My X5 E70 is a 2010 Diesel. Does that help?

Look if yours are where he described. There's small flaps that cover the holes btw.

This was a huge problem with the first gen X3. I had water accumulate in the floors of the car each time it rained. BMW unclogged the drains, but the problem persisted. Long story short, after reading about the "sunroof cassette" on multiple forums, I took it back to BMW. The car was already out of warranty, but the service manager pitched my case to BMW after I showed him online that this was a major problem, and BMW ended up paying for it as a "courtesy". The whole inside roof and supporting panels had to be removed. Total billed by my BMW dealer to BMW was almost $5,000 for parts and labor.

Thank you for posting the photos! Going to be fun getting at this with the fender in place.

Use water to flush out
 

Thanks to the OP for this thread and edennelson for the photo of where the front drain hole is located. You were a huge help.

I'm writing to share two tricks I came up with that worked great for me.

1) To completely diagnose whether it was my sunroof drain that was causing the wet carpets, I took blue painters tape and taped off the seam around the entire panoramic sunroof just before a huge rainstorm hit. The storm came and went and the inside front passenger footwell was dry this time, so I knew for sure that it was the sunroof drain and not one of the many other possibilities.

2) My drain pipe was not fully clogged--water would actually drain through it, just too slowly for heavy rainstorms. The heavy rain would fill up the cassette faster than it could drain, then overflow into the vehicle.

Since the drain was not fully clogged, the compressed air trick would not work. So I switched to using running water to wash all the dirt out of the drain pipe. What I did was buy a brass adapter to neck down a garden hose (3/4 Female Garden Hose Thread) to a shower head thread (1/2 Male NPT), then used an OralBreeze shower dental jet. (You could simply neck down to 1/4in or 3/16in vinyl hose with another simple thread adapter; the OralBreeze is essentially a valve that necks down to 1/4in hose barb.)

I jammed the thin hose down the drain pipe, then turned on the water with very low water pressure. It doesn't take much pressure because the necking-down will drive the pressure way up. I let it run for a while and washed all the dust/grime out. It was pretty obvious when the drain pipe finally cleared, because the water I sprayed into the cassette began to drain rapidly, faster than the hose could feed it.

The other good thing about using water is that it should push through any kinks in the drain pipe.

Only one of the four drain pipes was clogged. The front driver side had full, fast drainage, and the two rear drain pipes were clear.

Thanks to all above for the tips provided. My 2008 E70 X5 4.8L flooded twice recently.
Dchang0, your situation was similar to mine. Pass side almost completely plugged and the drivers side was partially plugged. Car was parked slightly down hill each time it flooded so the rear drains offered no help.

I did not have any Weed eater cord, I tried a small copper wire, no luck. I blew air using a small hose attached to my compressor knozzle, not sure if that helped.
I took a small water bottle, standard cheap water 12 oz bottle and mixed a strong mix of dawn dish soap and water in the bottle. I poured that into the channel where the drain is. It took about 1/4 bottle and backed up.
You need to be careful to get water only into the channel most under the body of the car.
There is another channel that houses the roof retractor track which you can also fill with water but it has no drain if you happen to fill it by mistake it will eventually drain into your roof, mine ended up in the Light fixture at the front of the sunroof.
I blew more air a couple times with soapy water down in the tube and junk started coming out on the floor behind each front tire and the flow picked up quite a bit.
I flowed 3 or 4 more bottles of soapy water down the drains while cleaning all the drain area around the sunroof opening. There was a lot of light dirt in that area that could over time get into the drain again.

One note. These cars have the pop up wind deflector in the very front of the sunroof opening. If you bump the wind deflector mechanism it will break. I broke both sides before learning what had happened. There is a very thin plasic support on the wind deflector about 6" back from the opening on each side. My 10 year old plastic was so brittle it broke into small pieces when I lifted a little on the deflector to get access for cleaning. My Mistake. They can be very brittle.

The rear drains come out of the E70 inside the rear lift gate opening. Open the gate and look about 6-8 " inside each side on the top, under where the lift gate will cover when closed. Both of mine were open but I did get a little dirt out of both. These I cleaned from the rear as I could not find access from the front. They feed from under the fixed glass in the rear of the sunroof. I ran my wire up through these on each side.
Leaks are fixed.

Weed eater cord didn't work for me. It would not bend around the first corner, some 1 to 2 inches in from the top of the front drain tube. Some people have mentioned that theirs got stuck too, yet some people mentioned that it worked for them--there might be some model years where it does work and some where it doesn't.


This happened to me too--it drained into the light fixture right over the rear passenger-side seat. I could see the water beading up right at the edge of where the light fixture is press-fit into the ceiling and used a paper towel to soak up the water. I sprayed water into the retractor tracks thinking they would drain out the rear drain pipes, but nope. Thinking about it now, that makes sense, as these two tracks are never going to get water in them while the sunroof is closed. They are covered by glass and are not under the seam between the metal roof and the glass.

Your idea of using both water and air is great, especially for those who have access to an air compressor hose and don't want to neck-down a garden hose with adapters.

Your rear drains are in the same place as mine (not too surprising since we have the same model year). I also was not able to locate the entrances to the rear drain pipes from their front side. I'll try running a wire into them from the rear exit like you suggest, though I am very sure they are not clogged. Might as well clean them anyway because of the horror stories about the water flooding the battery compartment if the rear drains get plugged up.

Thanks for the tips and the warning about the wind dam's brittleness. I'll keep that in mind next time I clean the drains.

Hi everyone, new here, thanx for the informative thread. Is there a way to get to the bottom of these drains without tearing the whole fender apart? Planing on getting started soon before summer rains!

If you did not get it to clear out from above I suggest you go back and try some more. I think to clear the bottom you have to take part of the fender apart on an X5 for access. I would work a long time from the sunroof to get the drains cleared. Warm soapy water helped clear mine. Ran the soapy water in till it backed up and then hit it with Air Pressure using my compressor and I have a small air tool to blast a small stream of air down the hole. My device allows me to turn it open and let small amounts of air pressure in at a time, this allows a little pressure to help the soapy water work.
I probably never had more than 15 psi in the tube at one time until it cleared. Then I ran more soapy water in and hit it with full pressure from my 150 PSI source.
If you hit it with too much air first I think the tubes in your car may burst or separate leaving you in deep SH**.

The bottom drain can be reached of you remove the clips of the wheel well near the door side and peeling it back. Sometimes the rubber end of the drain itself is clogged. In my case the bmw dimwits twisted and kinked the line that goes to the outlet on driver's side. I had to remove the inner footwell parts and frm to untwist it properly.