An X5 does not carry half the weight in pricing as a E39 540i 6-Speed. Those vehicles are just solid tanks compared to the X5.

Would hate a to see a good 4.6is X5 parted out but $7K is very optimistic with pricing at this mileage juncture. I hope you keep the X5 together the 4.6is is rare a well sorted one just needs the right owner.

Well the way I see it is that I have at least $6500 into this X5. I would rather part it out than sell it at a loss. I know in parts I can make a lot more than for a whole running vehicle at this mileage, especially since it still has issues.

I have no need for the X5 because my 540i wagon can do everything it does. In stock form my 540i wagon is faster, gets better gas mileage, has more cargo space (Google it), and has about the same off-roading capabilities (almost none). There's zero need for AWD here in Arizona.

It would definitely be sad to part out the 4.6is, but sentimental value doesn't pay the bills unfortunately.

Good news, looks like the X5's staying together after all! My friend agreed to buy it and we worked out an arrangement that makes both of us happy. It's cool because I'll get to see the X5 pretty often and I'll probably still work on it with my friend.

Now I have to get him on here, he normally lives on Bimmer Forums with his two Z3 M-Coupes.

Awesome. Now he'll have a tow vehicle to get those z3 M roadsters to the track and back.

Hey, that's my truck! Cool. Yeah Danny told me he was considering parting it out and I couldn't let that happen, especially since this one was so nice. Needs a little love here and there but the drivetrain is well sorted - definitely not work that an average craigslist buyer would put value in, but I've done those jobs with Danny before and know he knows what hes doing! Here she is sitting in my driveway :cool:

http://oi64.tinypic.com/9giryd.jpg

Don't even know me and you already think my cars will need to be towed from the track...! :bustingup That is very intuitive of you. Did the fact that I just bought a 215K mile M62 give it away? :p:

Thank God for an IS Savior. Here's to returning her to former glory!!!!!

I'm happy with this result because it means I still get to see the X5 from time to time and Graham gets to drive a relatively well-sorted car. Everyone wins!

We're going to give it a good wash tomorrow and I'll show Graham how to take care of the paint so that it stays nice for a long time.

Man those illuminated door handles are not cheap are they? Fixing up some odds and ends on this thing, bought a seat memory module thing as well.
Wood trim on the driver's door is cracked, steering wheel could use a re-wrap, nav screen has a melted spot, other than that, she's in excellent shape

Keeping a black car clean in AZ (especially one that isn't staying in the garage) is a fool's errand :rofl: ...but one I will happily partake in

Maybe I'll pluck one of the coupes out of the garage and do a fun little photoshoot once the X5 is clean. They'll look like siblings!

http://oi64.tinypic.com/9giryd.jpg

Congrats!

Needs to be lowered a tad.:thumbup:

Nope, something like $60/ea. They are fairly easily repaired though if you are so inclined. I bought one originally and then repaired the one I removed. I keep this one as a spare. The little light pipes break at the slightest breath when you remove the door panels. :rolleyes:

I paid more than that from FCP Euro, about $90, but lifetime warranty so hey...
Agreed, but all the threads showing these cars lowered has dead pictures now. I am open to suggestions on a decent lowering setup :)

Dont go crazy with the vehicle lowering thing. You are going to do some towing with this X5. I elected to go with the H&R spring kit and lowering links on the rear of my X5 4.6is. Love the stance and love even more that it retains its capability prowess.

I have a Tahoe for towing, I was merely joking earlier about my unreliable cars :) The X5 won't do any towing besides moving the trailer around my yard. Regardless, the H&R kit seems the way to go. I have ~30mm spacers already from an old car, reading online I think some 20mm up front will pair nicely with the lowering setup? Did you space yours out at all or just lower it?

Managed to wash it yesterday with Danny's help and installed facelift tail lights... what an improvement :thumbup:

http://oi65.tinypic.com/2j4u22u.jpg

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Check my album. Lowered with H&R lowering springs 'kit' several years ago. Also added 18mm Velocity spacers that helped fill the wheel well. Drops it about 1 3/4 inches.

Glad to see this beast live on!

Wow, big difference. I never noticed that.

That looks the right amount of low to add. Some of those pictures almost look like the rear wheels poke a bit though, is it like that in person too? It might just look like that in pictures because there is still a lot of wheel gap there, even when lowered with spacers.
I could never let a 4.6is get parted. I mean, maybe if Danny promised to turn his wagon into a faithful Alpina B10 V8 clone... but I don't think he would have done that... he would have just put on a few bolt-ons to make 1more whp than a stock M5 then get an LOLM5 license plate. Probably.
It is even more substantial in person. The inner and outer lights changed, same visual difference as pre-facelift E39 vs. facelift E39 tail lights (only without the LED bars). My girlfriend said she didn't notice any difference other than one was more clear... I said that's kinda the point! :bustingup

Amber facelift tails will be here today... will snap some pictures once those are installed
Door handle, seat memory module and driver's door wood trim are on their way. It's pretty weird I couldn't find a single driver's door trim without cracks... plenty of dash and even passenger trims without cracks. Settled for one with a single crack, compared to the spider web of cracks on the current piece.

Hm, maybe the wood trim is prone to stress-cracking from the impact of opening and closing the door? That would explain why it's always the driver's side door. One could do some research and see if X5's in the UK have the issues on their driver's side.

Mine is still minty. I️ know less wear than his though. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...df0aeae0c6.jpg


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

True, but you probably paid actual money for your X5 4.8is. The X5 4.6is only cost me like $3500 when I originally bought it. For that little money, I wasn't really bothered by things like cracked wood trim.

Man look at the gloss on that trim!

The piece with just one crack will do for now, though I'll be keeping an eye out for a good one on eBay!

Today I got the amber facelift tails in and wasted no time installing them

http://i63.tinypic.com/2ag9npv.jpg

http://i63.tinypic.com/2d7u6fn.jpg

Pictures absolutely do not do it justice but I love the look. Looks way better in person. Also going to swap out the third brake light to red... :cool:

Wanna swap? I have red on my 4.8iS. They are interchangeable.

Hmm. I will think on it if I can't find a red one. Trying to keep all the original parts.

Looks like an aero kit on yours? An X5 sold nearby here recently (for dirt cheap with a blown engine) with that kit on it... really wished I had picked it up now... looks great :thumbup:

$90 was an expensive way to find out the ambient LED bulb was burned out. Shucks... (at least I have a working door handle though!)

It seems to come in the socket and the wiring goes deep into the panel so not sure it's replaceable. Don't see a part number for it anyways. I can cut and solder on a new one, does anyone know if the ambient light can be purchased? Other solutions? Maybe just hot glue an orange LED to the light bar on the back of the handle?

How do you have red? Mine is clear.

Yes you can purchase the ambient lighting LED bulbs from BMW. I added ambient lighting to my 540i T by using the leds from a BMW E38. If you use real OEM or bmwfansinfo you can locate the part and order it from BMW.

The bulb you need is part # 63316975019 should be about $18.00 +/-

Ahh amazing thank you guys! Looks like cut and splice is the oem method anyways! Ill order two of those (pass side is dim) as soon as Im back home - going on vacation this weekend. Taking the X5 :)
Got in there with PA Soft and removed airbag light. Lowered the rear a hair as well, added DRLs and the window opening/closing with key unlock/lock feature. Gimmicky but whatever lol

You think that now... I use that on an almost daily basis in the summer here in south Texas.

What do you do after buying an X5 that has been sitting for months and with over 200,000 on an engine freshly rebuilt by a garage mechanic?

Drive 600 miles up steep hills on a roadtrip, duh

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She did well. Got a low coolant light the second day which gave me a lot of anxiety aobut the trip home, since there were hundreds of miles and many steep mountains between where we were and my driveway... but she made it. Did pretty darn well I'd say

Nice!

Since I've turned this into my own build thread now... more (arguably pointless) mods!

http://i68.tinypic.com/2ynp45t.jpg

Red third brake light. Didn't like the contrast of the white one against the black paint, looked especially out of place once I went to ambers. Red gives it a more "aggressive" look in person, as much as changing the color of a lens can anyways, and works to also sort of hide the light which isn't a bad thing. 10 minutes to replace... very easy job

http://i67.tinypic.com/2uiurmc.jpg

Aux-in, put it in the glovebox. Have it wired currently so the wire goes back through the console and pops out from under the e-brake boot - having the wire just come out of the center consle made it not close evenly but putting it off of the glovebox seemed stupid to me. My other cars have the aux-in in the center console so figured why not...

Also got a used seat module to replace the one in the car, original problem was seat position memory wasn't working and steering wheel wouldn't move. Nice to have that working again, thought it isn't raising/lowering when I enter the car. Maybe indicative that the used part I bought is on the way out... either way it works now so I'll enjoy it!

Ribbon cable to fix pixels showed up too... little afraid to tackle the job... but I'll get around to it soon :stickpoke

nice ride, you bought Dannys?
 

Hello i am Cer54467 from BF, i remeber talking to you a few times. i purchased a nice 2000 540i a couple years ago. a friend picked it and screwed me on it. i have been chatting with Danny and i am going to attempt a chainguide job on a M62TU. i have also become a machokist. i picked up an 4.4x5.

You are certainly in the minority as not many switch to ambers from clears. Truck looks good though, and the aux in is a nice mod as it opens up phone apps to playback possibility.

Driving home yesterday and had to do an evasive maneuver to keep from some idiot hitting me... jerked the steering wheel a bit to keep clear of said idiot and in doing so I hear a "POP" - feel a pop through the steering wheel - then "DRPDRPDRPDRPDRPDRP" as my battery light comes on and steering gets heavy. Got it pulled over just as gauge was moving out of TDC, still below 3/4

http://i66.tinypic.com/a47ifl.jpg

Stranded :(

http://i67.tinypic.com/30ksv3l.png

I know tolerances are tight on water pump impellers, but I think this is over the line

http://i67.tinypic.com/2jbo2c.png

Water pump pulley shaft. Completely off-axis. That metal thing peeking through...? Nothing to worry about, it's just one of the rollers for the bearing that has completely separated from it's races... :p:

New water pump is already in, filled with coolant and no leaks, but the secondary air pump system o-rings went bad during reinstallation (causes a nasty sounding vacuum leak). Should be back on the road later tonight (knock on wood)

I would never switch to the pre-facelift ambers... those are ugly as sin. The facelift ambers give a welcome bit of contrast and extra dimension to the rear. It also subtly works to make it visually look a bit wider. It will look even better once lowered a bit with some spacers.

Glad to hear that the evasive maneuver worked out with no bent body metal :thumbup:

How much time in service on that water pump?

When my alternator seized up (yes, seized up so badly it required a jump to crank and then the running engine shredded and burnt up the serpentine belt) I took that opportunity to do the water pump, thermostat and all engine cooling system hoses, idlers and belts.

Mike

Water pump took about 5 hours with a friend's help. About 290 minutes of that was just gaining access to the pump (in typical BMW fashion)

Also wanted to quote this... I now believe the coolant leak that caused the low coolant level was due to the water pump bearings beginning to fail. There were signs of some weepage from the pump so had I been more vigilant I may have been able to prevent the failure altogether

Why wasn't the water pumped changed when the timing guides were done? if new and failed then this part should be warranted. Normally when you tear into an engine to do the guides and chain its common procedure to change out the water pump.hmmmm

AND the thermostat!

Yeah, shocking that after all that work the water pump would go, unless it was original to the vehicle or was changed at 100K and now with 200K the replacement was tired :dunno: :dunno: :dunno:

Mike

Bingo.

The water pump was not original, as I noted when I did the guides on this X5 a while back. It's from 2011. Based on the Carfax, the car had around 104,000 miles in 2011, so this water pump has essentially lived through a whole lifespan since it failed at 217,000 miles. I probably should have thought about that when doing the chain guide job, but the water pump seemed perfectly fine to me so I put it back on. Every other car I've done guides on I've reused the water pump if it looks fine (also, people don't want to pay for new water pumps when they have me do their guides).

For what it's worth, I've never had a water pump fail in my ownership of any BMW, or any car for that matter. Dunno if I'm really lucky or if I don't keep cars long enough, haha.

Yes this should have been changed at the time of guides and the thermostat. 100K since the last change is indication enough that it should have been changed. Really the entire cooling system should have been overhauled and thus this event should have been avoided.

Well I guess this is one time "looks good" outweighs the reality of the situation. Yes you have been lucky but it didn't extend to the next owner.

To some degree understandable from a "flip" perspective. It was working great all the way up to the point it wasn't :rofl:

My philosophy of buy and hold for long term use and high reliability has been and continues to be if I'm working on something in one of my vehicles and touching stuff that has already delivered more or less in the 100K miles range, I'm replacing it. Touch it once and receive longer reliability of that section of the vehicle. :dunno: :dunno:

Glad that the new owner didn't experience a fatal overheat and got it to the side of the road in time :thumbup:

Mike

I'd say it's a combination of those two. :D I've had 3 water pumps fail in the 15+ BMW's. The ones that did not experience failures were typically because I replaced them before failure. Any BMW water pump +100,000 miles is starting to hit borrowed time. I replaced them in all BMW's that got flipped.

In the future though, unless the owner can prove they replaced the pump and thermostat in the last 30,000 miles... I'd insist on a water pump and thermostat while doing the guides. I couldn't imagine doing all that work and not doing those 2, in addition to tensioners, and other front end components.

^That's just my .02 though obviously. You keep doing you as it's obviously been working for you. :thumbup:

The funny thing is that I probably would have changed the water pump if the X5 was planned to be a flip— in this case I didn't change the water pump because I was intending to keep the X5 for a long time so I figured I'd just replace it when it went bad.

I hear you on that line of reasoning. A water pump is a stranding situation though so I try to change them rather than wait. I just don't like seeing a BMW stranded on the side of the road... let alone MY BMW. ;) :D

:iagree:

Running obvious rotable parts (water pumps, thermostats, alternators, belts, hoses, brakes, rotors, etc.) to failure when PM could insure higher reliability has never been my philosophy in my vehicles.

However, I do understand the budget busting challenges of BMW maintenance.

Mike

Yeah, budget is my main reason. That and the fact that I have multiple cars means that ultimate reliability isn't really a big concern. I don't have a super important job or people that rely on me for anything super important, so even if broke down somewhere it would only be a minor inconvenience.

I full support PM but since most parts can have quite different lifecycles, I don't replace costly parts such as a water pump or alternator until there are symptoms of failure other than when I have to take parts like that off to fix something else. I used to do that many years ago and gave or sold the used parts, primarily to friends. Very often the part was still working fine after many more thousands of miles. There's obviously risk. AAA is my backup.

Yep, no right/wrong way to own the vehicle. So long as you've got your plan for vehicle maintenance... to each their own.

I certainly understand all sides to it. Maintaining 5 BMW's the way I do was still cheaper than a new car payment, but did cost at least $2000/yr.

Maybe if I only had one car then I could justify preventatively replacing everything. But with a bunch of cars, I don't have as much money to spend on each car. Right now my fleet consists of:

- 2000 BMW 540i Touring with 199k miles
- 1996 Mustang GT 5-speed with 184k miles (should be sold pretty soon)
- 1998 Chevy Corvette with 188k miles
- 1987 Porsche 944S with 114k miles (hasn't run in 6 years, it's my project car)

And until recently I also had this X5 4.6is to feed. I want to fix the Porsche and actually do some mods to the Vette so I'm thinning the herd a bit.

I would have done the same with the water pump, it seemed fine, and the replacement wasn't too much. Just a bit of a job to get to but hey, it's a 200K+ 4.6is, what was I expecting :nanana:

The rod bearings on this car also went out in January. I've been trying to keep my other cars on the road so haven't had time to fix it quite yet, but started tearing into it yesterday with Danny and another friend's help since my daily driver isn't on the road right now. Got *to* the subframe... spindle had to come out on the passenger side to remove the axle, was able to get the driver's side axle out while leaving spindle attached to the strut. Suspension is disconnected. Ready to support the engine from the top and drop the subframe and get the diff and oil pan out and get to it....

http://i66.tinypic.com/157dwli.jpg

More soon... would like to get it back on the road by this weekend

The alternator on my 2006 330i slowly died off over a period of a year. I think. I was hearing a whining noise that seem to come from the alternator. The noise would escalate as the rpm went up. A mechanic test drove with me and identified it as an alternator noise.

Since it came and gone Intermittently and didn't affect the performance, I decided to leave it alone til it goes dead.

Sure enough, a few weeks ago the engine refuse to fire up after I have parked it during lunch at a restaurant parking lot.

Had it towed to the shop and replaced both the alternator and serpentine belts.

Now driving a bit stronger, for some reason. And that whining noise left completely.

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Got to the rod bearings on my 217K mile X5 4.6is, they are in awful shape lol... pictures don't show how bad they really are. The first cylinder was so loose that you could jiggle the connecting rod by hand and hear the slapping of the rod against the bearing. Whats weird is that this car didn't make any noise until maybe 10 miles ago at which point it was babied home and no way did all that wear happen in that time

The crank looked great except the cylinder 1 (which had that chewed up bearing). So engine will be coming out, crank removed and machined then oversized bearings installed. The entire top end of the engine is already new except head gaskets, so since I have to take the engine out I'm going to take this time to replace the piston rings and refresh the lower part of the engine - already had most everything I needed anyways

Joke post
 

Danny, You running that poor thing with KMart oil or what? No Air filter?:rofl:

Now that is out of my system....
Long life from those OE bearing. Great to see that you are rebuilding her instead of parting her out. I know you have posted many times that fixing the old ones with high mileage allows you to drive hi-end cars at rock bottom costs, but this one project will make for a great post. Can not wait to see and hear of the process.

Good luck and please post lots of images for those who own these beasts can see the level of effort and out comes.

I'm actually unsure what caused the failure, if I had to guess, sustained high-RPM driving uphill to Flagstaff awhile back maybe cause some oil starvation issues, bits of timing chain guide may have jiggled loose and found their way into the oiling system, it seemed the wear was caused by contamination. Cylinder 1 was the worst by far, and the scoring/scratching on the bearings coupled with the wear pattern and scoring on the connecting rods tells me the bearings were spinning for quite a while and had done a few rotations. The weird thing is it drove for a couple thousand miles no problems after that trip to Flagstaff, so hard to say. M62's are pretty durable though, I gotta admit!

Been toying with the idea of a RWD conversion as well... but I don't think I'll go through with it.

Do it! No need to keep it AWD:zoom: