Hi to all from me & my x5 3.0d cat D

[AW8]

Hi Powercat,

Improvement gained is impressive when the low repair cost is considered.

I guess I may be one of the aforemetioned fussy BMW owners as I would want it repaired more professionally.

The agenda to save money may be hard to continue in terms of running costs albeit I am not assuming this to be the case.

The appearance is unlikely to strengthen the cars image albeit this is clearly not an ownership concern.

[andym3]

[quote=""AW8""]I guess I may be one of the aforemetioned fussy BMW owners as I would want it repaired more professionally.[/quote]
Me to, I hate it when my car is dirty or has some stone chips! If it had any damage, it would be straight into the body shop!

[Rusty]

Great job that. Amazing what can be acheived for so little.

Now you can get out and enjoy the drive..

[Turks]

Well done Powercat... X5 ownership for under £5k.


Turks.

[Powercat]

Thanks guys, its forums like this that help to keep the cost down
if I had taken this to the body shop I'm pretty sure the repair costs and parts would have been more like 3000 and it would have still been registered as a category D so my advice unless you're going to do yourself don't bother buying an insurance right off.
I was lucky with my x5 I did a BMW history search and it came back as 2 owners and all full BMW dealer servicing history,
it won't be seeing another BMW servic as I will do my own from now on
The only concern I have is the gearbox as they seem very expensive to fix (when)they go wrong I have seen a thread on another forum that shows you how to do it yourself at the moment the gearbox seems to be running correctly though with 115,000 on the clock you never know.

[X5Sport]

.......of course you may have already got a replacement in there

[AW8]

If it were mine I would still be tempted to keep eye out for a salvage bumper &/or bonnet on the cheap as it would transform the car dramatically.

Maybe some logic in sourcing a cracked bumper but not as damaged as the one you have then maybe getting a smart repair. A bonnet that needs a respray. A bonet off the car could be repainted for £100-150 cash if you know the right person.

Costs certainly would be far lower than figures metioned.

[andym3]

[quote=""Powercat""]The only concern I have is the gearbox as they seem very expensive to fix (when)they go wrong [/quote]
Oh yes a problem I currently have!
The gearbox can go one of two ways - 1) You will loose drive altogether or 2) you can loose reverse like mine has. Either was your looking at a new gearbox or a refurb. Ive been doing soooo much research it's unreal to try and get the best price to get it fixed and it seems the X5 automatic gearbox is not designed for high mileage & if you get 100k miles out of it you are verylucky! My car has done 102k miles
My best price for repair so far is a recon box supplied & fitted with 2 years warrenty for £1735 inc VAT.
If you are worried about your gearbox, ive been told regular oil changes can help. If you change the gearbox oil every time you change your engine oil.

[Powercat]

sorry to hear about your bad gearbox, maybe I'm lucky and mine has got a replacement, as suggested above,
I have been reading about doing the oil change on the gearbox, here is the link somebody else posted here.
http://www.xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-forums/ ... e-diy.html

And if you're up to taking spanners to the gearbox heres a link of what you will find inside.
http://www.xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-forums/ ... -time.html
I will certainly give it a go should I get any problems, unfortunately the guy doesn't tell you where to get the new friction plates and seals.

[andym3]

I would love to have the guts to rip my gearbox apart and give it ago fixing it! But I dont

[AW8]

I have probably posted enough elsewhere re E53 auto gearbox manufacturers & refeence numbers but should add that all 6 cylinder prefacelift cars have the GM 5 Speed auto transmission whereas the failed item andym3 refers to as on his prefacelift 4.4i is a ZF 5 Speed unit thus not one of the same. Not to say I am convinced any E53 auto box will win a reliaibility award

[andym3]

I found out something interesting today! Apparently the autogear box on the 3.0D X5 is more prone to failing than the gearbox's on the petrol models! So you 3.0D X5 owner beware

[Powercat]

Hmmm I was thinking if mine did go wrong maybe I should get a replacement six speed gearbox, instead of
opening the box of frogs( gearbox ) I wonder if anyone has tried this already ?

[AW8]

[quote=""andym3""]I found out something interesting today! Apparently the autogear box on the 3.0D X5 is more prone to failing than the gearbox's on the petrol models! So you 3.0D X5 owner beware [/quote]

The auto gearbox in the 3.0i petrol prefacelift is the same as the gerabox in the 3.0d prefacelift..........the 5 speed GM unit.

The prefacelift 3.0d produces more torque & power more so when rempapped. Many prefacelift 3.0d cars were remapped & nobody knows just how many were done. I can't recall the source of info but remember reading one school of thought alleging that the extra load placed on a GM unit can causes it to be suffer earlier failure albeit there is no hard evidence to back this up whatsoever afaik. The earlier GM unit not regarded as being as durable as the 6 spped ZF unit in the facelift 3.0d.

Facelift 3.0d cars actually have same 6-Speed ZF auto box as in the petrol 4.4i facelift & 4.8is.