I bought cheap new one's from ebay as many finnish E53 owner's have had good succes on those. They were around 125USD a pair. Been running them for couple of weeks with no issues. Brand was Atec.


Just to be sure, I ordered Löbro/Spidan cv boot's for the axle's if they choose to fail at some point. :D

Hmmm, that could be it. I remember reading about the issue on early model X5’s but I thought bmw solved the issue during the facelift. I have a 05 4.4 if I didn’t mention earlier.

Ok, when I get home from work I can bolt her back up and see if I can record the sound. Not looking to replace the wrong part!

Thanks! Appreciate your input!

So a little digging around the forums I found this post of a 06 4.4 with the spline issue. Seems like a quick diagnosis is to unplug the servo motor in the transfer case. Now the transfer case will only send power to the rear wheels. I’ll give that a shot!

Rotate the axles, if no clicks, then reboot them.
Buy the GKN boots from FCPEuro etc.
The GKN axles typically last some 300K miles, if the rubber boots are not torn.
The #1 cause of failure is always a torn boot.

If car owners routine replace the boots at let's say every 100K, there will be no market for aftermarket axles. The problem with axles: out of sight out of mind.

+1. Also when you could still buy it ATP AT-205 sprayed on annually


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Very interesting that with e70 or any x-drive much easier to test that by disconnect front drive. No can do with my x5

Don’t want to promote thread drift here, but the topic has come up about front drive shaft failure. Does anyone know when BMW changed the length of the OEM front drive shaft?

2001-2003 shorter FRONT driveshaft.
2004-2006 longer FRONT driveshaft.

Thanks. Interestingly my 02 seems to have a different placement of the AC drain line than some others that I read about. This line leaking on the shaft at the t-case and causing corrosion is the cause of stripping from what I read?

My AC drain line is offset quite a bit from the shaft and has a clear path to the ground. My driveshaft looks clean where it enters the t-case too. However, I'm still wondering if a pre-emptive fix is worth it as this failure seems to be a complete show-stopper.