New Member, old issue

[alveoli]

Hi Guys, finally joined X5world after owning my 01 4.4 for the past 5 years. I am quite active on e46toronto with my 330ci.

X5's been pretty good except for the past two months. I had the oil seperator freeze resulting in major oil leakage. Had all the gaskets replaced, new oil sperator and pcv valve done. Since everything was open, i changed all the plugs as well. Truck drove better then new when I got it back. THEN...

while driving straight line, it stalled. Restarted fine. Almost got hit. It did this 4x in one week (once Friday, Three Monday). The last two times, it had difficulty starting but eventually after 2-3 times it started and drove fine.

Battery was replaced two years ago as was the fuel filter. Dealer found no codes and the truck drove fine for the mechanic. They are suggesting it may be (in order): 1) DME or 2) Fuel Pump

I've cleaned the MAF sensor before bringing it to the dealer (after reading here). Any other thoughts...

Im seriously considering cutting my losses and trading it in.

[tonycajjo]

DME Reprogram. maybe?

[Weasel]

For the stalling, I'd think it was losing either cam or crank sensor signals... usually we get fault codes for cam sensor plausibility faults, but sometimes it takes a while for it to throw the code... If the fuel pump is suspected, I'd want to see the fuel pressure readings as this happens, which is just about impossible with sporadic intermittent problems like this... this kind of problem can be a bitch to isolate, but it is too damn expensive to start throwing parts at when just guessing.

[alveoli]

I happen to agree...I wish I would just know what the cost to fix was as it would help with keep versus trade. They did however find a small coolant leak at the water pump (approx 500 cad to fix). So my current options are:

1) trade in while its driving and spend no more $$

2) keep and I drive the truck until it eventually dies and we can then diagnosis the problem. Risky if the repair turns out to be very expensive.

So far in the past year I've put in about 2K worth of maintence/repairs so I guess it turns out to be a numbers game.

[alveoli]

Well it died again. this time while in PARK, i reved the engine to 4-5 k and it died.

Restarted without issues and I drove hope even more pissed.

[Weasel]

From the sound of it the SES light will come on soon enough for you to see what to replace...