[Aronis]

Today is the day. Quick ride to warm up the differential fluids and the I am putting the car up on my Quickjack in a few minutes. I'll get some photos of the process. If you don't hear back from me by 6 pm today send help.

Mike

[GranitM5]

You're a brave man

[hoffmeister]

Good luck! Cant wait to see hownit goes. Did this on my truck a few months ago but havent dared on a bmw.

[Aronis]

Finished a few hours ago, spent extra time cleaning the garage and re-organizing my tools.

I had one slow down, had to run to Home Depot. I needed a 14 mm hex socket to get to the front differential fill hole.

The only technical snag was the Foxwell NT530 reported the temperature of the transfer case at 0.00 C. The car was warm, my garage is heated (set to 70), so the car was at the required temperature of 68 degrees. I could not get it to properly do the oil change protocol. I was able to remove 500 ml of the fluid so I just refilled and closed it up. Now I have 50/50 mix of old oil and new oil. I will find the CORRECT friggen Scanner to do this function. Sending it back to Amazon. I was back and forth with Foxwell support over the past few weeks, they assured me it would do the function.

Photographic snag.....my goPro did not record video, even though the record light was on. Oh well. I thought I was recording all of it and was going to edit it down to quick clips but the camera did not save the files? I don't know why. Very odd.

The plastic undercover is easy to take off. 8 mm socket is used. The side cover also to get at the fill hole on the front differential. You need a 14mm hex socket to get at that side plug, sorry no photo, but with a swivel and a socket extension it's an easy shot to get that plug out. The Drain plug was easy to get to. I refilled with 600 ml of G2.

Oil change. Easier with the stiffening plate off LOL.

Rear differential was very easy. Drain and fill plugs are easy to get to, straight shot. I refilled with the 1 liter G4 oil. FCP sent the wrong plugs, so I only had one set of new plugs which I used on the front differential. I replaced the gaskets on the rear by taking them off the wrong plugs. They sent 4 magnetic plugs, but these are about twice as deep, I did not want to change having it protruding into the diff and hitting something.

The transfer case process includes removing the center heat shield which is oddly missing from my car......grrrrrrrr. As it turns out the special 14 mm Hex wrench I bought can remove the drain/fill plug without removing the support bracket, but I did anyway. I did not look first I guess. The special BMW tool to remove the fluid includes a small metal tube that fits into the bottom of the differential. I used a small plastic tube which also fit. The large syringe extractor worked well. I refilled using the pump in the bottle gadget. I could not get the Foxwell to do the oil service function. It reported the oil temp to be 0.00 degrees celsius which it was not!

The quickjack with the extension and the large rubber blocks gives excellent access. My buddy who was over to play was tying to get me to the the transmission service also. I'll do that at 50,000 miles. I don't buy that life time oil BS. ZF's website even says to change the oil in the transmission at 50,000 miles.

And I am going to do oil changes every 5000 miles.

Mike

[Aronis]

Hold the Phone.....the camera did record. I just checked it again. Not sure why I could not see them on my laptop. I looked at the camera and they are there. So video to follow.....Editing will take time.

Mike

[Aronis]

Some Video. Sped up x 2.....basics I guess. I spend more time on car work than on video work....oh well....

Mike

[hoffmeister]

Congrats in this. Good feeling to get a job like this done and you just get to know your car so much better.

If you do find a good scanner that works properly on these cars can you report what it is?

[aj_g80]

question, why change the diff oil? what mileage are you at?

nice stuff nonetheless.

[Aronis]

Originally Posted by aj_g80

question, why change the diff oil? what mileage are you at?

nice stuff nonetheless.

40k miles. Car sent me an email saying it was due for oil/filter front and rear diff and transfer case oil changes. My car would not lie to me.

Mike

[Maverik259]

Originally Posted by Aronis

40k miles. Car sent me an email saying it was due for oil/filter front and rear diff and transfer case oil changes. My car would not lie to me.

Mike

At lease bmw doesn't act like it's a lifetime fluid like they do on the X5. Thankfully my bmw extended warranty covered it because it was $5500 to change transfer cases when an oil change several thousand miles sooner or even a rebuild would have sufficed. Insane business model.

[Aronis]

Transmission fluid is still listed as life time, although ZF says otherwise. I'll be doing the transmission fluid/filter change at 50,000 miles.

Mike

[NoMods]

tagging for research

[pmsteinm]

I'm planning to do the transfer case, transmission, and both diffs on my wife's X5 this summer to practice

I'll post here when I do. There are some minor differences but mostly the same procedures.

[pbonsalb]

While the diffs and transfer case are small capacity and hand pumping works, I recommend a pressurized trans pump for the trans.

[F10Mfizzy]

Originally Posted by pbonsalb

While the diffs and transfer case are small capacity and hand pumping works, I recommend a pressurized trans pump for the trans.

Dealer charged me 388 for transfer case. Wasn’t bad at all. They gotta plug it in to open the reservoir fully. A way for us to bring it in. I only got 13k miles on mine but I got ocd with my stuff lol front and rear diff used redline 75 w 90 and transfer case went with oem oil. I got quotes 800 to do the trans fluid flush from the dealer. I will go back and do it at 25k miles

[pmsteinm]

You can DIY the plug-in part with a 24hr ISTA subscription. I did that to flush brake fluid on the X5 which uses DSCi and requires that. It was pretty slick. It pumped out most the fluid for me before telling me to attach the bleeder, then work through the steps. At the end it runs a leak test too. Only issue was the battery got low during this and complained. I need to get a real power supply like it says but don't want to spend $1500 just yet. The cheap ones don't support Li-Ion which the M5 requires.

[pbonsalb]

I have used my MST 80+ on the M5 when flashing and coding. Nothing I did took longer than 30 minutes at most. I assume, but do not know, that the M5 charging circuitry including what is in the battery, and the MST 80+ protections are sufficient. What have you found to the contrary? I’d rather not buy a $1500 power supply, but both my Cayenne and M5 have factory lithium 12V batteries, so maybe I need a different power supply.

[pmsteinm]

Originally Posted by pbonsalb

I have used my MST 80+ on the M5 when flashing and coding. Nothing I did took longer than 30 minutes at most. I assume, but do not know, that the M5 charging circuitry including what is in the battery, and the MST 80+ protections are sufficient. What have you found to the contrary? I’d rather not buy a $1500 power supply, but both my Cayenne and M5 have factory lithium 12V batteries, so maybe I need a different power supply.

I don't know anything. Just that the BMW doc says "you must use these". Of course that's the Germans always following directions. Sometimes you really need to, sometimes you don't. That's part of why I haven't purchased anything yet. I do know "German engineering" likes to make things unnecessarily complex and unforgiving.

I left the CTEK connected while doing the bleed which seemed to do nothing. That makes sense since it is not a supply and can only provide 48 watts which is nothing.

For now I just CTEK overnight before doing anything. For the M5 I won't need anything too time consuming until I do the diffs/xfer case in a couple years (I plan to at 40k miles). For the X5 I'm not as worried...it's just an X5.

[pmsteinm]

I'm also debating getting the ICOM Next A. Some of the diagnostic and test options in ISTA were not selectable on the X5. I don't know if that's because of the connection, battery voltage, or something else. I also am not clear if I need the ICOM Next B MOST connector. I think no since the port is on the head unit and it looks like is mainly for things like infotainment.