Wishbones replaced, bushings replaced with Meyle HD.

I had a unexpected free Saturday afternoon so I decided to change the rear shocks out. I'm fairly certain they were the originals and after 167K they were pretty tired. Last month I got a pair of Sachs Touring 20% off on a promotion from Autozone ($62 each) and found a pair of LEM rear strut mounts for $50 each on Amazon.

Other than the left side shock being stubborn to remove this was a fairly easy DIY and certainly firmed up the over all feel of the ride. I plan on changing the front struts soon but want to also change out suspension bushings while I'm at it; the thrust arms and ball joints mainly.

Planned the afternoon to change out my valve cover cover gasket ended up being about an hour worth of work. My truck has a 110k on it and im gonna gues it was never done since the old gasket felt like ABS plastic not rubber anymore. Is this common ? I have done quite a few gaskets in my time and this one was by far in the worst shape i have ever seen. Now i just have to degrease and i hope i have cleaned up all oil leaks ( oil filter housing seal was just done as well)

Pretty normal for rubber gasket to get hard as plastic after that many miles. Should have replace the spark plugs, Vanos seals while you're doing that.

LED TAIL LIGHTS
 

I too worked on tail lights, after wedging tiny pieces of aluminum foil under the bulb contact points , i said heck with it and ordered a new set of smoked LED tail lights. Now waiting for them to show up.. But whats with the coding ? I have to get car coded to run LED's ??? :dunno:

2000 X5 CENTER CONSOLE
 

My console lid / arm rest broke. After i recovered from dealer price shock of over $500 for new one I located a cherry on ebay.. Perfect condition, but with gobs of wiring for the cell phone it was intended for in its day. Can I just cut the old stuff out and leave it disconnected ?

don't cut, just take it apart and disconnect... then give the harness to somebody or sell it - put it to good use... :)

there should be an insert part number you can get which just makes it into a storage compartment and replaces the phone wiring, I haven't seen one of the older armrests though that have the wiring to tell you though.

About the LED's, you will have the cold monitoring flash at startup which isn't too much of a bother, other than that on your 2000 you shouldn't have much problems. if you want to get cold monitoring coded off it's not too difficult if you find a local who has access to NCS Expert

i thought about it but spark plugs were done about 98k and not sure about vanos but its not to bad to pull it apart again if need be. :D

Not in your case with a pre-facelift X5. It doesn't have adaptive brake lights.