What did you do to / for your E53 today??

[Henn28]

I’ve been accumulating new door seals over the past several months to replace all four of mine, which are torn and ripped in too many places. I’ve been finding chunks of seal in the car and on the driveway recently. They are still available (bmw part) and while not crazy money, I popped for one per month for the last several months. They are the seals that run all the way around the door frame, and are friction fitted to the pinch weld. RealOEM lists them as “Edge protection”.

Pop up the plastic door sill with a trim tool, but be careful because in front these are held down at the ends by a tab that fits/locks under a corresponding tab on the plastic pillar/footwell cover. These tabs are very fragile now. Plastic clips slotted into the sill cover pop into the floor to hold them along their length. Somehow these seem pretty sturdy and none broke or failed during this work. My sill pieces are pretty beaten up, so I may replace these in the future. Assuming they are available.





Once the sill piece is off, grab the seal and pull it off of the pinch weld. Note the seam where the old seal is joined to make a continuous loop is “clocked” on the door opening (likely the floor) then start installing new one with the seam at this same point. I’m not sure if this matters, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. It takes some wiggling technique to get the new seal onto the pinch weld, and a rubber mallet to finish it up. It’s also exactly the correct length, but being rubber it’s easy to end up with too much seal to cover the last few inches if it gets stretched at all during installation. After a few attempts where I ended up with too much seal at the end, my technique became to push the seal on, both in a downward and lateral way so that the seal is slightly compressed against the length you’ve already installed, as it goes on. This way you won’t have a bit too much seal for not enough pinch weld. I read that some guys cut the seal to trim it, but there is no need for this as it is exactly the correct size. The fabric part of the seal can be worked over the headliner and pillar covers with a trim tool.

The doors, especially the rear doors, close much, much more solidly now. Time will tell if the wind and road noise on the highway is reduced.

[wpoll]

This coming weekend, baby gets new shoes, a fix for her incontinence and the second transmission drain/fill...



That'll use up most of Saturday morning.

[PropellerHead]

The rears are also newly coated. Rebuild would have happened for all four corners today, but I received poor advice from ECS about the seals and dust cover kits. I needed to order one for EACH corner.

Picked up the six pots and the redone rears today. After seeing how clean they are in person, I am going with strict monotone.

[EODguy]

Originally Posted by PropellerHead

The rears are also newly coated. Rebuild would have happened for all four corners today, but I received poor advice from ECS about the seals and dust cover kits. I needed to order one for EACH corner.



Picked up the six pots and the redone rears today. After seeing how clean they are in person, I am going with strict monotone.

I think you should let me put them on the White Witch instead, so you can get something else....

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[Henn28]

Man, those are beautiful. I need to do a full brake system refresh, including a new booster and master cylinder, and rebuilding my calipers. But it’s been an easy job to put off.

X5 went in for an alignment and balance yesterday. Id scraped some weights off over the past months since rotating the tires and needed the balance. If the weights aren’t as far outboard as possible, they get scraped off by the back of the calipers.

The lift makes a full alignment impossible, but it can get pretty close. The Yokohamas don’t seem to be wearing unevenly at all though, so that’s good.

[Salty B.]

Any idea why this old bitch suddenly started moving the steering wheel waaay up?

[andrewwynn]

Usually from a key based setting taking over.


Mine wasn't the steering wheel was the seat but about twice a year when i unlocked the car the seat would move back about 5 inches.

I could restore my saved spot but it would do this every time i unlocked the car until "the fix".

To sync my saved spot back to my key this is what i figured out:

Get in the car, restore seat/steer to your memory position then:

Roll down your window and reach out and use the key to lock and then unlock the door.

I had to do this about once a year on average i have no idea what caused it.

The other possibility is you somehow enabled "easy entry" where the car moves the steering wheel up and the seat back every exit and entry.

I was poking around with my foxwell the other day and managed to reset a r things to fuctory (sic) defaults including that asinine behavior, only drive door unlock and a couple others.

Worse: using bimmercode the proper settings were already set just being ignored.

Bimmercode to the rescue: saved settings from January brought everything back.

(Sadly bc doesn't work on e 53).


Try the key though the window thing, i have no clue what made me decide to try that, But wow was i happy when i invented that procedure.

[Salty B.]

Pretty sure my key fob is dead as it just kinda died last year despite only being maybe 18 months old (new from BMW). This steering-wheel weirdness just happened out of nowhere yesterday. I did barely nudge the control to move the wheel up maybe 3mm, and when I got to my stop and shut the engine off, BRRRRRT up it went all the way. Got back from my stop, BRRRRRRT back down it went. Crazy.

Lately I have not even been locking the car because, well, you know why.

Pretty sure E53 does not have "easy entry" option, or at least I could not find it in the limited settings available on the display (it has the motorized faceplate head unit).

I don't have a Foxwell but I do have an Ancel with the BMW-specific stuff so maybe I'll go mess around with that. And I'll try your suggestion with the key.

[Salty B.]

Originally Posted by haigha

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=oscillating+tool


Hope you resolve your issue!

OMG now I feel like an idiot... I already own a number of Ryobi battery tools, I guess one more won't hurt.

[andrewwynn]

You can't change the easy entry without coding hardware.



But it's an option for sure.

Before i got bimmercode i was able to defeat easy entry by fighting the steering wheel when it tries to move, it will over current the motor and disable itself until the next time you manually operate the steering position. (that works on e 70 not sure about e 53)