I slam the gate, this tends to get rid of the rattling many complain about. Im not a big fan of it however it seems to work.
I Also adjusted the rubber stoppers and coat them with petroleum jelly now and then. It all seems to help.

2003 4.4, I have to gently slam it in order for it to properly shut :( No softy electronic assist closing. Doing it softly will not lock it.

HA!

I had 3 co-workers in the X5 all day today with 4 stops on our route. It was SLAMMED about 3 times today....One of them was even followed by a "SORRY"!

This one has come up before, and is often tied to the rattles from hell in the tailgate of the E53. Ours has been reasonable tight with just one adjustment so far (is an '06). We had the rattles on our 2001 3.0 also and I've found that the dealer adjusts the hatch...rattles go away for a while (6-12 months) and then they slowly come back, only to be tightened again. A bit of a pain and some X5's seem worse than others...our new-ish 2006 has been good thus far.

Good luck...soft close for sure.

I was thinking the exact same thing :rofl:. Guess ours are too old ('02).

I know that if yu slam it it will definately break the mechanism...it happened on my 99 528iT (wagon) I NEVER let anyone close it....just close it gently and wait for it to be "sucked shut"....

I don't know what year the "soft close auto latch" was implemented, but I do know it was on the 1999 540i BMW's.

Down in Alberta, if it is cold enough, slamming the lift gate will cause it to bounced up again and not latch.

MY 02 I can shut the lower tailgate very softly but have to put a little force in the top part to get it to close so it wont chime "liftgate open"

:iagree: Same with my '01.

Pre-Facelifted = Use force or you'll get a chime.

Facelifted = Gentle...let gravity do it.

the slamming happens from time to time, just because of the simple fact that you can't be everywhere all the time, an I don't feel like saying FREEZE "i'll do that" or "let me put it back there for you" 24/7 , but I do when I can;
what I find is worse is people that think these car are made to be firmly slammed, most people that have never owned a BMW don't realized the doors are heavy yes, but they tend to close themselves like the tailgate, and what you have is people pushing these doors while its already closing on it's own and BAM ....lol but based on previous post you all know that lol

a simple fix would be to make a 1 seater BMW :stickpoke........problems solved :bustingup

Last night my wife approached the tail gate with a box in her hand... I so wanted to get out of the car and open and close the lift gate for her, but since our daughter in the car would have cried with me leaving the car, I just stayed put.

My wife SLAMMED the tail gate closed... so hard ... that I know a BMW angel died somewhere.