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E53 X5 3.0is build thread – Schnitz
Hi everybody,
I wanted to start a “build thread” for my wife's car, as I’ve done a lot of work to it since purchasing it. We picked it up summer 2023 in Vancouver, BC before moving to Winnipeg, Manitoba. It's a 2003 E53 with the 3.0 M54 engine with the Titan Silver colour. We decided to go down this path since my parents owned an e46 with an m54 from brand new and they had put over 400 000kms on it with minimal issues...unfortunately for us that wasn't the case for our M54 ownership. As with any car under my wife's ownership, it had to have a name, and it was decided that "Schnitz" was appropriate. We picked up the car in Vancouver about a week before moving and test drove it and everything seemed alright. When I looked at the car I noticed what seemed like a minor oil leak dripping beneath the pan up front. This was the day we picked it up, and the same day I bought that tilt deck trailer. https://imgur.com/Q4QwlJB We bought it at around 170 000kms on the car, and it came with a set of summer tires on rims which still had plenty of life left on them. All in I think we paid around 5k CAD for the car. The paint was in very good condition compared to some other e53s we looked at that day, and the interior was in very good shape as well. A previous owner had updated the stereo system with a Bluetooth capable head unit which is a nice feature to have already been installed. Here are a couple of shots of the car cleaned up after it was home and some interior shots as well. https://imgur.com/KUgSTbj https://imgur.com/72usgJB https://imgur.com/1mW1qo9 https://imgur.com/bL5tyxE |
Well this is proving difficult...my images aren't linking and I can't edit or delete my post....can a MOD please send me a DM to sort me out. Thanks....thought this would be a bit more intuitive.
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Yup, mine had the same oil pan leak. Right next to the a/c compressor. It took a pan removal to seal it good. Looking forward to pics.
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2002 X5 M54 in Titan Silver here. Classic color in my (admittedly biased) opinion! Looking forward to photos and following the build thread. Cheers!
Chris Lockhart TX 2002 X5 3.0 Titan-silber 2005 X5 3.0 Schwarz-2 |
Alright lets give the photos another shot and if that goes well I'll continue posting the rest of the story I had already pre-written in a word document... Here's the photos for the first post:
https://i.imgur.com/rzwmriv.png https://i.imgur.com/GMnPHlg.png https://i.imgur.com/dxP71x5.png https://i.imgur.com/d8CQy4B.png https://i.imgur.com/oXP46RH.png |
As with any “new to me” car, I changed the oil right away and it got all new pads and rotors on all corners. So as we were preparing to move, we had a short heat wave come through and without my prior knowledge of these cars very well, I did not realize that the auxiliary fan had not been working. As luck would have it, my wife was sitting in the car with it idling and the AC on, and the car began to overheat, and it burst the expansion tank. This was the beginning of what would be several issues of e53 ownership thus far. Since we were so busy with preparing for the move and I had bought the trailer with the intent of towing her car to Manitoba anyways, I just put it on the trailer and strapped it down and was going to deal with it once we go to our new house.
https://i.imgur.com/eGuIEGB.png So began the journey from BC to Manitoba to our new house. Thankfully mostly uneventful with the trusty help of the old cummins truck. We just had some minor issues with the trailer brakes not working but once we were out of the mountains and into the prairies it wasn’t as much of a concern and we got to our destination safely with a broken beemer in need of some love! The move from BC to Manitoba allowed us to purchase a house that had a detached garage big enough to fit my truck as well as my wife’s car. This was a huge win for me because when I lived in BC I used to work outside under a pine tree and I was just about over that, so this was a game changer to have a roof over my head when wrenching. https://i.imgur.com/LcDVbsY.png This maintenance session was a bit larger. I had replaced the auxiliary fan, put in an upgraded water pump, changed the thermostat, CCV, belts, expansion tank, upper/lower rad hoses. I wanted to make her car reliable again. After this work things were mostly uneventful until the winter came along in Winnipeg. If you haven’t been to Winnipeg, it can get quite cold in the winter time sometimes down to -40C and it can be relentless to vehicles! Luckily I was in the process of finishing the garage which included running good power and natural gas for a heater so I could wrench through the cold season. https://i.imgur.com/0qtqxuH.png |
'91 Dodge Cummings? Man, I would take the truck over the X5. I was stationed at Ft Hood Texas when those came out. A civilian I worked with bought one. The truck was a beast. He towed a RV with it. It was a manual transmission too. I liked riding in it. Just to hear it run was cray diesel loud.
I'm partial to the titanium color too. :bmw: |
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Hence why this is the "wife's car", because I still get to enjoy it but drive my truck ;) |
On my next maintenance session I decided to try and tackle that oil leak from the beginning of ownership. I swapped out the oil filter housing gasket, vanos line, power steering hoses, power steering fluid reservoir. While I was in there I also installed an oil pan heating pad, and a factory block heater to combat the winter temperatures and aid in cold starting. I believe I also changed out the fuel filter somewhere around this time as well (that was more annoying that I thought it would be).
https://i.imgur.com/PRQ90ik.png Since my wife works from home and we live in a cold climate. She often doesn’t need to drive far and typically goes short distances to go shopping or run errands. I started to notice a mayo type of build up in the CCV lines and under the oil fill cap. This was cause for concern especially after I started reading about the potential for hydro locking the engine if the lines clog up to the point where oil backs up and into the intake. The solution I ended up going for was an M56 valve cover swap with the integrated CCV so this would delete the CCV under the intake. As soon as I got that valve cover on I no longer noticed this mayo type of build up in the engine anymore which was a great improvement. https://i.imgur.com/gIYqL8B.png Everything seemed to be going fine and dandy, and as murphy’s law would have it, when I needed to travel overseas for work for 5 months, about a week before I left the car decided to have major troubles. On a very cold day (-25C), I noticed the car was not pumping out heat. My coolant temp gauge had previously been acting up and not reading correctly due to a faulty sensor. As I was driving the engine began to stumble at a stoplight and then die. I proceeded to open the hood, and steam was coming from the engine bay. The car overheated due to complete coolant loss. After the car was brought home, some investigation revealed that the transmission cooler had popped out of the radiator and that’s where the coolant was completely lost causing the engine to overheat. After getting the car running again it ran fine until it got up to temp and then misfired on cylinders 3 and 4. I suspected I likely blew the head gasket after some further investigation. I brought it to our local euro mechanic, and he proceeded to quote me over 6k to replace the head gasket in the car. At this point my wife desperately needed a car and I didn’t have the time to dive into a head gasket replacement job. We tried selling the car as is for about 3k. We got a few bites but nobody wanted to deal with the headache even though the rest of the car was still in great shape. We made the decision to just keep the car in the garage and for my wife to buy a cheap beater car to get around while I was away for work. I was in Latvia for about 5 months, and it seems for some reason they are the capital of E53s. I kept seeing fine examples of E53s everywhere that were still on the road and being kept alive. Plenty of M57 diesels. At the time I was highly considering just finding a clean diesel replacement and shipping it back to Canada. Here was a cool one I saw over there. https://i.imgur.com/Q92VRyj.png When I got back from overseas, recharged with energy and all the parts already waiting in the garage for me, I ripped the cylinder head off the M54 and took it to a machine shop to change the valve seals, check for cracks, deck the surface and clean it. While I was waiting for the machine shop to do that work I knocked another big project off my list which was replacing the shingles on my garage. https://i.imgur.com/MkQElQe.png |
One thing I was a bit worried about was how warped the cylinder head was going to be and if it wasn’t going to be able to be saved. The machine shop told me it was about the max they would have decked the cylinder head while still being able to use it. They ended up taking off 11 thousands off the bottom. (High compression anyone?) I asked them if I needed a thicker head gasket and they said I should be okay. So I got the stock thickness head gasket and just went for it!
https://i.imgur.com/uHnZIyk.png Before I pulled the cylinder head off I decided to test the block threads to determine if I needed to time sert the block as I read this was a very common issue for overheated engines. Turns out I needed to do this while I was in there so I ordered the time sert kit and time serted all the head bolt holes while I was in there. https://i.imgur.com/vURm6MZ.jpeg Once I got everything cleaned up, I slapped the new head gasket on the engine and put the cylinder head back on hoping those time serts would hold up. https://i.imgur.com/ZmR0pdp.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/PmFZUEu.jpeg Once I got everything back together, I pressure tested the coolant system overnight and it held just fine. I was confident that there were no leaks and it was going to be ready to rock again. First fire up went alright and it seemed to run okay after all the residual oils burnt off. I did however notice some ticking noises (which are still happening to this day) that either sounded like lifter tick or some sort of bottom end knock. I was a bit concerned (and still am) but the car runs and drives great so it can’t be that bad. Here she was in all her glory after I revived her. At this point this had also been one of my larger automotive projects that I had taken on. I’m not a mechanic and I’ve learned about working on cars mostly all DIY over the years. https://i.imgur.com/0K1u7He.png |
Seeing as how I did not want this to happen again, I was after a gauge system that I could install to alert the driver from potential overheating better than the stock gauges do. Being a diesel guy, I was already aware of the Banks iDash and they had released a compact gauge system that would do just the trick. I used a suction cup mount on the dash by the drivers A pillar, and then installed four sensors (oil pressure, oil temperature, coolant temperature, and coolant level). I bought a new oil filter cap for the oil pressure and temp sensors, then I bought an aluminum thermostat housing and drilled and tapped into it for a coolant temp sensor, and finally I used the stock coolant level sensor location on the bottom of the expansion tank to interpret coolant level (this car did not come with a coolant level sensor installed).
https://i.imgur.com/iqPTWQJ.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/IrIfnPk.jpeg As things were looking up for our E53 ownership, I always had in the back of my mind how cool it would be to turn this thing into a 4.6is clone car…a 3.0is so to speak. I really liked the look of the front and rear lower valences and 20” style 87s on those cars and thought how cool it would be to turn this car into that. It just so happened that at the right time, where I live in Winnipeg, there was a guy parting out an Imola Red 4.6is. I immediately messaged the guy and asked to buy the bumpers, wheels, and rear fender flares and got them all for about 500 bucks. Had I have known more about 4.6is cars I would have also grabbed the gauge cluster and exhaust tips too, but I had still pretty limited knowledge of these cars at the time. It also had a red interior which was kind of neat to see. I don't think they sold many red 4.6is with red interior in Canada. I'm sure it was quite rare now that I think back about it. https://i.imgur.com/d6DxB44.png Since the tires were shot on these wheels, it wouldn’t be until the following summer (this summer) that I found a set of proper sized tires for these rims and get them installed on the car. I was still busy in the mean time trying to track down where that annoying ticking/knocking noise was coming from in the engine bay. I ended up replacing the lifters TWICE, replaced the stock exhaust manifolds with headers, timing chain tensioner, fluids, etc trying to figure out where the noise was coming from. I also installed a down stream cat, deleted the SAP, and installed the EU2 tune roughly the same time. I still have no idea what the noise is but the car runs and drives fine. The noise is quiet at start up and gets louder as the engine comes up to temp. https://i.imgur.com/FspVbfv.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/ZD7LiHh.png Deleting the SAP and installing headers didn’t do the trick, but it did free up a few ponies. All of this brings us to just a few weeks ago, when I was on the hunt for a decent set of 315s and 275s for the style 87s. I ended up finding a complete lightly used set of wheels off an F15 with rims and got them for a good price. Once I had the tires swapped over and got the style 87s on I HAD to take some pics. The wheels totally change the look of the car. https://i.imgur.com/6C5rG3H.png https://i.imgur.com/lg6ULr8.png |
What an adventure! :thumbup:
E53 RiPPeR XOuTPoST jUNkiE ReVELaTiON 22:21 |
Looking good..
With its high stance and large engine bay...an in-car head gasket on an M54 E53 is pretty straightforward. The E53 can stay on its wheels the whole time. Nice work on the time-sert job...Kit 1090 is the way to go...I like using clear packing tape so I can see holes, etc. I definitely would have used the thicker stock 1.00mm head gasket...(factory is 0.70mm) ...and the difference between 1.00mm & 0.70mm is about 12 thousandths of an inch, which is close to what the machinist took off. I like the gauge set up and the billet M54 oil filter cap with sensor bungs. https://renditioncustom.com/products...45216247120160 |
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