I can't recall the poster, but there is another thread with info from a guy [in Va?] with a rock-crawler E53 build who did a manual tranny swap. You might look for it for more current info on the subject ....

yeap

http://www.xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-foru...-e53-3-0l.html

I was going to do that when I bought my auto last year. When I found the average price of a used tranny hovering around 1k before any of the extra parts I started looking for one that came with a manual. I was going to do it myself, but could not get the parts for less that 2500-3000 total. I was using car-part.com or whatever that site is.

If you can find the parts cheap then have at it. You can install the short shift kit as part of the install. Hell, might as well check the transfer case while it is apart and do some extra preventive repairs.

I never did the swap. Bought a 2005 BMW X5 6 speed sold that and now have a 2003 x5 5 speed. Would love to find out if its doable. A 6 speed trans out of an x5 just went unsold on ebay for $420 from lkq! The parts are getting cheaper everyday.

Yeap about 4-5 yrs ago when i bliew my 3rd gear in the auto trans and then my torque converter blew shortly after that i noticed used-rebuilt trans were roughtly 3-5grand and just used were still 2-3 grand but now i see them hitting just 1-1.5 grand so yea prices are dropping and getting a little more affordable for a DIYer to do a swap

Hi all. I realise this thread is very old but was hoping someone had achieved an automatic to manual conversion on a 2001 (E53) X5 3.0D with the terrible 5L40E transmission and if they had, if they could share a list of everything that needed changing! After having my second transmission failure I'm at the end of my tether!