X5 35D Towing picture and info please
 

I am sorry if its here but I didnt find.
Can you please share their opinions on towing with the x5D. I am about to join the X5 club again with a Diesel this round, but would like to make sure I will be happy towing my boat with it.

Please at least include what you tow and how long and how much weight it is. Then how it tows.

Pictures of what you tow would be great too.
Thanks

No experience yet...but my race buddy has a 2010 x5d. He recently towed his 3000lb racecar on a uhaul car hauler, 4 spare wheels/tires in the x5 plus tools etc.
He said he was getting 18+mpg doing about 80mph. He said it towed really well.
iirc the uhaul trailer is fairly light.

I tow a similar setup with my 4.6 and get 13mpg doing 70mph.

That's the Uhaul trailer that's got stickers all over it saying don't go over 45 mph, right? :)

umm 55mph...

Here you go :)

Funf Dreisig

Funny... but we all know the stickers are there to cover Uhauls' butt.


To the OP- How much does your boat+trailer+stuff weigh? 3500-4000 lbs should be quite OK. get an brake controller.

A

Most small-medium sized boat trailers I've seen use surge brakes which makes the brake controller unnecessary.

Electric brakes used to have issues with being submerged in water (but these days it's not much of an issue as they're well sealed).

I'm towing an E30 race car on an 18' open trailer. Trailer's got electric brakes, and I'm using a Tekonsha P3 brake controller. All in with my spares I think I'm towing around 4500#. I get about 20 MPG towing, and easily do the speed limit anywhere. Heck, it doesn't even gear down for most hills. It feels really stable with the trailer behind, no worries at all. Go for it!

Off Topic
 

Sure they are, but they are also there to advise the customer of the design and maintenance criteria for the trailer.

If you want to tow at 50% over the rated speed, with a full load, then you simply need to have full confidence in UHaul's maintenance practices with respect to trailer tires and wheel bearings. It isn't like they have ever lost a wheel or a tire due to overheating......

my boat is 3900 and the trailer 1100 I belive thats a dry weight figure.

I have no doubt that an X5 35d can haul a 5,000 lb. rig, even with several hundred more pounds of load (gas, boating equipment, etc.). But I wouldn't recommend doing this on a regular basis for long runs at freeway speeds or mountains. IMO the issue is the automatic transmission, which is reported to be a fairly common weak point on X5s.

FWIW I'm one of only a handful of X5 (E53 and E70) owners on this forum who have posted that they fairly regularly haul near the upper limit of the X5's range i.e. an all up weight X5 + Trailer + load of 11,000 lbs. But I only do this on relatively short hauls e.g. typically less than an hour and never more than a few hours, one way.

Funf Dreisig

It's hard to argue for or against this from personal experience since it's hard for even BMW to know for sure but I've towed for many highway miles at 5,000+lbs with no transmission issues at all. The diesel is likely even better than my 2003 4.4i (torque is higher and transmission is better).

:iagree:We towed the same loads (e.g. approx 5,000 lbs.), in the same trailer, with our 2001 4.4i with NO transmission issues until it was totaled at just under 100,000 miles. But we never towed for more than 3 hours (one way) at freeway speeds*. And there have been a number of posts about transmission issues. So I can't recommend, based on my own experience, using an X5 for long distance, heavy duty towing.

OTOH I have always wondered if the reported transmission issues were more related to an aggressive driving style, than towing. :dunno:

Funf Dreisig

* FWIW this wasn't because we were afraid to use our X5 for towing runs longer than 3 hours; it was because that was the time/distance between our old house and the new house I was building :)

I don't think that driving distance on the highway is particularly related to wear caused by towing, if there is in fact any additional wear. Wear is usually related to high temperatures, which are tied more closely to start/stop cycles, and number of shifts (or the torque converter not being in lock up mode). If you are on the highway with the torque converter in lockup, there is no real cause of wear, towing or not.

There are lots of posts here by withidl relating to towing 8000+ pounds over the continental divide multiple times, in an early model 4.4. No transmission issues over the vehicle life.