Favorite mods/ideas for a newby

[Mehler91]

Hey everyone! I am a recent BMW convert coming from several Volvos (S80 2.9, C70 T5, S60 T5, S80 3.2, S80 V8, XC90 T6, then an XC90 V8) through a Hyundai Sonata Hybrid, now to an E53 X5.

I just bought a 2006 X5 3.0 Gray/Gray with Nav w/o DSP. Bought it at an auction and it needed a little love. Bad LCD with several dead pixels replaced with a Eurotech LCD on Friday and it is working great. It has a bad TCU but the stock bluetooth is garbage anyways so I have ordered a Dice Mediabridge with a Sirius receiver to put in this week when it gets here and hopefully it works out nicely.

I am looking for other fun, easy mods to do to the car. It has the stock halogen headlights but I would love to put in Xenons but not trying to spend a lot of money (any advice would be nice here). I am also a relative novice for these type of things. I don't have any ability other than the dealer for coding things, but if someone knows what I need for coding things like the LED lights and Xenons and how to do it, the advice would be greatly appreciated.

I want a reverse camera but can't figure out if I have the TV tuner that I need to use the stock parts. Any ideas how to find that out?

I really like the look of a lot of these LED license plate lights, tail lights, and interior lights but I am hesitant to replace any since it sounds like something needs to be coded with these to make the errors not pop up.

With the car being dark Gray, I like the looks of the gray carbon fiber logos you can get for the hood and tailgate and the gray carbon fiber emergency brake handle someone posted recently. I like both the LED smoke tail lights and the LED clear white tail lights and can't decide what I want to do there yet.

I am planning on upgrading the stock speakers at some point and maybe put in one of the subs from BSW that fits cleanly in the existing compartments.

Any performance mods out there I should look at?

Anyways, any ideas, comments, suggestions, etc would be greatly appreciated. I bought this car to only last me a year or so but I have a feeling if I mod it out I will end up keeping it for a while.

Thanks!!

[UCrewX5]

regarding the TV tuner, not many X5's in the US have that since it was not an option that was made available here. How to find out if it is there is by hitting the menu button on your nav screen and if "Television" is showing up on the screen then you have it installed. If it is not there then you don't.

[Mehler91]

Thanks, I figured mine didn't have it and just confirmed it.

[X5X]

Welcome! BTW you just need to get CANBUS LEDs and no error messages will show up, and no coding required

[X5SND]

First off, welcome!

The interior and license plate bulbs can be swapped without much need to worry about errors or the need for coding....it's when you start doing the markers, and turn signals things can be a bit of a headache. Ensuring you get led's with the can-bus chips on them you should be fine though.

As far as "performance" mods, the 3.0 is not exactly what one would call performance oriented (it's no slouch either, considering its weight; don't get me wrong) but aside from diving head first and going to something like an ess tuning supercharger kit, I wouldn't really bother.

[Mehler91]

X5X- Thanks, that is excellent news.

X5SND - Also great news, I figured there wouldn't be a whole lot of performance oriented things for the 3.0. I was planning on going 4.8 but this 1 came through the lane and was priced so low that I had to pull the trigger on it.

[Mehler91]

What about the headlights? Especially the angel eyes? Will the CANBUS HID bulbs work there with no coding?

[Roadkill]

You will actually have to code the angel eyes and license plate lights. Upon start up the car sends small impulses to those lights to "monitor" them. When this happens you will get flickering of the LED's. It is hard on them and will speed up their usable life. The coding allows you to turn off the monitoring feature.

[SlickGT1]

Originally Posted by Roadkill

You will actually have to code the angel eyes and license plate lights. Upon start up the car sends small impulses to those lights to "monitor" them. When this happens you will get flickering of the LED's. It is hard on them and will speed up their usable life. The coding allows you to turn off the monitoring feature.

This is the correct answer. Even if you do get canbus LEDs, or SMD, you will strobe your lights at every startup and cause premature failure.

Oh welcome. And it didn't happen without pics.

[X5SND]

Coding to resolve the flickering with led bulbs in the angel eyes or turns I could see....but I have yet to do any sort of coding for license plate lights, and have been running LEDs in them for years without any flickering or error issues.