Been putting some miles on the X5, it's been smelling of coolant a bit every now and then so decided to clean the engine bay and look for leaks... nada again.

then I noticed two connectors on the air intake tube were loose

http://ills.bmwfans.info/m32.png
http://ills.bmwfans.info/m32.png


the connector of hose nr 6 got damaged, I taped that up for now and will have it replced later. However, under that connector is another hose spigot. The hose was disintegrated so the tube leading up to it was disconnected from the intake. I had an appropriate sized hose to I fixed the connexion. However, I can't find that hose on any of the parts diagrams... anyone know where it goes?

I mainly ask this because the car is making too much fan noise when warm if you ask me. Whether this is the secondary air pump or something else I can't seem to find out. I figured if the valve was leaking the airpump would be hot but it's not.

Front diff gave it up a couple weeks ago. I'm so over this damn thing. It's at my buddy's shop as I don't have the time for it.
Gonna sell it once I get it back.
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That sucks snik. Just sudden failure? Did it damage anything else? Axles?

Don't know if any axles were killed in the process. I haven't had any updates from my dude since getting a video of the front driveshaft spinning and the wheels not turning.

Drove out to Castroville and got back to SA, detoured to get a bite somewhere and in the parking lot bout 20mph. Boom. Lost fwd drive. Was binding up initially and would stop if I gave it gas. Then it eventually broke lose and I could drive. No lights. No errors. No leaks.

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Thanks for your comments on the Blizzaks. I've owned several sets of studless tires but never any Blizzaks, so I think I will avoid them. Also, the Scorpion Winter is technically a "performance SUV winter tire" according to tire rack, so perhaps it will make the X feel a bit less like a truck.



Andrew, the Grandtrek is indeed a winter tire. It's just listed as a "performance winter tire," like the Scorpion Winters I'm looking at, instead of a normal SUV winter tire. Tire Rack just puts them in a different category but they're still perfectly good winter tires. The reason you do fine with them in snow is because they are actual studless snow tires.

That being said though, I will opt to swap on my current Duelers in the summer since I do a lot more miles towing my trailer through the mountains in the summertime than I do in the winter. Though in my area, we get sporadic snow for half the year, and I know a lot of people who leave their studless tires on all year and do fine. They wear down a bit faster but they don't seem to give up much grip compared to your typical all-season tire in dry/warm weather.

Eventually I would like to get a set of summer tires once the Duelers wear out, but at the rate I drive this car, that will be about ten years from now.

What did you do to / for your E53 today??
 

the only loss of grip I have is extremely hot days where the soft compound wears off enough to allow me to drift up offramps.

I didn't consider the granstrek "studless" because they don't have the water grabbing outer layer of rubber like blizzak (which effectively makes their real lifespan less than half).

Unless they have changed the design, only the outer third of the tread on blizzak b has the stupid amazing grip. Once you wear through that you have normal winter tires.

The sipes on the grandtrek are the full depth of the tread blocks and the tread wraps around the side to grab in deep snow so you get good ice grip until the end.

They also have "winter wear bars" which indicate when you are down to the point you can't expect them to handle snow and more importantly, water which I think is a fantastic feature all cars should have.

PS. Love pirelli company. If my car had originally come with pirelli I'd likely be as diehard about them as I am now about Dunlop.

Keeping winter tires year 'round has kept me out of at least four collisions. I'll never put "all season" (should be called 3 season) tires on my car. The added steering and stopping power on dirty, oily, wet leaf covered pavement is well worth the quicker wear and more frequent replacement.

I'm only going on my second set in five years. I'll probably have to replace right about 6 years and the first set were worn when I bought the car, so about 35-40,000 miles I'm getting which is just as good as I got with my performance tires on my Z28.

With that kind of longevity on winter tires, I see no point in using 3 season tires.

Last winter when the side roads were the exceptionally slippery polished ice/packed snow, I watched a front drive car with 3-season tires spinning his tires like free crazy to get away from the curb where I couldn't even tell the road wasn't bare asphalt.

I re-parked and videoed my left front wheel as I pulled into the polished ice center of the road: there was about 60-90° of wheel slip when the tire hit the wet ice, that was it.

I found a fantastic video comparing 3-season tires (and highly rated), compared with winter tires (and in don't think even studless). It is shameful they call them all season, they really should call them 3-season.

If I lived in FLA or TX I would try to find a harder compound tire but maybe a non studless winter tire.

The main point for me is the 340 days a year my tires don't see snow but do see oily roads from traffic, that is where winter tires have twice the traction of ANY summer tire and will regularly keep me out of trouble. The extra wear is just cheap insurance to have the extra grip every day.

I drove a friend's X5 once and tired to demonstrate how they can handle like a sports car, and he had duellers; turns out with those tires, can't even handle like a Camry. I drifted though every corner and had to go 7-10 mph slower on 270 ramps than I'm used to.

Here's the thing: people will say "but I don't drive performance style".

Not until you *need to*.

I rest my case.

I have to agree with you on the sipes. I had wished all non-winter tires had the sipes for water like winter tires. But I've found that the summer max performance tires do just fine without the sipes. So now all of my cars have true winter tires and then max summer performance tires. With the exception of my Excursion that has BFG T/A KO2s.


On the winter tires though, my 4.8 came with the blizzaks when I bought it. Otherwise I do normally go with the General Altimax Arctic so you don't pay a premium for having a winter tire with the best performance for only half the life.

Winter tires have better traction on oily roads than summer tires? Say what now?



In the past two hours the Scorpions have sold out completely -- looks like they were on closeout but they weren't marked as such. But both Discount Tire and Tire Rack both sold out of them.



I got a quote for Toyo Observe G3s from another shop for only $500 installed though. They are studdable but I would run them without studs. I used some Observe snow tires on our old Scion (fwd) and they were pretty decent, but seemed to have reduced grip in all conditions after about 20k miles.

What max performance summer tire do you run on your X? I don't know of any that make them in the 17" sizes.



I have had the Hankook Ventus V12 Evo (both the first and second version) on my family cars, and I absolutely love them. Incredibly sticky but also very quiet, and I can get 35k miles out of them. I hope to get a similar tire for the X in a couple more years, now that I have two sets of wheels.

With absolutely no doubt!

For the exact same reason they work on packed snow. The sipes that grip on ice get through the oily surface that large tread blocks of summer tires float right on top of.

Summer tires are terrifying to me in Chicago. The roads are covered in oily film all the time.

If I had to estimate I have at least twice the traction. I right now have 3-season tires on wife's car I'll do some g-force and distance braking tests to explain better what I'm talking about but basically it's nearly impossible for me to get abs to kick on in my car on dry pavement but with wife's car just a good job on the pedal will do it.