Xoutpost.com - My First BMW

After years of Hondas, Toyotas and Lexuses I finally got my first BMW. Thanks for preparing me for it.

If it were up to me I would have gone for 335 but wife convinced me of X to haul stuff and kids. Quickly moved from X3 to X5 so here I am on Xoutpost E70 forum.

I got a 2008 X5 3.0i with 48K miles. Pictures included – those running boards look nice. I have 2K miles and about 6 months of warranty left and I have trying to drive this baby hard to shake out any issues. It is still too big and heavy for my taste but can’t complaint – handling is superb.

So far I have drained the battery once. The car went completely dead. I had to crawl into the trunk to open it from inside to inspect the battery. Roadside service guy could not jump start it to have it running. Per him pretty common for X5s - once they die they are gone. It had to be towed to the dealer who concluded that battery negative terminal wire was bad that caused excessive charging leading battery to die. Dealer replaced the wire and battery under warranty (nice!)

Due to my driving habit I will need a battery charger. CTEK 3300 on Amazon.com is $57, which looks like good price. It doesn’t have inside cigarette lighter connector. I don’t mind plugging alligator clamps under the hood. Are there any advantage / dis-advantages to plugging inside vs. under-hood connector?

Secondly are there some other aspects that I need to drive hard before I run out of factory warranty.