New forum member and first time BMW owner

[AceEngineer]

Hello all

I am a new member of the forum and a first time BMW owner. I just bought a used X5 for my wife’s DD and for trips to Vegas. I got a spectacular deal on a gorgeous 2005 X5 4.4i with 96k miles. The entire car is literally in showroom condition and the exterior has zero damage and like new paint. I have to admit I paid well over KBB, but well worth it. It came with a set of 35% worn winter tires on separate BMW OEM rims. The summer stickies on the car are also only about 40% worn and all eight tires have the BMW star. The seller turned out to be a BMW fanatic that was extremely meticulous about his cars. He passed on to me all the service records since it was new along with the receipt for the 4 new lifetime air springs that were just installed. At 75k the car had new valve guide seals installed by a dealer to the tune of $7500. The seller also gave me a data base from a phone app called ACar that tracks all service together with every fuel stop with gallons and mileage for the last five years; it’s unbelievable how the guy took care of his cars. The deal also included spare air and oil filters with gaskets and new plugs plus various plastic clips that the seller had to replace over the years, so he bought extras. Things like 4 extra clips for the rear sunshades because they break easily and stuff like that. A Bentley service manual was also included. When I crawled under the car, there was not a single sign of an oil leak and the underside had a patina of road dirt indicating the bottom hadn’t been power washed recently to hide a leak. I’ve had the car a week now and have gone over it with a fine tooth comb and the only cosmetic flaws are two small filled chips in the windshield and a 1 inch square tear in the corner of the tint in the tailgate. The seller had told me ahead of time that the panoramic sunroof didn’t open all the way and as it turns out this will be the only repair necessary to return the car to literal showroom condition. I’ve already checked out the price of the parts and the kits for the front and rear roofs run about $500 total. Removing a sunroof is something I have done before and if this is the only repair required it was still a super deal. My son and I have hooked my new X5 to a borrowed BMW factory service tool to check out the car. While we had the tool set up we cleared the transmission and throttle learned behavior and set all the car memory items to our liking. It came with the two original keys and I bought 2 more from china for $15 which we had no trouble programming to the car. We are still trying to figure out if we can get the halo lights to be the daytime driving lights. Anybody out there managed to do this yet? I downloaded a list of available options for the 2005’s and my new/used BMW has every option listed plus a few that must be dealer installed after delivery. The only non-stock thing about the car is the seller had installed Alpine HD display screens in the head rests for the rear seat passengers with a DVD player with remote in the glove box and an IR transmitter for the earphones mounted centered just above the rear hatch.
For those of you who managed to read all of the above and are wondering, I paid $11k even for the car.

AceEngineer

[Pelican Parts]

Hello and welcome to the forum! Sounds like you're already being proactive with the new ride and getting yourself familiar with the various systems. To help you with future maintenance and repairs down the line, I'm attaching a link to our site's DIY tech articles on the E53 platform. Please let us know if you have any questions or if we can assist with any part needs.

http://www.pelicanparts.com/BMW/tech...ch_main_X5.htm

[AceEngineer]

I don't know how it happened, but this thread appeared in the wrong forum. I was sure I was in the X5 forum when I hit the new post button, but I must have blew it. Could an administrator please move this thread to the E53 X5 forum, please.

AceEngineer

[shogun]

Moved to X5 forum

[AceEngineer]

[peter2772000]

Congrats on the purchase. Looks like you got a good deal, especially due to the amazing care the truck received. I dunno if that year v8 is reliable or not, but hopefully you'll be fine.

[Chrisconn04]

Hello all

I am a new member of the forum and a first time BMW owner. I just bought a used X5 for my wife’s DD and for trips to Vegas. I got a spectacular deal on a gorgeous 2005 X5 4.4i with 96k miles. The entire car is literally in showroom condition and the exterior has zero damage and like new paint. I have to admit I paid well over KBB, but well worth it. It came with a set of 35% worn winter tires on separate BMW OEM rims. The summer stickies on the car are also only about 40% worn and all eight tires have the BMW star. The seller turned out to be a BMW fanatic that was extremely meticulous about his cars. He passed on to me all the service records since it was new along with the receipt for the 4 new lifetime air springs that were just installed. At 75k the car had new valve guide seals installed by a dealer to the tune of $7500. The seller also gave me a data base from a phone app called ACar that tracks all service together with every fuel stop with gallons and mileage for the last five years; it’s unbelievable how the guy took care of his cars. The deal also included spare air and oil filters with gaskets and new plugs plus various plastic clips that the seller had to replace over the years, so he bought extras. Things like 4 extra clips for the rear sunshades because they break easily and stuff like that. A Bentley service manual was also included. When I crawled under the car, there was not a single sign of an oil leak and the underside had a patina of road dirt indicating the bottom hadn’t been power washed recently to hide a leak. I’ve had the car a week now and have gone over it with a fine tooth comb and the only cosmetic flaws are two small filled chips in the windshield and a 1 inch square tear in the corner of the tint in the tailgate. The seller had told me ahead of time that the panoramic sunroof didn’t open all the way and as it turns out this will be the only repair necessary to return the car to literal showroom condition. I’ve already checked out the price of the parts and the kits for the front and rear roofs run about $500 total. Removing a sunroof is something I have done before and if this is the only repair required it was still a super deal. My son and I have hooked my new X5 to a borrowed BMW factory service tool to check out the car. While we had the tool set up we cleared the transmission and throttle learned behavior and set all the car memory items to our liking. It came with the two original keys and I bought 2 more from china for $15 which we had no trouble programming to the car. We are still trying to figure out if we can get the halo lights to be the daytime driving lights. Anybody out there managed to do this yet? I downloaded a list of available options for the 2005’s and my new/used BMW has every option listed plus a few that must be dealer installed after delivery. The only non-stock thing about the car is the seller had installed Alpine HD display screens in the head rests for the rear seat passengers with a DVD player with remote in the glove box and an IR transmitter for the earphones mounted centered just above the rear hatch.
For those of you who managed to read all of the above and are wondering, I paid $11k even for the car.

AceEngineer

Congrats on your new BMW. I was wondering how did you program the keys from China?

Also, what scan tool did you use to make all of those changes? I have tired several scan tools in the past 7 years, but have not liked any of them.

Thanks for the help.


Chris

[AceEngineer]

I was careful to buy keys that came with a new security chip and we programmed them to the car with a key programmer I bought from China; https://www.aliexpress.com/item/2017...311.0.0.ts155j One thing I have noticed, the Chinese keys do not have a rechargeable battery and the recharge antenna and circuitry are not on their circuit card. I guess that is the difference between the $7 and $30 keys out there for sale. We borrowed some software and a cable from the local indy BMW wrench to make the changes, he is a friend of my son's. The software he loaned us allowed access to everything.

AceEngineer

[Chrisconn04]

I was careful to buy keys that came with a new security chip and we programmed them to the car with a key programmer I bought from China; https://www.aliexpress.com/item/2017...311.0.0.ts155j One thing I have noticed, the Chinese keys do not have a rechargeable battery and the recharge antenna and circuitry are not on their circuit card. I guess that is the difference between the $7 and $30 keys out there for sale. We borrowed some software and a cable from the local indy BMW wrench to make the changes, he is a friend of my son's. The software he loaned us allowed access to everything.

AceEngineer

Thanks for the information.


Chris

[AceEngineer]

Well, I've had my '05 BMW X5 for a while now and am extremely pleased with the purchase. The better half and I took a road trip to Vegas in the X5 and I just love the way it drives on the highway. We have had a few problems, but they were mostly minor. The one biggee problem was when the seat heater shorted and burned a hole in the leather and my wife's coat on her way to work one morning. Since the car was so pristine I decided to repair the seat and heater to original condition. My son and I fixed the seat using a heater from a Range Rover with lots of thanks to "X5SND" over on the X-Outpost forum and his very nice DIY thread at: https://xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-forums/...nt-repair.html The upholstery shop bill was $260 to sew in a new piece of matching leather into the seat cushion cover which we removed and delivered to the shop while we installed the new heater on the cushion. The cost of the matching leather and its shipping was half of that bill. We preordered everything and had an appointment with the upholstery shop so the car was only out of commission for a day with a half for a total cost of just over $325. Other than that, no major problems. I like the car so much that I have decided to buy the wife a different car and take the BMW for myself. She says that it is OK, but only if I can find her a Mercedes ML500 or ML550 to replace it, so I am going to look at an '07 this afternoon.

AceEngineer

[Rokolya87]

Great deal you got there I might say. A couple of things tho.

1. Next time to change the engine oil, check if there are any plastic debris on the old oil filter and the bottom of the oil filter housing. If its clean, you are in luck, the plastic tops on the chain guide rails are in good shape. Even if the car was taken care of with an insane scrupulosity, like it sounds in your case, chains of polymers that plastic is made of, simply collapse over time. About 15 years for M62 engine. Give or take.


2. Transmission fluid. These complicated transmissions require maintenance, regardless of what BMW says (think it’s a coincidence that these cars are having problems after BMW’s recommended “lifetime oil fill”?) Remember, a free maintenance plan is much cheaper for the dealer if they decide to delete a few items off the list. One of these items is the transmission fluid, which many of the BMW gearheads are recommending closer to a 40-50k interval, depends on your driving habits and whether or not you tow any trailers with your X5. You should replace the filter at the same time while you’re in there. Remember when changing any transmission fluid, remove the FILL plug first. If for some reason it won’t budge, you don’t want it to be when you just finished emptying out your trans!

[peter2772000]

You mean pieces like this? https://redirect.viglink.com/?format...Fusp%3Dsharing

According to our dealer, probably part of the chain guides, but if they take the engine apart and find nothing, it'll cost us $800. And ours is an N55 6 cyl with 49k miles
When we're down in FL again in March, I'm draining the oil again and if I find even just one more piece, I'm dropping it off to the dealer and insisting they tear into her.

[Rokolya87]

2012 sounds is a bit early for chain guides failure. And the peace in the picture looks a bit different. Here is an extreme example of what chain guide failure really looks like.

IMG_2129.jpgIMG_2128.jpg

[peter2772000]

Yeah, I've seen pics of extreme failure. And in one of those pics, some of the smaller bits the poster had initially found when draining the oil was very similar to the piece I had. That, plus the initial "guess" by a BMW tech at the dealership is what leads me to believe that the piece truly is from the chain guides.

[AceEngineer]

1. Next time to change the engine oil, check if there are any plastic debris on the old oil filter and the bottom of the oil filter housing. If its clean, you are in luck, the plastic tops on the chain guide rails are in good shape. Even if the car was taken care of with an insane scrupulosity, like it sounds in your case, chains of polymers that plastic is made of, simply collapse over time. About 15 years for M62 engine. Give or take.

2. Transmission fluid. These complicated transmissions require maintenance, regardless of what BMW says (think it’s a coincidence that these cars are having problems after BMW’s recommended “lifetime oil fill”?) Remember, a free maintenance plan is much cheaper for the dealer if they decide to delete a few items off the list. One of these items is the transmission fluid, which many of the BMW gearheads are recommending closer to a 40-50k interval, depends on your driving habits and whether or not you tow any trailers with your X5. You should replace the filter at the same time while you’re in there. Remember when changing any transmission fluid, remove the FILL plug first. If for some reason it won’t budge, you don’t want it to be when you just finished emptying out your trans!

The previous owner preemptively replaced the chain guides 10k miles before I bought it because "he could hear them" and he had the tranny fluid changed twice already. It was all listed in the Carfax service history report as being done by a local dealer.

Another reason I was willing to pay over blue book.

AceEngineer

[Rokolya87]

Can't believe people like your guy still exist))) I'd go shake his hand! Lol)) Then there is nothing to worry about for at least 50k. Maybe just the rubber part. Spray them with 303 protectant, to protect hoses, belts, wipers, even tires from drying out. Check this out to learn more - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEoOWgV6Dl8&t=36s

[AceEngineer]

Yea, I've never seen anybody as fanatic about their BMW as the guy who sold me the E53. I've had it for a couple of months now and I love it so much I just bought another BMW. Over the X-mas holidays some dimwit rear ended my personal rice rocket (a Honda EP3 Si) and their insurance totaled it. I have shopped for over two weeks now and yesterday I bought a 2008 BMW X3 30si that I found on CraigsList. This one is not quite as nice as the X5, but it is real close. The one owner was the wife of a retired surgeon in Santa Fe. It was garage kept and all recommended service was done by the dealer. The only visible wear seems to be the finish on the window switch panel in the drivers door. Titanium Silver with a silver leather interior. All options except Nav and only 108k miles. I can pick it up on Tuesday when the banks open so I am on pins and needles until then.

AceEngineer