Overheated
 

After 300 miles my 2001 X5 with 175000 miles went from normal operating to red line in about 2 minutes. A huge cloud was visible out the back. I limped over to the shoulder 90 miles from home. A while back I did a head gasket and Bigsert project and it's been running great. I looked in the reservoir and can see coolant. I think my thermostat stuck closed after we stopped for dinner at Panera and I blew a lower hose. I haven't had time to diagnose. I had just picked up kids from the airport for Grandma's funeral and it was 12:30 AM when we finally climbed out of the tow truck.
Word of advise...Get the long mileage AAA Service, not just the local. I have local and my son who lives in very rural WA has the long distance plan. Fortunately AAA let us use his plan. Mine would have been over $700 for the 90 mile ride. My wife says dump the X5. I think I might replace her aging e46 with something newer to keep her happy. Stay tuned...

sorry to hear...sounds a bit strange. With the head gasket you did, I bet most of the cooling system parts were in good shape. Thermostats usually fail open. This is one of those situations where an audible alarm when coolant temps reach 110 or so would have really helped.

Take a day or two to figure out next moves.

Check the left-hand radiator tank about 3 inches above the lower hose. I had mine crack there and it would suck air into the pump on short cycles after highway driving (then it shit the bed) I hit 110c that time and shut it down RFN, it looked like the thermometer from the Riddick movie....

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Doing a compression test first to see what's up. I have a bore scope and will take a peek as well. It wouldn't restart in the driveway the next day which has me worried...

Ouch

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That stinks man, I’m sorry. The overheat is one of the things that keeps me up at night with the X5, especially the aluminum block versions. My one experience with it (threw a belt) showed me how car will go from running fine, to blazing hot in a matter of minutes.

not knowing anything about the nature of your overheat, just make sure that you have spark and fuel before you do anything hasty with the motor.

Ugh sorry to hear... hoping there is clarity to what is going on soon! Keep us updated

Update.. today I had the day off and planned on doing the compression test. I have a dead battery. Put it on charge and now get loud clicks about one second apart. I put my 32mm on the fan bolt and turned the motor via wrench. Seems normal. Easy since the plugs were out. I put the compression tester on a couple cylinders and there is some compression while turning with a wrench slowly. I believe I have a battery drain due to a RR air suspension leak or some other parasitic situation. I plan on jumping the vehicle to see if it cranks then. Any thoughts so far?
The borescope just showed the tops of pistons and the plugs looked a bit wet/oily but with everything that happened within the 2 minutes of chaos, i'm not surprised.

Anyone with dead starter motor experience have the same starter symptoms?

Can you steal a battery out of one of your other vehicles to test? I'm skeptical that the starter is dead.

I would suggest doing a leakdown test on the engine. If you blow bubbles in the coolant, that'll tell you a lot.

After that, check for spark and fuel.

Any updates?

Update...
Last Monday my position was eliminated at work so everything has been put on pause for a (hopefully) brief moment until I am reemployed. Now I'm putting the snow tires on the 335i with sport suspension. Woohoo.

Good Luck brother...

Oh dang..... things will get better. Still a ton of jobs out there.....:thumbup:

In looking at RealOEM.com there appears to be only one starter for my 3.0 2001. I would think these would cross reference with any M54 3.0 motor. Anyone have any experience on this?
And to make matters worse, I tested positive for COVID and am butt-dragging sequestered at home.

Sorry to hear of your troubles. I also have a 2001 M54, also did a warped head repair about 4 years ago, also facing new motor challenges and others too. When I had things all apart for the engine work, I took apart the starter for a look, and ended up replacing the brushes assembly (not really needed at all, but I had already bought the part by the time I got in there to see that the brushes had 70% left at ~180k miles).

I'm with @nick325 (as on most things) - would be very cautious about replacing a part like that before careful diagnosis.

Here is a pic of the starter in my car from back when I took it apart. (still working as well as ever).
Attachment 82753

Some other pics from the replacement. A lot easier of course with the head off. It is held on there with Torx screws coming in from the rear. I have read (and can believe) that the easiest replacement when the engine is all together is to get at it from below. So I'll repeat that this is really something you want to be sure you need to replace before doing it.

Attachment 82754

Attachment 82755

Attachment 82756

And I even found my notes from the starter work:
Starter rebuild. x5 m54 starter wiring: B+ comes from jump port on firewall, goes to starter (solenoid), then terminates at alternator. Control wire is black and yellow, 8mm nut. Other solenoid wire is black, 10mm nut. Removal required E12 with a tight fit. To break loose, used E12 socket on 3/8" breaker (needed due to low profile). Then Craftsman universal 3/8" ratcheting wrench to unthread it. Threads and dowel were in very good shape, but I tapped, cut, sanded, and greased to make any future removal easy (when the intake manifold might still be in place, making it much harder). Took it apart, cleaned, greased. Brushes were only worn down about 30% (13 mm down to a little less than 10 mm), but I bought a new brush assembly (4 brushes) and installed it.

Part numbers:
BMW 12-41-7-501-738.
Bosch PN: SR-0474-N.
On the starter shell itself: Bosch 0 001 108 190. Decoding the Bosch #: all Bosch starters start with 0 001; next 3 digits, 108 are the series of the starter; final 3 digits relate to exactly what type of car it is for.

I’m thinking with the steam cleaning the starter took, I might just need to clean up all the electrical connections. I’ll pull the intake to get a really good look, hopefully next week.
Thanks for the detailed post. Very helpful.

Another tip on bench testing your starter, whether you do it on your bench or in the car to see if it is a wiring problem ...

It is a little different vs. most cars. I had taken it in to my local O'Reilly's for them to test it before I reinstalled it, even told them what they needed to do, but they probably did not do this, and told me it was bad. But my own bench testing confirmed it good. And it's still working perfectly to this day, so ...

(all that said, I don't 100% remember this, but think it is right)

1. You of course need 12V on the big stud where the B+ wire goes.

2. Ground on the aluminum body somewhere.

I use a spare (old but OK) car battery and jumper cables for those connections.

3. Then as normally on all other starters, you just need to touch the control wire (the 8mm nut in this case) with 12V to give it the signal to start. And then of course be ready to take it back off so the thing does not spin up excessively.

4. But the rarer thing is that you need to ground that last wire - the black wire with the 10mm nut. I have vague memories of tracing the circuit diagram for that and finding it to be a security interlock, so if that wire is not grounded by the ECU, it will not allow the starter to fire.

And a little more detail on that Torx E12 socket and the Craftsman ratcheting wrench I mentioned above, for once it is broken loose - those are really tough to find old unique ratcheting wrenches. They have 12 nubs instead of being 6 or 12-point like most wrenches. Makes them "universal" for 6, 12, square, and as I found here, even E-Torx. The 3/8" size is a perfect fit for E12, and in such a difficult spot was very helpful in getting the E12 bolts out. 3/8" is also pretty small, so not sized overall properly to break it loose (would likely damage the wrench before breaking loose). Here is a pic I found on the web just now:

Attachment 82761

Update… after our 20 “ of snow, it hit 50 degrees and I pulled the intake. I disconnected the three wires to the starter plus the alternator wire to avoid back feeding to a bad place. The starter got the jumper cables and jumper wires and turned the engine at about 1/3 speed. I had the plugs out so I tried a compression test on 1 and 2. 75 pounds on 1 and zero on 2. Bummer. Now I have to decide about finding a decent 3.0 motor or selling the x5. I’d be inclined to keep it and look for a motor and replace my wife’s 325. I’ll have to tear down the motor to see what happened.

About how long does it take you to take the head off, to see you if it’s just a head gasket issue?

It would take a couple hours. My concern is that I did a head gasket job a while back including Bigserts. As soon as I find employment I will pick this project up again.