503hobby

Just traded my 2003 E39 525i Touring in on a 2010 E61. Wow, what an upgrade! loved the E39 but the E61 is incredible. Longtime BMW owner and I have had many Bimmers starting with a 1992 750iL and includes 5 seperate E39 models, a 1992 325 convertible, E46 Coupe and my current E93 335. (the Touring is for my wife).
The new car is black saphire with black dakota, only 8K miles. Has the M package, premium, value, cold, rear heated seats, Nav HD and PDC packages The prior owner also upgraded the wheels to polished 19" BBS CK with Pilot Spot A/S. I have enjoyed reading this forum, not being an SUV was very important but having the usefullness of a wagon that we have enjoyed for the last 6 years was key.

Lotus99

Sweet ride! Welcome to our family!

mmitev

that's a hot looking touring!
to the forums!

503hobby

Thanks for the nice comments! Came real close to buying a MB wagon but the boss would not hear of it. She gave me my marching orders so I expanded my search and as soon as this popped up at a Land Rover dealer in MD I took the plunge. I don't think they knew what they had. Just another "off" brand trade they wanted to get rid of. It was originally a CA car that the prior owner had his MD BMW dealer find and had it shipped in for him in July of last year. Glad he did, glad I did.

mmitev

haha, a few years down the line these cars will probably have collectible value in the US! less than 1,000 p.a. were sold for the last few years. i bet the LR guys did not know that

btw seeing that the previous owner has invested in shipping and those really nice wheels, its odd that he kept the car for less than a year if I understand you correctly. you may want to look a bit closer into the repair history and the main problems with these cars discussed on the forum here.

there are a few niggles with the sunroof drains, the rear gate cables, the suspension compressor and the diversity amplifier, which can cause a lot of headache when you're not aware of them. on the other hand, they can be easily avoided/fixed if you read up a bit.

good luck with the car!

503hobby

Thanks for the heads up on service issues and on the rarity of that model. I just ran across an Alpine white with black E61 M at the local mall parking lot, no NAV or PDC but it still looked great. The more I drive the car the more impresssed I am with it. No problems in the service history at all. My guess is an habitual "trader in guy" is why it was traded in. He had a 1 year old X5 that he traded on on the E61 according to the original selling dealer folks. I have first div's on the LR a year from now, (Just kidding). When I bought my 3 year old E93 335 last year it had only 6,660 miles on it and it was at a Benz dealer and was a smoking deal. Those kind of luxury car deals are out there, just have to be lucky and find them. Off brand trades can be bargains. Thanks again.

Lotus99

Just to make sure I'm aware of the above issues (and to quickly document them for future posters), could you just please add a bullet point of summary info as to what each issue is?

I know the preventative maintenance for sunroof drains so the water doesn't get into the spare wheel well in the trunk, in which there's lots of electronics that can fry, but

For the rear gate cables, what is there to do preventative wise? I thought that it's just a weak point in that after operation of the tailgate many times, eventually the cables inside can fail, which cause issues. No?

For the suspension compressor, I asked this from another poster who had fixed his, but didn't get a reply. Would this correctly summarize the issue? From what little I've read on it, I thought that in very dusty environments, there's some sort of seal that fails and lets dust into the compressor for the rear suspension, and then the compressor fails. Is that right? So you'd have to replace the seal? Or is it that the tube feeding air into the compressor cracks over time and one should check and replace it before that happens?

Lastly for the diversity amplifier, it's a module in the spoiler of the tailgate, that controls the remote control fobs and radio, and sometimes water can get into it, which fries it and can cause issues. There's a tech bulletin on it that says to add foam around it to avoid water getting to it, that's the only preventative thing I've read. But it's only for cars produced up to Jan. 2008.

Thanks.

mmitev

You're right, there is no real prevention. What I do is I don't open the trunk to the top - i stop it with the button maybe 3-4 inches before the top. After pressing the button again, it comes down from that position. But I am lucky not to have to use the trunk that often. I also use the glass window in most cases. But for people that use the trunk a lot, there is no prevention.

BUT its still good for them to know that an independent shop will fix the loom for like 200-400 USD, and that a repair kit for the loom is meanwhile available from BMW for around 120 USD. This is peanuts compared to what some people have been quoted by the BMW dealer - 1000-1500 USD.

Also, its good to know that this problem exists, and at the first occurence you can get it to the indi shop, and save time and nerves with remote control not working on holidays, or the rear window opening alone while on the motorway in the winter with the family, or the rear wiper not working in the same circumstances.

There is no seal.

On pre-LCI cars the hose becomes brittle, fails and sucks in dirt which kills the compressor. People replace the hose with the braided one from LCI cars, but often its too late, as the gunk is in the compressor and it will fail, only slowlier. But what you can do in this case is shop around, also on Ebay if in Europe (these cars are quite common here) and get a replacement one for cheap, maybe 500 USD for a used LCI one, and 1000 USD for a new one. And then the mounting is a 30 min job at the indi. Again, I've heard horrifying quotes for this same compressor and work done by an official dealer.

On LCI cars the problem is mostly fixed afaik. The hose is braided, and I think also the compressor is improved.

Yes, this is also what I did on my car. Whatever "foam" you use, the purpose of it should be to press down the lid of the black box, so that no water can accidentally get in there. Again, its also very important to know what your problem is when it happens, know how it should be fixed and how much it should cost, and go with this knowledge to the dealer or to the indy. It saves a lot of time, "diagnostic" costs and avoids the risk of fixing something that aint broke (frequent practice at the stealers as we know).

Lotus99

Thanks for confirming things.

As far as the tailgate wiring loom goes, is it proven that at the maximum height is where the damage mainly occurs? What would be the reason for that, vs. the regular opening/closing action causing it? I know in iDrive there's a setting where you set how high the gate opens by default, so if I knew for sure the max height causes issues, I could set it to stop one or two notches below max. We have a dog, so we use the trunk quite a bit.

mmitev

No problem - this is the place that helped me a lot with my car, so I'm just giving some of it back.

I don't know for sure how the damage occurs and I'm just presuming it happens during some sort of wire "pulling" at the end of the opening range. I also presume it mostly happens during cold weather when the material of the wires is less flexible. Also, my car is pre-LCI so I don't have the height adjustment. Thus, I'm actually doing the only thing I can to prevent a problem.

I'm also not sure if opening the glass portion to the end causes the same stress to the wires. If yes, mine will also fail, as I use it a lot, and it can't be opened half-way.