When I bought mine, there were 3 separate part numbers; the hitch, the wiring harness, or both packaged together. It was cheaper to buy the combination, and I paid around $600 at the time. I believe the harness by itself was around $200 then. It may have gone up in the years since, but I wouldn't expect it to be anywhere near $1000.

I think the harness should be somewhere around $200, and the module should be about the same... But definitely not $1000.

My wiring harness included the module, I didn't have to buy it separately.

When I bought my BMW hitch in Jan '07, it was available as a complete package with the hitch, wiring and module. Don't have the part number handy, but if I remember, will post it tonight.

Sucks about the backorder situation, hope they work the hitches out and get the hitches back in the system :bustingup. (sorry, that was bad..)

Talked to my parts guy today, the module came in without a problem and is readily available... However they went and backordered the harness!!!!

I don't know why it showed available when I originally placed the order Friday evening, but isn't now... but it does suck! I was however to scavenge up a harness from a fellow employee who happened to keep his old one when trading in his X5, so possibly I could at least jot down a pin-out of the module end plug and the trailer plug end... and that would at least enable people to fab up the harness.

Guys,

I've been reading about this hitch saga ever since I got my X5 a couple months ago - searching eBay/Craigslist/etc every day for a hitch. I went in to my dealer this Thursday and asked what I could do to get a hitch (even pulling one off a used X5 in stock and swapping my non-hitch components). He took a look in the computer and found another dealer that had 1 in stock. I picked it up today (full kit with harness/etc).

All that to say - find a good parts guy at your dealer and have them call around and you should be able to find a dealer somewhere with one of these in stock.

FYI, the part number for the whole kit is 71 60 0 009 711.

Good to see you had good luck finding an OEM hitch! :thumbup:

Could you post the phone number to the dealer with the wiring harness (and the part number too)? In Canada they cannot be purchased separately from the hitch. As for the USA... there are no hitches anywhere in the USA either (I called almost all of them!).

One dealer said they must be getting some hitches in stock because there used to be a backorder of over 800 in the states, but now it is down to 250 or so.

I think that they are just canceling the orders.

I know I'm one of those cancels. And the wiring harness came up as back-ordered as of recent as well. The only thing you can still get is the control module.