Air Intake Tube Elbow

[dgrand]

FYI: My 2002 X5 3.0i was making whistling sound, like a turbocharged engine when accelerating. I though that was the serpentine belt or tensioner pulley. "Will deal with this later" was my plan. Today however, I started the engine and it choke. As long as you do not press on gas pedal it was shutting off. Hot engine worked fine. Idling was rough though. DISA valve was flapping when idling. SES light is on for other reasons.

It turned out that a vacuum tube, a part of lower air intake elbow that goes to the engine (the last boot that goes to the engine from air intake system) is cracked.

27$ at the dealer and 30 minutes of work and it is fixed.

So before blaming MAF, intake air adjustor (DISA), fuel and air filters, check your intake system for any holes in it if you see symthoms like I did.

[Rockmelon]

any pic to show where the crack was?

[bmdubbs]

[dgrand]

added picture. Enjoy!

[mrBrigante]

going through this very fix myself good pic and post

[Rockmelon]

thanks. i recall that someone else had cracks at the same place. first symptom is a whistling noise.

[Serozha85]

I just fixed the same thing on my X and there are several other threads about this - pretty common for this part to crack on account of very stupid engineering...

If you let it go too long it can throw CEL codes (bank 1 and bank 2 running lean)

[ARTRIGA]

yep, tons of people have this complaint on 3 and 4.4 maybe even others. In my case, I worked on my cooling system and had taken the air intake boot off at the air filter box and the other end where it mounts into the plastic m-fold on top of the radiator.
This is where I didn't snap it back in all the way and air was whistling all kinds of melodies. Took me a year to realize where the problem was. I snapped the hose back in all the way and 5 sec. later....my ride was noise free again.

[lo_jack]

I believe if you take that off you will find that little tube where you had cracks goes to the idle control motor right over the throttlebody, which would explain why your idle was bad but it would run ok with the throttle down.

[CRAZYMEX]

how difficult is it to DIY?
Do you need:
any special tools?
need to jack the front end and get a 2nd set of helpful hands?
need to disconnect battery?
any description of how to steps would be much appreciated.
Thanks