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

[sidneyj]

Originally Posted by Factory6speed

Well probably a few you know what this is. Yesterday I got it all disassembled like this. "Remove rear glass panel mechanic"

Tonight I'll clean and grease it once I get back later. And tomorrow I'm going to attempt reassembly and fit the cassette back up.

My plan is to put it back up with the glass and be able to drive the car finally, this winter beater I bought for the winter, that ended up being a convertible. It'd be nice to drive it more than a hundred feet

I found most of the upper interior pieces in black, and I found a local guy to reupholster the headliner and headliner shade. The whole interior is black, except for the upper roof area it's this very light gray, and the headliner is terribly water stained. I hate to waste time with fabric nonsense right now but there's no way I could put this back up. It's got to be done. The water stain is really bad, I think that's a big part of why the original owner sold the car. So I'll end up just driving it without the headliner for a while, and then later put the shade and everything back up. It'll be so much better with complete black interior.

What a job! How'd it turn out?

[sidneyj]

Replaced Pano roof surround seal as well as the seal on the rear pano glass. My only input for a perfect fit of the seal is to make your mark where you think the cut needs to be than add an 1/8" or so. Using some heavy duty very sharp thin bladed scissors, nip off just a tiny bit at a time to make it a perfect tight fit. Using those types of scissors makes cutting the seal easy. I tried a razor blade and cheap dull house scissors and mucked up my first effort at getting a clean straight cut. Figured I'd replace the seals since they were 17+ years old even though they looked fine. Had the glass out to re-do my headliner in Alcantara so "while I was in there" decided to replace it.

[Factory6speed]

Originally Posted by sidneyj

What a job! How'd it turn out?

Not so great. Almost. The video goes too far. He removes the front kit, rear kit, and at the end he removes the two parts at the very front for the wind deflector. I just followed along and removed those two, even though I didn't need to. It would have been smart to check the new parts first, and I would have stopped short. In my defense, this is almost like an automatic transmission repair.. in a way.

Those wind deflector parts are a separate kit, $60. So I had to order them and wait.

They came yesterday so I did it last night. I almost immediately broke the one part for the wind deflector somehow. I think I misunderstood how to place it down in, and tension from the spring snapped it. The video shows it exactly, it's really simple, I just can't pay attention.

No big deal it should still work, moving on. I later had a hell of a time figuring out how to get the front arm on properly. But eventually got it, and set the timing.

Initial test went great. All the way back and forward. Second test, pass. Third test .... The front drive cable plate on the left side moved past the rear glass mechanic and didn't lock it in. if I had the glass on, the rear would have stayed flat on the left and probably broken all the plastic stuff. Extremely fragile.

Looked at it and retested. Sometimes, it will unlock nicely on the way forward, and then relock on the way back. Sometimes, it doesn't unlock out all the way, and then there's nothing for it to grab onto on the way back. Pretty sure I installed everything good, I messed with it until 4am and concluded defective plastic arm. These arms are like Chinese toys from the 80s. The whole glass is dependent on these cheap plastic arms and wire springs being good.

So I get to buy another kit and do it again. The self tappers and sheet metal is getting close. I tried explaining it ECS, I broke the deflector pivot, will pay for that. But the other piece is defective. And now I have to break everything out to get that out. Getting costly.. hopefully they cover it. I might just bail and try to get the glass in place.

Most of the black interior pieces are here, gives me something to hope for. I am absolutely pulling the fuse and never using it. If anyone's knows of a good delete panel let me know.

[sidneyj]

Originally Posted by Factory6speed

Not so great. Almost. The video goes too far. He removes the front kit, rear kit, and at the end he removes the two parts at the very front for the wind deflector. I just followed along and removed those two, even though I didn't need to. It would have been smart to check the new parts first, and I would have stopped short. In my defense, this is almost like an automatic transmission repair.. in a way.



Those wind deflector parts are a separate kit, $60. So I had to order them and wait.



They came yesterday so I did it last night. I almost immediately broke the one part for the wind deflector somehow. I think I misunderstood how to place it down in, and tension from the spring snapped it. The video shows it exactly, it's really simple, I just can't pay attention.



No big deal it should still work, moving on. I later had a hell of a time figuring out how to get the front arm on properly. But eventually got it, and set the timing.



Initial test went great. All the way back and forward. Second test, pass. Third test .... The front drive cable plate on the left side moved past the rear glass mechanic and didn't lock it in. if I had the glass on, the rear would have stayed flat on the left and probably broken all the plastic stuff. Extremely fragile.



Looked at it and retested. Sometimes, it will unlock nicely on the way forward, and then relock on the way back. Sometimes, it doesn't unlock out all the way, and then there's nothing for it to grab onto on the way back. Pretty sure I installed everything good, I messed with it until 4am and concluded defective plastic arm. These arms are like Chinese toys from the 80s. The whole glass is dependent on these cheap plastic arms and wire springs being good.



So I get to buy another kit and do it again. The self tappers and sheet metal is getting close. I tried explaining it ECS, I broke the deflector pivot, will pay for that. But the other piece is defective. And now I have to break everything out to get that out. Getting costly.. hopefully they cover it. I might just bail and try to get the glass in place.



Most of the black interior pieces are here, gives me something to hope for. I am absolutely pulling the fuse and never using it. If anyone's knows of a good delete panel let me know.

What a cluster. You took a dive so deep that I don’t think most would try. Once I get my glass back in this week I’m also shutting it down and will only open it to clean






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[Bdc101]

Originally Posted by Factory6speed

.

Kudos to you for trying it and figuring it out. These cars are so stinking complicated that it's impossible to do every job right the first time. Perseverance and hard work is the only way to keep them running. (Either that or spending the GDP of a third-world country on a mechanic)

[Henn28]

Had to get back under the X5 yesterday and tweak the left tie rod I put in last week. I thought I counted threads and set the new one to match, but clearly was off. Likely because I was in a hurry. The steering wheel was off to the right about 15 degrees. Two full turns put it back in the middle, and matched the 9 threads showing on the right side.

Notably, the left tie rod is a piece of cake (relatively), as the large nut holding the inner section on the rack extends out far enough that you can put a full size, giant crescent wrench on it and get it off easily without removing the stiffener, or having to use a special tool. Fortunately the right side boot is fine, and that tie rod is in good shape for now as it is buried up above the sub frame and stiffener and will not be easy.

The straight handle band clamp tool I have will in no way work on the left side inner clap however. Luckily some mechanic that I used in the previous 23 years put a worm gear type clamp on it, which I reused. I wonder if someone makes a 90 degree ear type clamp tool for this job, or are we supposed to drop the stiffener to reach in and clamp the thing! At $28 bucks each those bolts will add quite a bit to the job.

The car is running and driving so great right now with the full bilstein suspension refresh, monoball tension struts and sway bar links it almost makes me want to cry when I think about the impending cv boot job that needs to be done.

[guntherrex]

nice result!

Quick question for the tech wizards here: I am planning to replace the door handle carrier soon after my wife kindly snapped it in half

in the youtube's I see people disconnecting the battery to make sure the airbag doesn't go *pop*. in others I see them hanging it to the side to not have to disconnect the battery.

is it a problem disconnecting the battery? Or is it just a pain in the butt?

[andrewwynn]

I just turn the airbag 180° and reattach it on one corner.

(This keeps zero stress on the cable/connector). It will get in the way of doing a full door shut test until you flip it back but you can latch the door with a big screwdriver etc for initial testing.

I might have a picture in a thread. Search awr-fix in titles in pretty sure I made a repair guide for DHC. Also put a zip tie preferably steel around the weak point.

If using non oem make sure the spring doesn't stick out there's almost zero tolerance it will scrape the window ask me how I know.
Not the wife's fault it's a design defect. BMW enginerds being goofy cute in at least three ways they messed up that design.

[Bdc101]

Originally Posted by guntherrex

nice result!

Quick question for the tech wizards here: I am planning to replace the door handle carrier soon after my wife kindly snapped it in half

in the youtube's I see people disconnecting the battery to make sure the airbag doesn't go *pop*. in others I see them hanging it to the side to not have to disconnect the battery.

is it a problem disconnecting the battery? Or is it just a pain in the butt?

It'll reset your tripometer and a few other things, not a big deal. But you can just hang the airbag off to the side or disconnect it. It makes me nervous working with an airbag in my face whether the battery is connected or not. Just be aware that if you turn the key with the airbag disconnected it'll throw the airbag light on the dash - so if you can't reset it with a Foxwell or PA Soft or something, it'll be there for a while.

[andrewwynn]

Originally Posted by Henn28

The straight handle band clamp tool I have will in no way work on the left side inner clap however. Luckily some mechanic that I used in the previous 23 years put a worm gear type clamp on it, which I reused. I wonder if someone makes a 90 degree ear type clamp tool for this job, or are we supposed to drop the stiffener to reach in and clamp the thing! At $28 bucks each those bolts will add quite a bit to the job.

https://www.fcpeuro.com/products/inn...cta-tools-4014

That's the tool I bought for that job.

Most often some heat will be needed to break free if it's not been adjusted in a while. My wife's left tie rod was so stuck it took a 24" pipe wrench to break it free.

The "TTY" Bolts can be re torqued a couple times. In destructive testing using the factory spec on about half a dozen bolts I didn't experience any change in tension until the 3rd re-tightening of 90° on the third (4th including factory), every one started plastic deformation and on the 4th (5th) they were worthless the torque stopped increasing with angle and they snapped in half.

Some people in effort to reuse will just torque to joint then 45° vs. 90.

You can do what I did: get some 12.9 bolts where spec torque matches the yield on the 10.9 and you can reuse them unlimited times. Add nordlok washer and have them stay tight.