I have joined the "broken door carrier" ranks. Just curious, does anyone have any idea of what type of time frame we're roughly talking about in regards to the indoor latch being inoperable as well? My outside latch went about 2 weeks ago and I'm really not going to have the free time to address this for probably another week or so. BTW, great post, great forum. Thanks in advance.

Just to clarify, your outside door handle stopped working first, and now the inside handle doesn't work as well? If so, that's a bad deal, because it will be difficult if not impossible to get the door panel off in that state without damaging something. It looks like you live in a place that might be having cold weather; any chance you washed the car recently and something inside is just frozen, preventing the inside handle from working? Get it inside with some heat on it to see if you can at least get the door open.

I just read through some of the earlier posts in this thread and found this one that mentioned needing to take it to the dealer to get it opened & fixed. That may not be the only option though; I had a similar problem with my e32 when the door lock actuator failed with the door deadlocked, and was able to get it open by cutting a hole in the door panel. I had to source new vinyl for the door panel to cover it up afterward, but it got me in there.

Thanks for the response. My comment was poorly written. At this point, only my outside latch is inoperable. I had read in the thread that when this happens its only a matter of time before the inside latch goes as well. As I will not be able to fix the door for at least a week, I was wondering if anyone knew a rough timeframe of when the inside latch follows suit.

I saw that mentioned as well, but after looking at the mechanism, I don't think failure of the inside latch will naturally follow. The door handle carrier pulls up on the door lock mechanism, but IIRC the inside latch connects to a different part on the mechanism. Pulling on either actuates the door catch, but they both operate independently of one another.

Hello,

In my car I needed to replace the driver door actuator, some plastic thiny broke, so the inside door handle wasn't working anymore.
After replacement the driver door was not working anymore on the key or console button.
I removed fuses 20 and 24, next it was working again.

Hope this helps some one...
Greetings!

Anyone know if you can put a cylinder lock on the passenger side door. I hate it that BM trouble U in order to pinch a few pennies on a Luxury SUV didn't include a lock with the passenger side door. I know that they sell almost the same car in the UK so they must have a cylinder for that door. I know how to remove the cylinder, I just want to know if the rest of the lock mechanism is in there.

Hey,

I would believe that this works.

Here: http://www.xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-foru...inder-fix.html you see some pics of the part where the key cylinder is in.

Here the rest: RealOEM.com * BMW E53 X5 3.0d DOOR CONTROL FRONT
Nr.: 51218402538 would be for the right hand side door.

Good Luck

VERY IMPORTANT. Part no#10 the PLASTIC Handle. There is a small plastic nib on the narrow end. If your handle has been used before it will be slightly sheared off. I did not have a new handle to replace the broken carrier at the time. So, I used a small self taping screw and pre drilled a tiny hole in the nib. When screwing tight remember to leave a small bit of slack so the handle can snap back into place after opening the door. Mine is working out fine. Of course, my 88 &89 E-30 rags have original handle mechanisms.

Thanks to all for these posts. I live in a remote area of the world and they helped me so much.

For others who may have difficulty getting parts try this website. Great prices.
Schmiedmann - Styling/Tuning/Spare parts for BMW X5 (E53) - New parts

Here is a little story that may amuse you all. I will post it all somewhere else later.

But thankyou all for helping me to get my car going again.

BM Trouble You.

Last year with the easing of import restrictions for cars into Myanmar
we imported a used 2006 BMW X5 from Germany. This was the beginning of
my journey into how hard it is to run a luxury car without back up in
a far off country

The car has always run well and then one day the front drivers door
handle broke. Nothing special involved just lifted the handle to open
the door and the mechanism inside the door broke and this was the
beginning of a year long saga. So I searched online found forums with
owners with the same problem and the solutions arent hard to find.

I found an expat here who has a German Car repair shop and we order
the parts wait a few months and it gets fixed. But then I started to
notice other things wrong with the car. Bad wear on the rear tyres
noises from the pulleys in the engine bay, airconditioning.

Ok so I look at the tyres and then notice that the whole car is out of
whack. The front left tyre sticks out an inch more from the side of
the car than the front right. The rear is the opposite it is in on one
side and out on the other. I show many people we put it up on lifts
and inspect underneath. The guys with lots of experience have no
answer.

I try a guy who has a alignment place at the side of a road for
Japanese cars. He puts it up on stands over a pit gets underneath
shakes a few things and then shows me a rubber bush that is obviously
broken. Well spotted. He showed me some other rubbers he thought were
bad too and told me to fix that up and bring it back.

So at this stage I have this horrible dangerous wear on the rear, the
front wheel on the left is sticking out 1 inch more than the left and
the rubbers are broken. At this point I had to park the car and not
use it because of the rear tyres problem.

Months go by as I try to get parts. I have a shopping list and visit a
dealer in Bangkok but the prices are too high for my family so I
slowly whittle it down to major stuff. My wife goes to take the car to
the swimming pool within 1km of our house and the passenger door
handle breaks. Time to add one more part.

I find a company in Denmark that I can order parts for this model
online and ship to anywhere in the world and the parts are 1/3 what
they are in Thailand.

Then I found a new workshop near my house who has only just opened
up. I make friends with them and they have an alignment section. I get
on the internet and download videos from youtube which show how to
adjust the rears on x5s which have a common problem of eating tyres. I
show these guys and we play with the adjustments and by eye we make
the car drivable again. One problem solved.

I get my rubber bushes for the front from Denmark and put them in.
That fixes a shake in the front, but there is still this wheel
sticking out an inch on one side. We test, we shake, we probe. Then we
start to measure this point to that point. Top to bottom clearances
from everything on both sides of the car. As we do we realise the rim
on the left is sitting different to the one on the right. One inch
different. There is nothing wrong with the suspension to make this
happen it is the rim. We look at the rims one has a little F on it
and one has R. Front and Rear. The tyres are all the same size on all
four and the spare, but the penny drops and we realise the rims on
BMWs are different from Front to Rear. One side of the car the rims
are on backwards. Simple fix to rotate the wheels. Nightmare finished.
Problem solved high fives all round. A good 10 people and experts
would have looked at this and no one noticed.

Personally I have never seen a car with different curves in the
spokes of the rims from front to back in my life before.
Have you? Keep it in mind. I can see how cool the engineers at BMW
must that thought they were when they invented it. I bet it improved
the handling too. I wonder if they thought of the consequences if
someone got it wrong. It is not even mentioned in the Owners manual.

BM Trouble U.

My left rear door doesn't open from outside.I don't know the problem from lock mechanism or the handle Carrier .when I lift the external cable with my hand the door don't open ..any tips or test procedure!