your kidding right??? the last service was 18 months ago!!!!!!!

no wonder your turbo failed, minimum excluding mileage done should be 12 months, and in my personal view that is still far to long,

my car has done 160,000 km so similar mileage to you, i have it serviced EVERY 10,000 km

thats every 6000 miles, engine oil and filter plus general check over.

i had the trans, transfer case and both diff oils changed at 100,000 km and will have it done again at 200,000.

if you want your diesel motor to last KEEP clean oil in it.

BMW are totally joking with there stupid service indicator light system.

and are only interested in the first owner on the vehicle, once its out of waranty there is no reason for them to want the vehicle to last, cuts down on sales.

Really? Is 18 months really too long between service? My service indicator still has one red and one yellow light on (I think) and only recently I have the 'oil service' wording appear. I do understand what you are saying though about service lights! Until a year ago I covered around 2,500 miles per year but now cover around 7,500 per year. I realise that oil does get old and its qualities break down but never thought the time frame would be that critical to blow a turbo.

I'm still waiting to hear back from the garage!

If you use a good brand 5w 30 fully synthetic engine oil ,then you should be looking at minimum 10,000 miles oil changes or 2 years ,which ever comes first!
You can of course ,change your oil when ever you like ,at 6000 miles ,like Bigwave does,but thats just throwing money down the drain!!
Your blown turbo wasnt because of your "late" oil change,unless your previous oil change was with 15 w 40 oil and 30,000 miles or so !!!
I must say that 90,000 miles is a bit early for them to blow ,unless something unusual happened!Get your mechanic to check the oil feed line to the turbo to make sure its not blocked and check the air filter pipe to the turbo to see if it has any "shavings" that could have been sucked up the turbo!This is something that happened to a member here,as there was some debris in this pipe ,which resulted in blowing more than one turbo.In either case ,since you have loads of smoke from your exhaust ,your turbine/compressor will be broken.Usually ,what happens is the turbine ends up stuck in the cat and the compressor will have shed aluminiumj shavings to your air filter pipe due to it spinning freely against the turbo inlet.
Get your mechanic to check the exhaust for debris .
When turbo blows,it will also push a lot of oil to your intercooler and your mechanic will need to clean it all out.This is very important so as to avoid the engine running on its own oil,just like that youtube video you posted.
Good luck.Hope it all works nicely and you get your X5 back on the road ,as good as new:)

mate the reason i change my oil at 10,000km (6,000miles) is fairly simple and you could say throwing money away, however a long time ago i was told that if you want a diesel motor to last then change the oil frequently, now i dont know if this is true or not, but if i way up the costs of the extra oil changes against a potential turbo or even replacement motor ( please remember i,m in australia, and we pay about three time what you do for parts etc) then i call it cheap insurance.

i know with my petrol engined boat that it gets an oil and filter change once a year no matter how few hours it does, generally speaking some where between 30 and 50 hours a year, so if you work that out at driving flat out in low gear up a hill at 50 mph thats 1500 mile only, so running your car for 15,000 to 20,000 km between oil changes to me seems like inviting trouble

anyway thats my reasoning only, obviously others may have differing opinions and they are entitled to them, however i very much doubt that BMW cares what you do with it once the warranty has expired

I got the car back now but the power delivery is completely different!!

I'm not heavy on the accelerator at all but when I drove away from the garage I noticed that whereas the power used to be pretty constant it isn't now. Prior to the blown turbo I would hear the turbo spin up and if I put my foot down on the pedal the boost was available and away I went.

Now though, if I accelerate to around 2000rpm in order to get past this rpm I need to definitely apply the foot to the pedal. By this I mean around 3/4 of the way to the floor just for the rpm to increase. The turbo will spin up and then suddenly I feel the boost and the rpm will increase by 1000 plus and I shoot off! Until I get to feel the boost I can only describe this as being like going up a hill in a 1.0L engined car. It's like I'm shouting 'come on, come'on' and feeling like I need to change to a better gear.

My point is that although the turbo does kick in it certainly feels like I have to press the accelerator down much further than before and if I drive along steadily around 2000rpm and just step on the accelerator slightly I'm making no difference at all. It all really happens when I've stuffed the accelerator down by 3/4's. (I'm sure it didn't feel like this at 2000rpm before it went in!). I at least felt a more power through the revs than now.

Any ideas?

I'm going to take it back to the garage and see what they think. Maybe this is how it should be and mine was over boosting or something in the past. Fuel consumption is pretty much as before with less rear end smoke :)

they probably disconnected the battery and maybe it has to relearn your driving style,

can you take it out to a quite area and given it a good hard run, maybe that will sort it out

You may well be right and I will endeavour to find a quite stretch of road. The turbo kicking in made me smile though. Of course that feeling is nothing compared to my old Porsche Turbo which just made me feel like a rocket pilot and always put a big grin on my face :)

I agree with you in that I very much doubt that BMW cares what you do with it once the warranty has expired!
Truth is ,here at a Bmw dealer ,we replace the engine oil 15,000-20,000 kms within the standard warranty period and even extended 5 year period and unheard of a turbo/engine failure !Now if Bmw thought the turbo was going to blow under the warranty period ,wouldnt they instruct dealers to change the oil at shorter intervals?We use the recommended 5w 30 for al turbo Diesel Bmws and just the cost of the 6.5 / 7.0 lltrs oil alone ,to the customer is over $200.00 usd !Its good for business but we would never get customers in to do 6000 miles oil change!
No harm though,in making more frequent oil changes ,just not necessary !

Only way your car was over boosting in the past ,was if it was remapped and now your mechanic put the original file in!This would happen if he updated the cars software!Do you know if he did?This would also explain why your car is less smoky!
Has he fitted the same spec turbo as what you had before?I have seen some X5s fitted with a 2056,2256 ,when they sould have a 2260,for example ,as the turbos are all interchangeable!
Since you have lack of boost,it maybe something simple like boost escaping from a badly tightened hose clip or vacuum pipe !
Did he clean the catalytic or checked to see if any turbo parts are stuck there blocking it?
Did he fit a new turbo.repaired your old one or a reconditioned one?If it was repaired or reconditioned ,maybe the VGT vanes are not adjusted properly and this is essential for good initial boost build up..
Good luck and keep us posted :)

I don't know the answers to those questions. I would assume a like for like replacement on the turbo but as you have said it could be one of many. I checked the vacuum pipe today which goes to the black cylindrical box bolted to the inner wing and the pipe had a good suction. Don't get me wrong, when I hit the right place on the accelerator the car shifts along no problem but I have never had to push down so much to accelerate, it is to me at least very noticeable. I'll give it a few more days and see how things go. I understand that the cats are a sealed unit so couldn't exactly be cleaned through. I was told today by the garage that the car was quite smokey on friday and it wasn't acceptable to give back to me in that condition. After 120 miles drive on the motorway yesterday with plenty of foot down experiments with the turbo I can honestly say that it's hugely less smokey that it ever has been in the 3 years I've owned it.