Im in Calif. dealer wnted $300 for oil and $420 labor.. thanks but No thanks did it all myself for $225.00 oils and filters. oh ya did fuel filter too that was another $50 and PIA to change.. them enginers must lay awake at nght thinking up things to make repairs harder and more expensive.. It even has a water cooled alternator ? really who does that...

$300 for oil??? what the heck are you driving??? is it a 15,000 HP seavessel propulsion engine??? my 4.8iS is taking 8.5 qt, about 9 liters of synthetic oil, at $10 a qt it is still under a hundred.. i buy the Castrol from Autozone for $6 a qt, about $60 for 10 qts, still have a bottle or two for top offs...

an OE filter from BMW of Fairfax online order is about $15 a pop, so we are at about $75-110 for the materials, and you can have the local JiffyLube do the actual change for about $30 labor (if you are too lazy to do it yourself), and you are at $100-150 tops... you will need to reset the green indicator, but it can be done inside the cluster...

Is the oil sold at your AutoZOne at those prices?

you can mail order oil filters from the BMW of Fairfax, or other dealer...

And are there any JiffyLubes in your area? all you need from them is their labor...

got all my stuff from car quest. Mine is AWD so i had tranfercase, frt and rear diffs also. engine oil, trans, premixed rad fluid. and fuel filter, eng.oil filter, air filter, trans screen. I ordered the cabin air charcole filter from BMW that was seperate...its a expensive care to maintain, i priced the new center console pad. Holy crap $500 bucks. I think I have one bought on Ebay will kow soon. Now I need to replace my dash cluster another 3-500 bucks. yikes , oh ya bought a new set of meats fo it too... another $900 crap goin to the poor house fast.

you are replacing the cluster??? a cluster must programmed to your car and to your actual miles, otherwise it will throw a tamper dot that will drastically reduce the resale value of the vehicle... a programming happens at a dealer, and dealer will NOT program a used cluster... a new cluster from a dealer can easily run over a grand... if you have Indy who has proper equipment, he may program a used cluster to match your car... do your homework before commiting to a cluster change... or LCM change, for that matter of fact - this one is related to the mileage as well and must be coded to the car...

there is a place 100 miles from here that rebuild your clusters in 1 day for $250. so no programing is needed..I already talked to them and it looks like a snap to get out of car. I bought the big Bentley publication hard bound X5 book, cost $125.00 but what a book explains so nice. But I also talked to dealer and he will recode a cluster he said for $ 125.00 if needed

cool - it seems that you had done your homework for this one... :)

have a great day, thanks for the good advice

installed "power distribution" in the trunk - it is a relay that operates from the "Wake-on-LAN" signal, when the power is turned off after 16 minutes of inactivity, and the relay operates direct power from the battery. That source can be used for various purposes in the car, such as feeding power to power inverters, to headrest DVD players, to the on-board DVR.

I don't have pics but will make them and update the info...

I used Panasonic ACNH3212 relay - it is capable of switching 30 A and the coil is using only 37.5 mA to activate the relay, thus putting little stress on the tapped in circuit... I got the relay from onlinecomponents.com
http://media.digikey.com/Photos/Pana...s/ACNH3212.JPG
Since I had found a circuit under the driver's seat that was live everytime the car is awake (same circuit on the passenger side is always live), I had an idea to use that circuit for power for other items that I was thinking about installing... However, I did not think that the circuit under the seat would be capable of the load, thus came an idea of using a relay, to switch the direct battery power using the circuit under the seat...

I had a large project box from Radio Shack, and a breadboard part # 276-150...
http://www.aces.edu/~parmega/efi/temp/wb/projbox.jpg http://rsk.imageg.net/graphics/produ...265164w345.jpg

Since I wanted to use the power inverters under the seats for the 110 VAC, I needed rather a heavier gauge wire, so ordered 20 ft of 10 gauge black and 20 ft red wire from ebay... those wires required heavier connectors to be used on the breadboard, so I used the green ones, 10 for about $8 shipped, from ebay as well.
http://i.ebayimg.com/t/10-x-2-Pin-9-...+gQ~~60_12.JPG
to connect the 10 gauge wires to each other, i needed some heavy duty connectors, so i got Anderson connectors, they are gender-less and can take about 50A (maybe even more), 10 pieces about $27 delivered...


http://i.ebayimg.com/t/10-ANDERSON-C...hujsY!~~_3.JPG


For my particular application, I needed battery power to be delivered under the front seats. Since my project box turned out to be too big to fit under the seat, I decided to locate it in the trunk. because of this particular setup, I had to run the 10 gauge wires from the trunk area to the front seat, under the carpet to make the install as unintrusive as possible... at the same time, i needed a "wake-on-LAN" signal elivered to the project box, so I ran a thin, 1-pair cable from the driver's seat to the trunk. I terminated the "signal" wire with a set of connectors that I use for the small projects but will be upgrading those connectors to the OE connectors.

http://c1552172.r72.cf0.rackcdn.com/245936_x600.jpg http://c1552172.r72.cf0.rackcdn.com/17793_x600.jpg

http://c1552172.r72.cf0.rackcdn.com/24623_x600.jpg http://c1552172.r72.cf0.rackcdn.com/27341_x600.jpg
I soldered the realy onto the breadboard, added the green connectors around the perimeter, and wired the relay, so it would take a "signal" from the circuit under the driver's seat, and will operate the contacts that were wired to several other green terminals. this way I have several terminals ready to be used if/when i need to use them for whatever new projects i might come up with. Once I snap a picture of the projeсt box with all those wires, I will post a the pic... there is nothing electronic in this set-up, pure electro-mechanical...

This power distribution box is a pre-requisite for my further installations of the power inverters and the all-car DVR

Replaced rear drive shaft, tune up AC

did you clean/buff out the dullness from the headlights?