Couple of X5 radio issues

[Elvis 3.0]

Gar - a few things to keep in mind

most importantly

#1) if they are ever looking to sell a vehicle pm me first

#2) Battery swap out should not take longer than about a half hour at most BUT make certain you are in an area where you are prepared for the electrical to be shut off. That is, remember once you remove the battery that if you were to shut either a door or the back tail gate and it was locked -- then you will be SOL. So my advice would be to leave ALL of the doors open and the gate down prior to removing old battery.

#3) there is a safety cable on the one of the terminals (left side, [- neg] I believe. Don't accidentally loosen this cable. Let it be. In fact make sure it and all cables when re-attached to new battery are very tight (but don't over force)

If you haven't replaced the battery ever or its been awhile you should just do it. I had an issue with a battery purchased from ADV Auto parts that was D.O.A. about 48 hours after purchase. This was after I inquired as to the shelf life before purchasing. It turns out that you will want to purchase the battery and insist on a full charge at the store before picking it up. This will take about 4 hours, so plan ahead or if you have a charger do it yourself prior to install. These batteries can sit for months on the shelf.

#4) Finally, check out page 19, post #183, scroll to no. 31 (Speed Sensitive Volume)

http://www.xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-foru...e53-x5-19.html

Others can chime on on the technical aspects of my theory but the X's have a Speed Sensitive Radio option that can be turned on or off. It is tied to the wheel sensor for speed and I have found can be finicky as the X ages ( your talking about an '06). Maybe I am reaching but if your SSV for the radio is turned on, you may want to simply turn it off and see if that helps.

[BigGar]

I have changed out the batteries on this and a few other E53 X5's over the years. It's been hit or miss as to the success of just pulling the old one and installing the new one. Some of them tolerate the swap fine, others need to be hooked up to BMW's supercomputer to "initialize" them whatever that means. I have never dealt with a vehicle so sensitive to voltage.

I'm going to look for chafed wires on the '05 with the amplifier problem. Maybe I'll get lucky. As far as the '06 goes, I'll do the fuse pulling trick and see if that lights the radio back up in the system.

Elvis, most of the collection was sold off a couple of years ago, but they still have two near zero mile 2006 4.8is models in the storage facility, a few Z8's, an a couple early M6's, along with some muscle cars and a couple Benz's.

They really love their E53's and that's why there are a couple of extras. I start them and drive them a few miles every month or two.

BTW, that hidden features link is pretty cool. I know about most of that stuff but there were a few I'm going to pass on to the owners.



Gar