Well I took it all out of the door and everything looked a-okay to my (untrained) eyes. I had to drive the car back home last night from the garage so I have put it all back together, hoping perhaps it was a matter of properly fastening everything and adjusting some screws would fix the issue. Of course it did not. The door opens a little easier now, but definitely not like it should.

Don't they say “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”? Kinda feels like what I did last night :D

Is this the right part for the inside carrier to fix my problem?

https://www.koedbmw.com/nl-nl/product/51218243615

That should do the trick. When you said you had to replace the inside DHC before then you didn't mean that one ??

I have replaced it before on my previous X5 (3.0i), but the part was secondhand and didn't really solve the issue all that well. I still had to pull the doorhandle quite abruptly in order for it to even consider opening. Hence I'm afraid the same would happen now, so I'd rather just order a brand new carrier and install it then.

It's a terrible week for the X5 to be honest. Of course all of them are known E53 issues:
- Two PDC sensors have broken
- The passenger side window clip has broken (luckily still have one spare clip)
- The driverside door handle has broken on the inside

And a few weeks ago my entire window mechanism broke on the left side. All just in time for a cozy Christmas :D

Hope you have a nice warm place to work on the X this Christmas!

Luckily for me I have a garage where I can work on the car from time to time. With a diesel heater it's do-able :-)

- PDC sensors have been ordered, waiting on delivery to replace
- The passenger side window has completely broken. Sadly not just one of the clips I had laying around, but the plastic that mounts the cable to the clips. I'm afraid I have to order a whole new mechanism...
- Driverside door handle carrier replaced with new OEM piece. Not too bad at roughly 100euro
- Sadly now my steering rack started leaking. As in, literally dripping. One drip per ~4 seconds. Got myself a bottle of ATF fluid so I can always top it off while I figure out everything I have to do to fix this issue. Really not looking forward to having to take off everything to even get the rack out :-/
- For some reason the oil temperature no longer goes above 70 degrees (celcius) now, but two weeks ago it would get to operating temperature (90ish degrees celcius) just fine. What can this be? It's ~10 degrees celcius outside...


Tip: of course I broke some off the plastic door panel clips. The right OEM number for my pre-facelift car is 51418224768. Ordered 10 of them to be sure it hangs on properly.