Good choice on the water heater valve

This weekend I rolled over 214,000 miles in the 4.6. That means I've put on about 1000 miles in the first three weeks of driving the X5, and I haven't really done anything other than normal commuting. So far, so good.

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My new heater control valve arrived the other day, along with a new Bremi ignition coil to replace the troublesome #8 coil (currently borrowing a good coil from my other car). I'll likely wait until the weekend to install the heater valve, since it involves messing with the cooling system and I don't want to do that after my work commute with the coolant super hot.

Over the weekend I also vacuumed the interior and cleaned the seats thoroughly. Visually it doesn't look any different, but the leather feels a lot nicer and smells great. I used Ammo Lather and Ammo Mousse, both worked really nicely. The back seats really needed the conditioning, they were quite dry from never being used.

It's finally not raining anymore so I'll finally be able to wash the X5 over the weekend. The rain here in Phoenix makes vehicles look super dirty because of how hard the water is. I snapped these pictures during my lunch break and it's crazy how dirty the X5 looks after being rained on.

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My ECS Tuning matte black kidney grilles should arrive later this week as well, so that'll be a nice little cosmetic upgrade for the front. I also plan to restore the headlights this weekend, so the X5 will look a little nicer afterwards.

Sad news, the X5 broke last night :( I was driving it home from work and everything was fine but as soon as I turned into my neighborhood I heard a loud grinding and the X5 stopped moving. Now whenever I put it into D or R it makes a horrible metallic grinding noise. I'm thinking it's either a bad torque converter or a bad transfer case. When I pushed the X5 down the street to park it I heard quite a bit of grinding noise, even with the transmission in neutral. There are no codes or check engine lights, and the transmission shifted perfectly fine right up until this happened.

I made a video about it for my YouTube channel, which you can see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHm9oi-jAng



The grinding noise can be heard at 0:42. It's quite loud.

Thankfully this happened only a few blocks away from my house, so I didn't need to call a tow truck. I parked the X5 on the street last night and this morning I went to Harbor Freight to buy a tow strap. I dug my 540i touring out of the garage for the first time in like a month and that's what I used to tow the X5 (you can see that in the video around 4:30). The 540i did just fine with the towing, while my girlfriend steered the X5 and applied the brakes. The X5's engine still runs perfectly fine so she had power brakes and steering.

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I'm going to jack up the X5 on four jack stands tomorrow and run the engine with the transmission in gear to see what's causing that awful grinding noise.

Depending on what's broken, this might be the end of the line for this X5... If the transmission itself is bad then fixing it would cost more than the X5 is worth, unless I just sourced another used 5HP24 with a questionable history. Plus isn't the 4.6's transmission a little different from a standard 5HP24?

Worst comes to worst I can make all my money back from parting out this X5, and I can pop the freshly rebuilt 4.6 engine into my touring since it's a plug and play swap (aside from swapping the oil pan/oil pump/oil separator).

That does sound like torque converter. I think it's well covered issue when you do search. I believe there is a company who rebuilds them. I've seen them advertise in Bimmer magazine. I'm sure google search will yield plenty.

If the torque convertor took a dump then you are going to have to replace the transmission also. The debris that gets sucked up through the tranny causes other catastrophic events. If its the transfer case then no biggie just rebuild it and move on. PM me if you want a used one with 78K in good shape.

That's awful news Danny :wow:!

Hopefully it's an issue in the transfer case or transfer case driveshaft splines and NOT the trans/converter.

Mike

dannyzabolotny,


To fix that grinding noise.......You need to replace the shifter with this.






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and whatever connects to it under the chassis!:D


Joking aside, hopefully it's something simple.

What a ghastly sound. Hoping it comes together easily.

Hm, I wasn't aware of the possibility of the torque converter damaging the transmission, that's not exactly comforting, haha.

I guess we'll find out tomorrow when I jack up the X5 and look for the source of the grinding sound.

In either case I'm not going to be able to address the problem until I move to my next house in a week or two, since that's got me pretty tied up in terms of finances and free time. I also don't want to have a disassembled X5 to move, I'm already going to have to tow it to the next place.

Yes if the torque converter breaks up then the debris flows through the trans and affects other internal seals. Now if the converter is in tact and just shows a lockup code or other converter code then you can just change the torque converter because it hasn't broken up. Put your scanner on the X5 and see what codes you get from the tranny ( if any).