My febi turned out to be OE BMW with the name scraped off :)

Great idea with the wooden block. On the x5 its easy for me to remove the pan and this made it much easier than digging my hand down under the starter to get to that lock point in the engine bay.

Argh, the A/c belt was a hassle without the tool. If the belt starts to fray I'll redo it... I don't understand why it's so damn tight, feels like it has almost no deflection. Can't be good on the harmonic!

I drove an hour each way to my "local" dealer after work yeaterday to pick up the mounting bolts. The pulley came in Wednesday. I loosely assembled everything last night. And Saturday I'll be raising the vehicle to put my wood block back and torque things down.

Glad that you had success!

Finally replaced the harmonic pulley on my wife's diesel. I'm still getting battery discharge warnings any time the doors are left open for an extended period. So I'm going to replace the battery with the correct group and size. Decided to go AGM. Hope I don't regret it.


Old alternator now charges as high as 14.8V, so I'm going to return the one I bought.


2 gotchas on the pulley install:
Torquing the bolts is a PITA. I was using a non-ratcheting breaker bar, and at one point I put the socket on the wrong bolt and may have overtorqued it. The bolts are very close together and working by braile.

Installing the AC belt is a PITA. I had to do it twice as the first time the belt walked out to the front of the clutch and I couldn't get it to go back without removing it.

When you do the battery replacement, you have to have it registered/programmed correct?

Yes

Ok, so a couple weeks ago I replaced the battery. I was able to register it with a free program, I will update with a link when I find it. Something like BMWLogger

Took the car on our 3300 mile road trip and 2 things happened:

I started getting a check engine light for high ash load in DPF, so I'll be moving forward with the emissions delete and tune.

Second, on the way home my fuel filter heater split and dumped fuel all over the highway and car. That was exciting. Wagner BMW of shrewsbury MA got me sorted out in record time on a Saturday morning. They ended up pulling used parts off another car in the lot to help me out, since we were still 750 miles from home.

I need to follow up with BMWNA about the fact that a part, which was already replaced under recall, caused such a major failure and safety issue. I had quite a bit of expenses associated with this SNAFU, not to mention anguish/duress of having my whole family in the car when it presented a fire risk.

You got Murphy's law with that filter, wow. Glad you are safe. What broke on the heater?

My shining moment was waiting for readiness to complete. 2 left, scr and the dpf. Scr gets ready, yay! 5 minutes later I get a code p20ee for bmw code 4d16 scr efficiency. W t f? It just passed scr?!?
Had to reset because of cel, and another long wait for readiness. Yes, I followed the steps in the e70 dde readiness pdf from here, and it doesn't complete it from that.

That's when I thought to myself that whoever programmed the dde parameters has little to no common mechanical sense when it comes to diagnostics and tolerances.
Just like when they make cellphones that fail into a boot loop, no failsafe, just failure. Or games/programs that crash or error without giving you a reason why or where it failed and no debugging.
This is the nature of software these days.
If this is the future of technology, I see a bleak future.
One thing I can blame is that bmw subcontracts things like scr systems. In a highly globalized and yet concentrated markets, we get unofficial monopolies that kill independent development.

The heater assembly is made up of three molded plastic pieces that are bonded/welded together. Where the white/yellow nylon looking end that clips into the fuel filter joins the black center portion, the seam started to let go.

first time i hear of the filter issue.

im familiar with the foam insualtion around the filter of which there are 2 or 3 pieces.

but i think you are fereing to the funky device attached to the filter.

on a side note one day i tried lighting up diesel with a blow torch and could not get it to ignite. another huge reason why diesel cars are safer than gas.

but yes nothing worse than being stranded and getting ass raped on the road.

The filter heater was recalled in 2011.

Yes, if it hadn't been diesel, it would have been a much scarier experience, but when aerosolized like that, it will still burn.

Let the diesel wick into something like wood or cloth and it will burn easier.

I have some pics of the part that I can upload when I'm not on mobile.