I want to send a big thanks to this board community. I'm only on week 8 of X5 ownership and I just tackled CV joint replacement and Valve Cover Gasket replacement thanks to the good info/pics/posts on this site.
I got the X5 for $7k here in Canada and its got 170km (100k miles) and I knew it needed CV work. Other than that it appeared to be in dirty/uncared for state but it cleaned up really nice.
Within a few weeks the engine started running rough. Took the truck to an Indy shop and code reading showed misfire #6 so the shop quoted for Cylinder #6 coil replacement, 8 new plugs, 8 new connectors $1,200. WTF! no thanks. When I got it home and took the plastic valve valance off I could see half-inch of oil in the valve head valley so that's why #6 and all the plugs in that bank were running rough. After reading the posts on DYI here I took it on and after 5 hours of fiddling I had new valve cover gaskets fitted and voila no oil leak and a smooth running truck.
Here's a pic of the valve cover off. I used some gasket tack to hold the new gaskets in and it still took 5 seating attempts (one failed, re-assembled and then discovered pinched gasket with leak!!!). On the final attempt, the gasket seated perfectly. You can see in the pics I used some bungee to hold the hoses out of the way. I also bungeed the rad expansion tank up and out of the way (broke that damn rigid return line in process, but that was ez fix). Working on the driver's side bank was very tight but overall do-able.
The other tip I got from this site was about removing the damn clips that hold the electrical box on top of the injectors. I used a long kebab skewer (not kidding) to release the first 3 clips. The 4th back clip (closest to firewall) is not accessible in any way (that I could see). So with a quick medium tug, pulled the box out and released the clip.
This post is getting long, so I'll re-post about the CV joints soon.
09-01-2011, 11:32 AM
Linear Mode
