Well - I did it.....
 

It's with a heavy heart that I have made the decision to part with my X5

The 5 year and 40,000 mile relationship had it ups and downs. When it's good - it's real good but eventually you get a little fed-up with some of the BS. It's like the hot chick you see on the street. Seems hard to believe but someone out there is tired of f-ing her.....

I finally reached that point with mine. Between my suspicion of the beginnings of a leaking kidney-pan in the bell-housing and the rusted brake-line I discovered and fixed/patched last night - I decided to call it quits. I took a trip to Carmax and made the deal.

I am sure I'll stay on the forum here for a while. I really enjoyed the X5 but the constant fear chewing away at the back of my brain of what's gonna break (that shouldn't ever break) was just too much....

Thinking about replacing it with a VW Golf R! Until then I'll just poke-around town in the CRV - it's not the coolest thing around but then again - I never have to worry about it.

Maybe I'll get back into BMW's when I can afford to buy myself a new M3

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I read you, clearly...one man's ceiling is another man's floor.
Any/most of us that are driving around in older Xs, and those of us whom have been reading here a long time often wonder when the Footman is showing up.

Great car, but our older versions are getting long in the tooth; even some of the newer MYs are riddled with their share of glitches and gotchas.

Our '01 keeps rolling, and until it really starts to erode it is worth keeping, but our situ is different than a young Fam's situ, I realize.
Good luck to you and with your next pick, whatever it is.
BR, mD

Good luck. Worse ways to go than a new M3... warranties are a wonderful thing. :)

So far only good days to report with our current X... but the previous one sure gave us fits at times. I hear you about worries, sometimes it feels like the sword of Damocles is just hanging above you. :)

That right there. The way you put that together?

THAT is the kind of thing that makes coming around here fun. :thumbup:

Ownership is a heavy burden - wrought with luxury and paranoia.

In the meantime I continue to read this forum in armchair fashion. I can enjoy reading about X5's without worrying when mine will pull the stunts mentioned in all the posts. Lol.

I'll be putting some junk up on eBay sooner or later. Unless someone wants to grab it before I can do that. If you're in the Chicago area - make me an offer. I'll probably say yes....

My old diagnostics laptop with Scanner 1.4 and the Romanian suite. Complete with cables for both

Bentley manual for e53

3 quarts of BMW synthetic oil

1.5 Liters of liquimoly differential fluid (I never did get around to changing the front diff)

Magic BMW blue coolant (both mixed and raw)

Complete set of owners manuals for a 2004 X5. It's a bunch of them (I was sent the wrong ones - mine was a 2005)


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My 4-year old daughter as seen in the picture washing the wheels for the last time is still rather upset about the sale....

She cried the whole way home saying she wanted "The Beemer" and continues to ask/talk about it daily.

She was playing with one of her "cars" last night announcing to the passengers riding inside that we were selling the car - "and you'll never see it again!"

I think the car and its subsequent sale made quite an impression on her. Lol.


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I really feel your pain. My has been an absolute money-pit to own and a frustraing piece of kit at best. When it's good it's really, really good, but when it's bad, it's horrible! The fact is, it's just not reliable enough, but what is? I got very close to replacing it a few months ago, but I just couldn't find something I actually wanted to buy/drive instead. I don't like new cars. I don't want a new car. I had a new car, the garage screwed up programming the key and the car left us stranded and had to be towed down to the dealership to be plugged into the computer with a link back to VW in Germany so they could make it go again! That's crazy. I want a car where I can change the battery without having to re-program it. And I want a car that doesn't moan at me if I don't wear my seat belt. The X5 is bad enough, but modern kit is just dreadful -- and increasingly unreliable. I have friends with modern BMWs, modules failing all over the place, thousands of £ to replace. The really depressing thing is, I have no idea what I'd buy next as there's just so little out there I actually like!

FYI-only premier members are allowed to offer stuff for sale and then only in the 'classified' section.

Garrett, that's bordering on child abuse. Your poor little girl will never get over your selling 'her' Bimmer --- until she's maybe 16 and wants daddy to buy her a 3 series ragtop .....:)

One of the downsides of frequenting a forum is it is easy to assume all the stuff that is happening to anybody in the world is going to happen to every one of us. My solution is to be sure I keep up on preventative maintenance, just as would be necessary on any other vehicle, then don't worry about it so I can enjoy ownership.

Whenever the plus and minuses of anything are requested the downside points will far exceed the positives. Since a forum is largely about fixing problems that's what will dominate over those that are happy with their X5. Certainly some have had terrible experiences but if that was the case with everyone, most of us would not own an X5. As an example, there is a current thread about a massive oil leak. By reading that my conclusion could easily be that everyone with an X5 is going to have a catastrophic failure of their engine because of the CCV system. I wonder what the percentage of owners, even just those in very cold areas, have actually had a problem, certainly one that destroyed the engine.

It is unrealistic to think that stuff shouldn't wear out on a 10-14 year old vehicle, more often than not with over 100,000 miles on the clock. Just as it is to complain about the price of parts.