Your fleet running reports

[Mito Man]

What ramps are they?

Race Ramps.

[mik]

Interesting. Thanks.

[Nic]

Replacing the 330 was relatively straight forward, looked at 3 X5’s, all with the newer 215bhp engine, all between £3-4500 and decided they were all sheds. Brief look at a 530d e60 and walked away from that too due dodgy electrics in the tailgate and then bought the cheapest X5 I could. In the dark. Without test driving it.



141,000 miles, weird spec of sat nav, aux heater, electric memory seats, electric steering column but not heated seats. Bought as spares and repairs as it apparently had a blown turbo, something I’m not too sure about so will investigate it next week.

[Zonda_]

Replacing the 330 was relatively straight forward, looked at 3 X5’s, all with the newer 215bhp engine, all between £3-4500 and decided they were all sheds. Brief look at a 530d e60 and walked away from that too due dodgy electrics in the tailgate and then bought the cheapest X5 I could. In the dark. Without test driving it.



141,000 miles, weird spec of sat nav, aux heater, electric memory seats, electric steering column but not heated seats. Bought as spares and repairs as it apparently had a blown turbo, something I’m not too sure about so will investigate it next week.

Hope it’s not the same problem my dads has. Currently awaiting a replacement engine.

[Nic]

Engine sounds fine, fault was described as it being smokey and oil leak in the engine bay, more likely to be a blocked breather or a fault with the aux heater I reckon as it drives ok.

[Zonda_]

Engine sounds fine, fault was described as it being smokey and oil leak in the engine bay, more likely to be a blocked breather or a fault with the aux heater I reckon as it drives ok.

Ah, my dad's kept going into limp home mode, I think the garage said it's thrown a valve due to back pressure.

[Mito Man]

My dad had one of those new, it was a pretty standard spec. I think the electric seats and wheel came with the sport spec. The webasto heater negated the need for heated seats - iirc the heated seats costs as much as the webasto but the webasto heated and deiced the whole car so was much better for winter.
It also had a turbo failure, then a replacement loom which never really fixed it and resulted in more electrical issues before it was sold for a new one.

[Nic]

My dad had one of those new, it was a pretty standard spec. I think the electric seats and wheel came with the sport spec. The webasto heater negated the need for heated seats - iirc the heated seats costs as much as the webasto but the webasto heated and deiced the whole car so was much better for winter.
It also had a turbo failure, then a replacement loom which never really fixed it and resulted in more electrical issues before it was sold for a new one.

That explains a lot with regard to the webasto. It’s obviously been well cared for, current owner has done front drop links, front arms & rear bushes, I guess the oil leak and smoking did it for him.

[Gwaredd]

Oil change on the Alhambra post turbo revealed no more metal in the filter, so the tiny flecks of bronze in the previous one must have come from the turbo bearing when it failed, so hurrah the filter did its job!

The gearbox is as noisy as fvck at idle, and the clutch is close to death still, but it soldiers on.

I also polished the MAF and MAP sensors after being inspired by Beany, but it made no difference. I also had a play with the actuator rod, but lengthening & shortening it by a considerable margin made naff all difference either.

Auris still great for what I need it for, and I'm still tempted to get rid of the EGR & DPF and map it out properly so it turns off the stupid 5th injector that fires diesel into the hot exhaust whenever I'm in a city full of pedestrians, but with the ULEZ looming, I'm probably better off saving the cash & getting a petrol next. Golf GTi is at the top of the list currently.

It's been a while, but I'm now missing something with good throttle response & an exhaust or indution noise.

[Mito Man]

My dad had one of those new, it was a pretty standard spec. I think the electric seats and wheel came with the sport spec. The webasto heater negated the need for heated seats - iirc the heated seats costs as much as the webasto but the webasto heated and deiced the whole car so was much better for winter.
It also had a turbo failure, then a replacement loom which never really fixed it and resulted in more electrical issues before it was sold for a new one.

That explains a lot with regard to the webasto. It’s obviously been well cared for, current owner has done front drop links, front arms & rear bushes, I guess the oil leak and smoking did it for him.

IIRC the heater is down in the wheel arch, if you drive in a puddle more than 20 cm deep you will flood the inside of the arch and the heater so it could cause the excessive smoking - may just need to be taken apart and cleaned.

[Sundayjumper]

...bought the cheapest X5 I could.

In the correct colour fortunately !

Is it auto or manual ? All of the E53s had problems with their auto boxes although by 140k miles it might have been done already.

I got rid of my one when it became apparent the gearbox was about to die.

[JLv3.0]

Gwareth - you need that Pug back.

[Sundayjumper]

RACE CAR update.

The weather has been lovely all weekend so I've finally got some stuff done.

Removed the decent suspension, front hubs & brakes from Compact #2. Replaced with fcuked spares to keep the shell mobile.
Removed the decent engine & gearbox mounts from Compact #2. Replaced with the fcuked gearbox mounts from Compact #1 and some ice hockey pucks to keep the engine off the crossmember.
Put Compact #2 up on stands ready to start tackling the LSD & rear beam swap.

Fitted the decent engine & gearbox mounts to Compact #1.
Fitted an x-brace to Compact #1. The old, fcuked, engine mounts were letting the engine sit too low and had prevented me from fitting it before.

Fitted a 30mm lift kit [1] to The Trailer to try and get it to sit level behind The Tour-egg.

I researched the battery drain issue on the Tour-egg and it's pointing towards an issue with the "KESSY" (keyless entry) system. Very common and easily fixed if you can handle a soldering iron, there's a couple of MOSFETS and some resistors in the control module that often fail and cause the it to draw way too much power. The keyless entry system is meant to unlock the doors as soon as you touch the handle, I'd noticed it didn't always work properly (but would unlock when you pulled the handle, so still working to some extent) but assumed it was a kind of safe mode due to the weak battery. It's possibly the other way around - bad KESSY killing the battery. I'll have to pull the module out and test it but the symptoms are correct. About £10 of components. Definitely worth a try.



[1] some bits of 60x30 box section placed between the axles & the chassis

[NotoriousREV]

My electric garage door has failed. It’s been juddering for a while and occasionally tripping the safety switch and stopping on the way down. I’d tried lubricating it in a few places but no joy. Today I noticed that the cables were lose on the drums. I rewound the loose cable back on, but also noticed there was no tension in the springs so something’s gone wrong. Waiting for the fitter to call me back to figure out how to fix it. This probably means I won’t be able to use my bike until it’s sorted

[Nic]

...bought the cheapest X5 I could.

In the correct colour fortunately !

Is it auto or manual ? All of the E53s had problems with their auto boxes although by 140k miles it might have been done already.

I got rid of my one when it became apparent the gearbox was about to die.

What were the symptoms of the gearbox about to die? It’s an auto, it changed up and down smoothly and kicked down fine too, I’ll do a preventive oil change if necessary.

[Matty]

Replacing the 330 was relatively straight forward, looked at 3 X5’s

Was is everyone buying X5's all of a sudden? Should we all be buying X5's now? Is this in preperations for the Brexitopocolypse? Slap a cow-catcher on the front and some metal grills on the glass?

[Rich B]

Replacing the 330 was relatively straight forward, looked at 3 X5’s

Was is everyone buying X5's all of a sudden? Should we all be buying X5's now? Is this in preperations for the Brexitopocolypse? Slap a cow-catcher on the front and some metal grills on the glass?

you only need to buy an X5 if you’ve just sold a black 330d.

[Gwaredd]

Gwareth - you need that Pug back.

Yup

[Sundayjumper]

What were the symptoms of the gearbox about to die? It’s an auto, it changed up and down smoothly and kicked down fine too, I’ll do a preventive oil change if necessary.

Mine would judder a bit sometimes on light acceleration, e.g. lifting off before a roundabout then it would judder as you exited. Especially if it was slightly uphill. This was a symptom of a dodgy torque converter. Mildly annoying but not a huge problem. It locked up fine when cruising.

However it then developed a habit of dropping out of reverse if you were very gently trickling into a parking space, foot off the throttle and using the natural tendency of slushboxes to creep. Giving it some revs would re-engage it with a bit of a thud. This is due to an o-ring deep inside the gearbox failing and not holding oil pressure properly. The part itself is pennies but removing and stripping the 'box is a huge job and there's a load of "while you're there" bits to do too. At the time it was about £2k for a gearbox rebuild and I just couldn't justify it.

I sold it on ebay with the fault declared, it went to a guy that was buying up broken X5s and shipping them to Eastern Europe where labour was very cheap (gearbox R&R is a huge amount of labour) but the cars were still worth decent money.

A shame really as I quite liked it otherwise. Not really any better than an E39 for luggage, and not as comfy as an E38, but better to drive than you'd expect given its size & weight.

Oh, and they get through suspension bushings pretty fast. Give everything a good look over. If the rear wheels have noticeable negative camber it's the lower wishbone bushes. Mine passed an MOT like this:



Quite obviously fcuked, but because of the way the spring loads the suspension when it's in the air it won't move and you can't feel any play.

And faded / missing pixels on the dash can be fixed with a new ribbon cable.

[Zonda_]

Replacing the 330 was relatively straight forward, looked at 3 X5’s

Was is everyone buying X5's all of a sudden? Should we all be buying X5's now? Is this in preperations for the Brexitopocolypse? Slap a cow-catcher on the front and some metal grills on the glass?

In my experience they are pieces of unreliable badly built shit.