Need Advice. Dead battery and broken driver's door handle.

[SiennaX5er]

Here is the situation. The battery in my X5 went bad. I got a new battery and as I was opening my driver's door to install the battery, the handle broke. The battery in there now is completely shot, and isn't even connected. The driver's door handle is broken and will not open the door. I can manually turn the key in the driver's door to unlock it. If I could get the car power, I could use my key to unlock the passenger door. Does anyone have any ideas as to how I could either get into the car or provide the car with power from the outside? Is there any way to pop the hood open from the outside? I would not be opposed to breaking my front grill to gain access to the engine bay. I'm going to call a locksmith soon but just thought I'd see if there was any other way.

Also, there is no way to manually open the tailgate with a key right?

[SiennaX5er]

[mrbmwx5]

Get under the car using your new battery and hook up the +power to the starter and -neg to the body to power up the X.

[amacman]

obviously never read my same suggestion when you posted this same problem last week .
get a mechanic to power up the battery via the starter motor as suggested .

[Weasel]

I gave the same suggestion via PM already too...

[SiennaX5er]

Damn, harsh crowd. I'm the boyfriend of SiennaX5er and will be working to get this thing back on the road. I did not know that there was already a thread posted last week. I'll check out the starter motor, thank you for the suggestion.

[SiennaX5er]

Haven't had a chance to get under the car due to the mid-atlantic snow but I did just want to verify if the positive cable is obvious when under the car? What I mean is, I know the starter has a few wires coming out of it, is the positive wire easy to spot? Does anyone have a photo of a starter that I could use as reference? Thanks.

[Weasel]

It will be the only wire coming off the starter that's the size of battery cable. The other wires are pretty small.

[UCrewX5]

Originally Posted by SiennaX5er

Haven't had a chance to get under the car due to the mid-atlantic snow but I did just want to verify if the positive cable is obvious when under the car? What I mean is, I know the starter has a few wires coming out of it, is the positive wire easy to spot? Does anyone have a photo of a starter that I could use as reference? Thanks.

Check your PM for an alternative method of getting into the vehicle without breaking a window or crawling under it in a foot of snow.

[amacman]

this could be the cable , can any techs confirm .
ignore the drain plug , I found this picture on a thread about coolant leak but I think the starter is left of pic with cable held by the rusted nut .