Spec X5 Overland Build

[Henn28]

Update is there is no update. Work intruded last week and this weekend, and I’m waiting on parts. My output bearings came in though and once installed this week I can assemble the diff and check the backlash and gear mesh. I also ordered some misc driveshaft parts like a new center bearing and a new CV joint. It will be easier to get off since the diff will be removed and at 160k, a refresh is likely due.

Meanwhile, before leaving for work last week I spotted a decent size cooling puddle under the aft part of the stiffener. Looks like it’s coming from the bellhousing unfortunately. Fingers crossed it’s a heater or rear manifold hose connection loose and not the valley.

[Bmwe5320023.0]

Is it the transfer case leaking?

Do you happen to have part numbers or links to the bearings you ordered?

[Henn28]

Originally Posted by Bmwe5320023.0

Is it the transfer case leaking?

Do you happen to have part numbers or links to the bearings you ordered?

Xfer case is fine, it’s leaking coolant from behind the motor, down through the bellhousing. Only three things it can be, and from what i can see so far, not the easy one (rear coolant manifold and/or hoses). That leaves the valley pipes and or pan, which will suck, but will be infinitely easier than the rear coolant cover that bolts down on the back of the block above the crank seal. It’s under the bellhousing, so that’s cool.

Intake is 50% off this am and I’m hoping to see coolant from the pipes or valley. 10k on a new motor and it’s already leaking. I’ll post some pics later, but the right vanos has a small weep that has made a bit of a mess on the front of the head. Nice work BMW.

Regrading bearings, the FAG taper bearings are no longer made, but Quaife, and others I contacted said FAG makes a ball replacement that will work. See email below from a UK company:
——————
We have the HAG205 kit in stock Which has the F-587739 which is the new part number for : F-801298
Is this the kit you require ?

https://www.bearings-online.co.uk/it...epair-Set.html
——————
I didn’t go too far down that rabbit hole as I found taper bearings at DiffsOnline. Ping Dan Fitzgerald at Dan@diffsonline and ask about the bearings he just shipped to New Orleans for an X5 4.4 diff. He’s the owner I think and does a lot of bmw diff work it seems.

The bearings look identical, but are made in Japan. We’ll see how they work. I had them pressed on yesterday by a local steering shop, so the diff is ready to assemble. As soon as I see where the coolant is coming from on my ungrateful x5.

[Henn28]

Intake is off...took me about 1+45, and thats after shooting the $hit with my neighbor for 20 mins. Not something that I want to be good at, unfortunately.

Happily, the leak appears to be from the large coolant pipe at the rear manifold. It will be a PITA, but nothing compared to "door 3": the rear coolant cover. I was a bit concerned about this because the motor is so new I figured it could be anything, not just the usual suspects.


Sure enough, a mirror shows coolant dripping from under the large pipe, and the valley full to the weep-holes.



I cleaned up the valley mess and stuffed a rag under the pipe to see if I may also have a valley pan leak. That would be super unlucky, but it is a BMW and I'd rather do both jobs now than have to pull it apart again.

I noticed oil around several intake holes, and the small oil return line from the dinky plastic nipple on the breather valve was off. This was a huge pita to get attached while dropping the intake on, and clearly I didn't do a good job. I'm wondering if this would cause oil to be drawn into the intake. I'll pull the valve and look at it, and the intake. The car doesn't use very much oil at all however, so I'm a bit stumped about the oil under the intake gaskets.

I sprung for new pipes, o-rings and rear manifold gaskets. I think I'm going to pull the manifold and get the pipes out that way. I reused my old ones, and my old manifold on the new motor, and I'd like to check the manifold out. It didn't leak for close to 2 years however, so I suspect I just rolled or cracked an O-ring.

On a positive note, I took the Quaife diff down to the local steering shop and had the press the new output bearings on. Much easier than me banging on them with a hammer and a big socket. Its ready to assemble and test for backlash and gear mesh.

[Bmwe5320023.0]

Thanks buddy, got your PM.
Glad you found the leak and it's pretty simple.

The side bearings are ridiculously expensive. This kit is 310 euros, which is like $500 CAD.

This was the original bearing
https://www.bearings-online.co.uk/it...f-Bearing.html

This is the new version that you mentioned
https://www.123bearing.com/bearing-h...587739-tr1-fag

This is stupid expensive lol.

Found the kit on ebay as well.
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/143786832897...mis&media=COPY

These rear diffs are pretty much bulletproof. I will just grab a used diff for $70 locally and use the bearings from it.

Looking forward to see your experience with driving this thing once you put it back together!

[Bmwe5320023.0]

It's just so weird why they don't list this LSD for E53 3.0 Auto. I emailed Quaifie.
https://mattlewisracing.co.uk/produc...lical-gear-lsd

E53 X5 3.0i manual rear diff; 4.4i auto rear diff; 4.6is auto rear diff

It seems to me the diff type is 188k, the same for manual and auto transmitting


You're definitely blowing it out of the water with this upgrade. Just the LSD and bearing set is over $2500CAD, more than the price of most E53s these days.

I spend more money on my X5 than on my gf but still can't justify the price tag lol!

It looks like there's a cheaper alternative, I'll give it a shot.

https://racingdiffs.com/products/bmw...conversion-set

[Henn28]

Originally Posted by Bmwe5320023.0

It's just so weird why they don't list this LSD for E53 3.0 Auto. I emailed Quaifie.
https://mattlewisracing.co.uk/produc...lical-gear-lsd

E53 X5 3.0i manual rear diff; 4.4i auto rear diff; 4.6is auto rear diff

It seems to me the diff type is 188k, the same for manual and auto transmitting


You're definitely blowing it out of the water with this upgrade. Just the LSD and bearing set is over $2500CAD, more than the price of most E53s these days.

I spend more money on my X5 than on my gf but still can't justify the price tag lol!

It looks like there's a cheaper alternative, I'll give it a shot.

https://racingdiffs.com/products/bmw...conversion-set

Nice, we can compare notes.

The bearings did hurt a bit. The Quaife though I justified to myself by recalling almost getting stuck in Iowa mud and ice in 20deg temps last year hunting birds.

My wife gives me lots of rope on my projects, and I x5 is likely cheaper than a full 68 Camaro, or Alfa, etc. build. I drive the wheels off of the X5 now too that it’s back to daily driver status, aside from when it’s broken down of course, and that keeps me from buying something silly like another M3 or a 911.

My seats, if they ever get finished by the upholstery shop will be amazing. Won’t be cheap I suspect, but well worth it on the long trips.

[Henn28]

When I left for work last Friday it seemed that I had fixed the coolant pipe leak with a new pipe and O-rings all around, and a re-seal of the rear coolant manifold. The large pipe is available new so I went with that, but the small one is not any longer so I cleaned the old one up and used it again. My big problem was I was after putting it all back together again, and with new Bosh coils I getting multiple misfires on several cylinders, which eventually settled down to just a misfire code on number 1. Swapping the coils with 5 didn't change the location.

Back from work last night and after checking under the car (dry, happily) I went to limp the car onto the road for the tow to my Indy shop and she fired right up and ran strong. I drove it around for 5 minutes, cleared the codes and the motor sounded strong none returned. My fear was that I broke a wire in the harness when I peeled it off the motor and laid it off to the right side of the engine bay. The insulation and wires are quite brittle at this point. But now my working theory is that I got water into the harness boxes and or other critical point(s) during a heavy rainstorm last week while the motor was apart. The cowl was off and I found some water in the valley the next morning and despite a thorough vacuum followed by a compressed air blow out, I suspect some remained in the harness.

She's still headed out to my indy today under her own power since I have an appointment I don't want to waste. In her near future are new Bilstein B4 struts, strut bearings, etc. to replace the OE struts that are shot, a vacuum bleed of the coolant system, a new throttle plug wired in, maybe the new LSD diff installed if I can get it together while the car is with him, and I'll get him to put all the ridiculously challenging injector clips on. I found all 8 of mine on backwards when I put the harness back on. I reused my OE harness when I did the motor swap and didn't notice they were installed backwards. The new motor ran great for 2 years, but clearly the plugs were not 100% seated.

In other news, the LSD swap came to a halt because the new diff wouldn't fit in the housing with the OE snap ring shims. I suspect the taper bearings I bought are ever so slightly different. I am new to working on diffs, but I've learned that the shim tolerances are measured in tenths and even hundredths of MMs. Fortunately I found a package of 10, 188K "medium" diff snap ring shims from Racing Diffs (in Serbia I think) that run incrementally from 3 to 4 mm and which will arrive tomorrow. Hopefully some combo of these shims will give the proper backlash. The OE shims will fit but are way too tight and jam the crown gear against the pinion, not allowing the diff to turn at all. My OE snap ring shims are marked 3.64 on the left and 4.0 on the right. I suspect I need maybe a 3.5 or 3.4 on the left side.

If I can get the thing together, and with the proper backlash while my indy still has the X5 this week, I'll take it out to him to install along with the new driveshaft CV joint I bought and center bearing. I've been getting a definite 'ping' sound when I select drive and reverse which could be quite a few things, but I'm hopeful that the new diff, center bearing and CV joint will take care of it.

[Henn28]

The X5 has stayed leak and misfire free this past week so shes at the shop for a full front strut refresh, a vacuum bleed of the coolant system, some ride height tweaks with INPA (my version stopped working on my laptop), and correctly installed injector clips which my Indy says he can get on without pulling the harness…again. Unfortunately my diff shims from RacingDiffs hadn’t shown up in time for me to finish that job and toss it in the car, with the new bushings for him to install before I dropped it off. I don’t have easy access to a bushing tool so would have liked him to do that part.

The shims arrived all the way from Serbia on Thursday evening so yesterday I got to work. 10 snap ring shims from 3 to 4 mm, in .1mm increments.


The OE left shim (that locked the new diff up) was 3.6, so I went with the 3.4 on that side, and the OE 3.8 shim on the right. The fact that the diff would at least turn told me I was on the right track. The gear mesh pattern told me that the diff needed to shift to the right however…the drive side was too far to the heal side of the crown, and the coast was not engaged very much, and was too far to the toe side:


3.5 mm shim for the left and 3.7 for the right gave me what to my amateur eye looks like an OK mesh pattern…a tiny bit off, but I decided to stick with it due to fact that the shims were gettingdifficult to get in (and out if needed) with a race driver and punch as needed:





Next came the backlash measurement which came in right at .08mm, which is right in the acceptable range according to Quaife.


I may fiddle around with the backlash measure technique a bit more next week as I’m not 100% sure I have it right. A few more YouTube videos will get me squared away!

Next I gave the bearings, housing, etc a good clean and popped some OE BMW seals in each side with no drama. New circlips on the stub axles and in went the left side reasonably easy. The OE stub axles are a tight fit in the Quaife, but some antiseize in the bore and gear oil on the axle splines helped. A rubber mallet was needed to get it to bottom out in the inner grove.

The right sided however was real PITA. The Quaife has a grove milled into its output stub axle bore that kept catching the retaining clip on the stub axle and freezing it. I could not get the stub axle past this point and into the splined section of the Quaife. I finally had to pop it back out with a punch from the other side, which broke the snap ring. After locating the two pieces I put the original snap ring back on the axle stub and was able to work it past this point and down into the splined section and finally bottom it out with a rubber mallet.

The pic below shows the grove(arrow) which grabbed the snap ring on the output stub axle. The old snap ring was happily a bit more squashed and worn I guess:


All in all not a terrible project, so far. The Quaife was no where near correct with the OE shims, which could be the Quaife, or more likely is due to the new taper bearings being slightly different dimensions than the OE FAG units (which aren’t available any longer). The Quaife seems like a really tightly machined piece of gear.

The 188k medium differential is a pain in the sense that it uses snap ring shim rather than bolt on flanges with shims. They are not readily available, are a pain to work with ( broke 2 snap ring tools) and need some hammer and punch persuasion to get seated. The old races from the oe bearings were very helpful as spacers, something to tap on so I wasn’t tapping on the new races to get them in, and to get the output seals in.

Next up is to get it in the car. Time will tell if my decision not to pull the pinion was a good one. I will have a spare Diff though if I need to revisit something on the Quaife diff after it is in. Buyng the eBay diff for the Quaife was a good decision I think as I could take my time building it up, waiting for parts, etc.

Take everything above with a grain of salt, or 10. Nothing on this project was cosmic, but I relied on YouTube, Quaife’s instructions and forum reading. Bentley says nothing about rebuilding a diff unfortunately. I was amazed at how the diff is really not even as advanced as refrigerator technology, but the tolerances involved are very, very small.

[Henn28]

Merry Christmas all.
Brief update: I re read the Quaife installation instructions, did some more YouTube research, and emailed the Racing Diffs experts directly about backlash measurement and the fact that the diff with the Quaife in it has a very small amount of rotstional play (less than a mm) in the input flange (pinion).

The upshot of the above is that the output bearings are preloaded such that testing backlash takes a bit more leverage than just pushing on a crown gear tooth with a finger as I had done. Seems silly now, but there is some drag on the diff carrier and once I applied some additional force on it I got a backlash reading of .14mm. Quaife says that .08 to .14 is within spec, and up to .2 can be acceptable depending on your application.

The Racing Diffs Guru said that the minor lash in the pinion at the input flange isn’t a worry, as long as the backlash and pinion preload checks good.

so I’m happy with the “new” diff it as it sits in my work shed on Christmas Eve. The X5 is back from the shop with new front struts and all the misc bits that go along with that job. I still have a slight “clunk” from the right front over bumps, which I had hoped the struts would fix. I’ll check the torques on the sway bar links, and everything else up there, but I suspect I’ve got a bushing that is going.

Next up is to install the new diff, along with a center bearing and a new driveshaft cv joint. Might as well, since getting the drive shaft out will be easier with the diff out first. Seems like lift work, but I’d rather do it in my driveway frankly. I have access to two lifts, but neither are convenient in my lazy estimation. I will see what auto zone has for rent regarding bushing tools, and hope something will work on the diff bushings.