bimmerjohns

Hello, new to the forum but a longtime lurker since I bought my e61 535xit back in December. I am currently replacing the nightmarishly complicated panoramic roof. This is my first foray into the e60 chassis. I am far more familiar with e46, e39 and e30s.

Basically I bought the car with the panoramic sunroof broken. Having removed the entire cassette I learned that a broken piece of glass made its way into the main glass drive system and broke it. I decided to just spend the money on the 3 repair kits bmw sells for the cassette. Following BMW AIR manuals from Bmwtis.com, I completely rebuilt the cassette with the main glass slide and tilt mechanism kit, sunshade mechanism kit and the rear glass tilt mechanism kit.

Now I am in the processing of reinstalling the cassette but have run into a huge wall. To properly align the cassette in the body you need BMW special tool 54 1 110, aka part number 83300495604, according to 54 13 080 repair instructions. However after calling my local stealer-ship it turns out they completely discontinued these alignment dowels.

ECStuning, Fcpeuro, all my normal go to parts stores, have no more inventory or do not carry this part anymore. My local indy shop basically told me to try and make the tool myself. Problem is the dowel uses both the rounded end to align cassette in the body aperture, but also has a rectangular base to align the outer edges of the cassette. So without a copy of the original tool I couldn't reasonably machine my own version as I don't know the correct dimensions of the rectangular piece. The indy shop told me to just get a micrometer/bore gauge and measure the bores in the body aperture and the cassette. however that won't work for the rectangular base of the dowel. Basically my last resort now is to just track down a dead stock set of the dowels in some European companies warehouse. Anyone worked with Schmiedmann in Denmark? I ordered the part from there site as it was listed as in stock. So in a few weeks I will find out if they have real (deadstock) inventory or if there just ordering it from bmw who stopped selling the tool all together and will reach out and cancel the order like ECStuning did to me. Funny how yesterday it was in stock and then today they cancel my order and relist the item as discontinued on the site. I love ECS but they gotta fix there inventory so it displays accurate inventory. Especially being a mostly online store.

This e61 was built in late 2007, so its an LCI but never received the warranty work for the sunroof seal, trunk leaks etc. and received the older idrive system than its 2008-2010 siblings (CIC). I have a Sencom tailgate wiring kit to rewire the tailgate after the sunroof repair is complete. Luckily the car saw the dealership twice a year for its first 10 yrs of its life so a lot of the other issues of early n54s were dealt with. Index 12 injectors, brand new transfer case motor in 2015, new HPFP in 2010, etc.

Before the sunroof debacle I had big dreams for this build. I wanted to acquire the M-sport trim, bumpers side skirts etc. as this was the only option this car didn't get trimmed with. I also planned on replacing the oem turbos with upgraded pure600 turbos, aftermarket intercooler, all aluminum charge pipe ducting etc. Aswell as tackling a bunch of oil leaks: Oil pan, oil cooler seal/OFHG, etc.
I love engine and suspension work but despise bodywork, so of course I decided the sunroof wouldn't be too bad when I was originally looking at the car to buy! I let the really good Carfax history and the decent price sway me!!

but anyhow, TLTR:

Replacing the panoramic roof cassette on my e61 and the alignment dowels are discontinued by BMW. If you've replaced one before let me know if you any tips for my dilemma! or if someone knows a way to align the cassette without the special tool?.. ..

If my fears are correct, and I am really blazing trail here, well then I will update this post as a sort of blog so no one else has to struggle this much on the last BMW 5 series wagon! (at least for now).

bimmerjohns

Well just about 2 years later and I am back on this project. Rebuilding the cassette is way more expensive than just getting a used one and swapping the glass over. I had a local sunroof specialist help me reinstall the one I rebuilt and he had a bit of a laugh over all my suffering. He explained that you don't need the special dowel, just a simple method of tightening the bolts down while making sure the glass operates forward and reverse while you fully tighten them.. Another big headache I overcame was the floating sunshades. They were a bit beat up and I had them re-clothed. The specialist later explained that most of the time the mechanism jams when you do this, and its best to only buy new oem sunshades from bmw. About an hour after getting home the shades jammed, and 600$ later and another trip back to the guy leaves it all fixed. I had a shop rewire the right hand side wiring on the rear hatch as the weather didn't allow me to finish this half of the job outside. 1 hours later, and 2200$ lighter on the pocket that part is finished. I recommend just buying bmws complete harness, I got a Sen-com harness from Germany specifically for the e61. However the shop explained that it was for the Euro version which had some slight differences in wiring, and frankly the construction isn't any better the the oem harness. It also saved them time doing the harness from cutting and soldering a bunch of wires. I would make sure you find a shop that's done the repair before to be honest. I can't help but think I was sort of there guinea pig, where they had never done this job before.

esixtyone

Thanks for keeping us updated and leaving this valuable information here for others. Thankfully I've yet to become acquainted with the intricacies of the moonroof.

As far as the tailgate wiring-- isn't one of the advantages of the Sencom kit that it uses silicone wiring, and thus will be more durable than the original equipment? Also, I'm not sure how you get around the cutting and soldering (crimping, in my case) no matter which way you go.

I successfully installed the Sencom kit and I've never done anything like it before -- so there's a data point for anyone else who is feeling daunted by the task. I did a ton of research though and it ended up taking most of a weekend. I didn't have any issues at all due to any "euro" differences. Maybe you ended up with the wrong assemblage of kits, as that can be confusing (left, right, antenna, etc...).

Best of luck with the car going forward. Hope you can get to some of the fun stuff now

gman6262

The sunroof information is valuable, thanks for sharing.

On the tailgate wiring, I did the Sencom repair myself - I wrote it up here: https://www.fightchaos.com/2016/01/b...te-wiring.html and found that it worked quite well. Took my time, it took 12 hours on a Saturday, but it's been solid ever since. I believe the silicon wiring insulation is better quality than the OEM plastic, particularly in cold climates. I would still recommend this repair.