Rear Ball Joints

[Gregory891]

Ricky Bobby is correct, I had similar mileage (but in km) and inner tire wear. Found all the videos and then did the work. Rear ball joints (see the Bentley E39 video), the silver color arm with ball joint that wears and the sway bar ends. No noises, suspension is now tracking as it should. I have rear air springs and it was easier - as you can relieve the air pressure easier than compressing the spring (don't forget the pull the fuse). I also pro-actively replaced by air springs (VERY easy to do) at the same time. Do it all and sleep easier.

[cn90]

Originally Posted by Freestyler

...But your legendary E39 suspension DIY's on Bimmerfest has saved me, as well as many others, huge amounts of grief, working hours and money, back when i had my E39.
I'm more than thrilled that you are here on Xoutpost now.
...

Glad you found my DIYs useful.

The X5 REAR suspension is essentially the same as E39 (my car is 1998 528i).
The ball joint is the same PN, ditto for the Integral Link.
Use realoem dot com to get your PNs.

I feel no need to write a REAR suspension DIY for E53 because the E39 DIY is good enough.

[cn90]

@davesx5,

Use only Lemforder, nothing else.
The BASIC minimum:
- Ball Joint
- The Short and Long Control Arms.
- End Links

The Integral Links were still good when I removed them from my E39 at 110K. It is basically rubber links. This job is time-consuming, you may want to get all the ducks in the row, so you only do it once.

Shock Absorber/Seat should be replaced too.

[cn90]

REAR tires always wear more on the INSIDE. This is because virtually all BMW Rear tires have negative camber.

In the E39, I decrease the camber to 1 degrees or so. I wrote the procedure in bimmerfest E39 section, somewhere...

[Freestyler]

Originally Posted by cn90

REAR tires always wear more on the INSIDE. This is because virtually all BMW Rear tires have negative camber

..comments about neutral toe adjustment in 3 2 1..

[Ricky Bobby]

You already know what I'm going to say.

Make the toe neutral (.01) and you can have negative camber all day long and have even tire wear, its the combo of both that shreds. Negative camber by itself won't wear the tires down on the inside.

[davesx5]

Back to the parts and tools.

I do not have air suspension, I have normal springs.

Do I need a spring compressor to remove the ball joints??

[Ricky Bobby]

You need a spring compressor to take the pre-load off the suspension by compressing the springs

[davintosh]

Originally Posted by davesx5

Back to the parts and tools.

I do not have air suspension, I have normal springs.

Do I need a spring compressor to remove the ball joints??

I believe some wise guy mentioned that little factoid on Page 1.

I loaned my ball joint tool out to another member here who also had coil springs, and he had a devil of a time getting things apart and worse time getting them back together without the spring compressors. Just get the loaner compressor set from Auto Zone / Advance Auto / O'Reilly / Pep Boys / etc... No need to own a tool like that unless you use it often.

[davesx5]

Update
I changed out one side.
Lessons learned

USE THE BMW TOOL

Using other presses and tools will work, but it takes allot of time and effort. It turns a 10 minute job into 2 hours.

You do not need a spring compressor.
Using 2 jacks I was able to compress the spring pefect to slide in the long bolt.

I am waiting for the rental tool to do the other side.