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I just had the same issue on my 2007 530xi 6M sedan.
I have had a slight creak when turning left for about a year. I have checked everything, replaced the wheel bearing, the suspension is fairly new, I simply couldn't figure it out.
I decided to swap the tie rods as a last resort. It's a major pain (who decided to use an 8 sided 38MM inner tie rod nut... there is no reason for this). In any event, I found a snapped off bolt head when doing this job and eventually noticed that two motor mount bracket bolts were missing heads and a third was cracked when I pulled it out. The threaded ends of the snapped ones were easy to pull out with a 'SpeedOut', I'll change the motor mounts as well as I imagine they are damaged from the bracket movement.
No idea what caused this, I do know that for the past two years I have driven this car on a lot of washboard ice covered roads in South Lake Tahoe (we moved back to the Bay Area this year so it shouldn't see as much of that moving forward). Either way, I would have thought this to be very uncommon, but based on this post I guess not.
I just had the same issue on my 2007 530xi 6M sedan.
I have had a slight creak when turning left for about a year. I have checked everything, replaced the wheel bearing, the suspension is fairly new, I simply couldn't figure it out.
I decided to swap the tie rods as a last resort. It's a major pain (who decided to use an 8 sided 38MM inner tie rod nut... there is no reason for this). In any event, I found a snapped off bolt head when doing this job and eventually noticed that two motor mount bracket bolts were missing heads and a third was cracked when I pulled it out. The threaded ends of the snapped ones were easy to pull out with a 'SpeedOut', I'll change the motor mounts as well as I imagine they are damaged from the bracket movement.
No idea what caused this, I do know that for the past two years I have driven this car on a lot of washboard ice covered roads in South Lake Tahoe (we moved back to the Bay Area this year so it shouldn't see as much of that moving forward). Either way, I would have thought this to be very uncommon, but based on this post I guess not.
A $15 18" or 24" pipe wrench is the key to getting any inner tie rod off. It's quick and simple.
I just did my motor mounts due to vibration. I haven't heard of broken heads but that makes me want to go and put new bolts on now.
