2001 BMW X5 3.0i - Soft-Roading on the Cheap

[Jake]

Mileage: 194,750

Great day yesterday with Taylor, Tom, Joey, Lauren, Brandon, and my friends Jack and Tarron who y'all don't know. Thanks to Taylor for the driveway space! We made a lot of progress on the X5 and I learned a lot in the process. So...

Cleaning
Sweet Jesus this thing was disgusting inside. Taylor attacked the hazy headlights with Plastic-X and brought them back to new(er). Joey replaced the torn steering wheel with a $25 junkyard replacement I found yesterday morning in Lorton. Joey and I slathered the seats in Leatherique, which is hilarious but also worked to legitimately clean them up. I vacuumed the interior and removed several pounds of dog hair, lollipop sticks, Beanie Baby hangtags, and coins. Jack and I attacked the carpets with a Rug Doctor and got them surprisingly clean again. It all sounds kind of silly on a $1500 beater, but it does make it a more pleasant place to spend time and will help a little with resale.

The car washed up pretty well, too! 

MAF
The new MAF eliminated the transmission failure light and the car shifts like buttah. Yay.

Wheel Speed Sensor
Tom replaced the WSS on the front right and repaired the shitty already-repaired wiring. The code for "inlet valve, front right" is still there. Harumph.

O2 Sensor
Taylor broke his O2 socket as I arrived so we didn't tackle this yet. The Bank 1 sensors are accessed from the top of the car and don't look all bad to do. 

Electronics
The whole car continues to freak out about random things. The E53 and E39 were early "K-Bus" cars, which is basically like modern Canbus. Every module is more or less on a car-wide network and can talk to each other. If one K-Bus item goes down, it can take down random shit with it. In my case, things go down and then come back based on slamming of doors or hitting bumps or whatever.

Tom replaced the ignition switch and that didn't seem to change anything.

I am turning my attention to the Eonon cheap Chinese radio that's installed now. These radios promise navigation, touchscreen stuff, Bluetooth, etc running on very-old Android for the low price of $300. They include a Canbus Adapter to integrate with steering wheel controls and so on. The E53 is identical to the E39 in that the normal radio setup is a "head unit" and info display (MPG, clock, distance to empty, etc) in the center of the dash, with a CD player above, and the amp/radio tuner in the cargo area. Installing the Eonon fucks with all of this because you just... remove it. 

I got in touch with the previous owner (more on that in a sec) and he said the electronic issues all started when he had Best Buy install the Eonon. So, I'm heading up to Jessup, MD today to the LKQ junkyard. They have two 3.0i pre-LCI X5s and I plan on stealing every fucking piece of the radio from them. I suspect the Eonon has some shitty wiring work behind it and/or the Canbus adapter is failing. 

Previous Owner
Dan and Monique called me last night and were super friendly. They live nearby and owned the X5 from 2003 until about March of this year, it was a dealer demo or something for the first two years. He did much of the work himself and could recall every little thing about it. He claimed that all of this had been done in the last two years:

• Radiator
  
• Water pump
  
• Thermostat
  
• Drive belts
  
• VANOS unit
  
• Valve cover gasket
  
• Spark plugs
  
• Window regulators x4
  
• ABS module rebuild (really)
  
• Bank 2, Sensor 1 O2 replacement
  
• Eonon head unit install (after MID pixels died on OEM unit)
  

So I think it has good bones. He told me about these repairs without my prompting so I don't think he's trying to prove anything about how he cared for it. Moreso just a "oh yeah I did this too" - he was pretty up front with everything and kept adding "oh yeah one more" as we talked for about half an hour. I feel better given they owned it for so long continuously, versus a nine-owner example (*cough* my E46 M3). I am hoping this radio replacement will cure a lot of the electronic ailments or at least provide a good baseline. The car honestly drives fine as-is, but I'd like a bit more consistency in how, like, the reverse lights work.

Under the rear seat:



Tom working on the wheel speed sensor wiring:



"We have to have lines in the carpet or the internet will make fun of you!"





This is what came out of the Rug Doctor:



Cleaned up:



I really don't hate this thing one bit. The trip is going to be rad.