X5 donut in the snow
 

I can only post a small video file directly on the forum
had some fun in the garden with my X5

LOL!!! Looked like fun!

makes sense the dude from texas would be impressed. what's the big deal? try doing it backwards...

Was the car (stability control) fighting the car when you were doing that? My x5 drives fine in the snow, but one of things I dislike about it the most is that you cant completely disable the traction control system. I have tried pushing the DSC button, holding it, and still i can hear my ABS system working against me when I lose traction in the snow...annoying considering I have a lot of winter driving experience and controlled slides are nearly impossible with this vehicle...

yes , the traction control was still active with DSC switched off but only at low speed .
the donut in the film was not my most spectacular and had traction interference a couple of times .
I made a better movie the previous night with my daughter filming from passenger seat .I was drifting at silly speeds over a much larger area and doing figure 8 then into very fast dizzy donuts with no traction control intervention until actual speed dropped .
one area was very slick with ice where the car stopped moving on a slight incline with the wheels spinning in first gear at 4000rpm . after about 1 second the revs dropped to 1000 then pulsated from 1000 to 2000 rpm with TC intervention to move the car again .
I loaded that video onto my computer , then deleted from camera , now I can`t find it on computer . I also have some on digital 8 tape but USB driver software not compatible with computer so i`ll need to try an ilink if I can find one .
the video shown in first post was on the frozen ruts with some fresh snow from the previous night so the donut is not very spectacular . all good fun and impressed with the X5 capability but had some serious understeer which at times could not be corrected because the rear wheels had inadequate grip to give me oversteer .
hope you are still awake reading my long and boring reply .

Say goodbye to the xfer case

care to elaborate
why would it suffer damage on ice
surely there must be more strain fully loaded climbing a twisty hill .

I am waiting for the answer DocMike .

Are you honestly trolling the X5 forum....?
If you have not figured out the weak point of the X5 diveline, it happens to be the transfercase. Additionally if you can not figure out that dumping tons of torque through the X5 doing donuts may not be the safest thing to do in this car I can't help you. Having blown two transfer cases in an e30 ix doing the same shit, a differential in a Euro /M3 by dumping the clutch at 3k rpm to launch, I may be some what overly cautious. But again trolls to the X5 forum, what next?

But on the ice there won't be much torque delireved so not much strain on the transfer case.