatures) I checked the fluid level in the expansion tank.

Well guess what? Empty!

Now you can scroll back a few pages and clearly see that one of the first things I did was put in a new expansion tank. That's what I did because I was SURE that I put a new one in...right?? Maybe?? I know it's been a while but that did happen right??

Wait...I've been driving the whole time with no coolant??

How much, or lack of, coolant are we talking about??

Why didn't the low coolant light come on??

I didn't find the movie Groundhog Day particularly funny, more frustrating to watch, and so is this!

I only had an emergency bottle of the green coolant so I topped up with that just to get an idea of how empty it was. It was half a gallon low

Not too far into the way home and we started getting heat. Proper heat too not some half ass warm. HEAT!

For the next couple days I monitored the coolant level and it was in fact going down little by little but I couldn't see any noticeable leak.

A few days later when it warmed up I washed everything down and played the find the coolant leak game hoping it wouldn't turn into the new head gasket game.

I would drive around running errands, grocery shopping whatever and pop the hood when I parked staring intently into the engine compartment like a cat waiting for a mouse to pop out from under a door and eventually was rewarded with the faintest trace of coolant around the top seam. Ain't that a bitch!

Luckily I had another brand spanking new Behr (Made in China) expansion tank and cap.

So once again, here I go doing a coolant flush. It took 7 gallons of distilled water to rinse out the blue and green mix and then I filled it back up with some premium blue stuff.

Here's something new I learned which left me incredibly confused.

As I was swapping out the expansion tank I coulnd't for the life of me find the pigtail for the coolant level sensor. (Some of you might be giggling to yourselves already) I know for a FACT that in the Wife's X there is a low coolant light, which would lead me to believe a pigtail to the sensor right?? WRONG!

After doing a little googling I come to find out that vehicles with the high cluster have a low coolant light but the ones with the low cluster don't? WHAT??

Someone please explain to me...HOW/WHY IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO??? Why would there be no way to know if the coolant is low?? ON A BMW?!?!?!?! HOW DID THAT MAKE ANY SENSE TO ANYONE?!?!??!?!

So yeah...I learned that...but also found something interesting and much more useful.

I had left the cap off the expansion tank as I went to turn on the heater control in the highest heat and lowest fan position. As soon as I turned the key in to the ACC position coolant started pissing out from the front.

I quickly realized it was because the AUX water pump was cycling water. Something my pile of e46s don't have.

Hmmm...a quick google search came up with nothing but hear me out people...

Why couldn't I use the AUX pump to cycle water through the coolant system and purging air instead of only doing the standard bleeding procedure that I was used to? Well let's give it a try. I briefly owned an N52 engined vehicle that used the electric water pump to bleed itself so this shouldn't be much different right?

A few tries and some wasted coolant later I seemed to have a properly bled cooling system via the electric AUX pump.

I don't think I'm that clever so did I just not search with the right keywords or did I stumble across a cheat code to bleed an M54 in an E53?

So, brand new expansion tank and cap, filled back up with coolant and off we go.

Place your bets people. Do we find another leak? Yes or no?