DIY Articles/advice on repairs

[ADarcy]

Hi everyone, I haven't posted here in a few years since my X5 has been mostly maintenance free (a good thing), but in the last few months i've had a number of problems develop. Ironically just 6 months past when my warranty expired....Shocking I know, lol.

Here is the list of items the dealer came back with:

Thermostat failing
AC recharge
Transmission sealing sleeve leaking*
Oil and filter per your request
Oil leak from two shaft seals at cyl. head
Oil leak from upper timing cover gaskets
Two pulleys making noise
Instrument Cluster Pixels burned out
Sunroof weather stripping

The bummer here is that my dealer/service manager is good and trustworthy. I can also verify that all of the above needs to be done from symptoms I am having and visually inspecting it myself. Now, I am quite mechanically inclined having rebuilt old fords, and work often on e28/e34 M5's, but I have never had to turn a wrench on this X5. I searched the site and did not find any DIY articles on any of the above except for the dead pixels.

Does anybody know of any DIY articles for the rest of the list? Due to time I may have to suck it up and have the dealer do the work, but if I can avoid some of it i'd like to!

Many thanks in advance


Andy

It's a 2006 X5 4.4i w 76,000 miles. It only sees 5-6k miles a year of in town (sub 3 mile) driving per trip. I have to imagine the stop and go short trips are whats killing it. I bet the engine never even warms up before it gets shut off!