New here? Read This before You Begin
 

New Here? March 29, 2018: At the bottom of this post is a pdf document. Read it first.

Jay Arras invited me over here to publish the attached doc. Version 4.6 of "So You Just Bought an E60". Note that new items (but not typos and so forth) will be highlighted in grey in new editions. This doc has evolved since 2013, and has had more than 30 versions. It's not perfect, and a bit messy, but there's a lot of useful information in here.

What's new: The Search for a Used BMW. How get the right parts to maintain your BMW. Mileage rollback suspicions. Serpentine belt, oil pressure and engine death. Appendix: DIY Repairs and Maintenance From Delivery to 100K Miles.

Thanks to all for finding typos etc. Please comment if you have additional ideas.

Goal is to summarize most of the issues and comments for the new, less experienced E60 owners or potential buyers who are showing up.

Work in process, and it will get additions/changes. Edited versions will always appear in this message.

Thanks to Jgalon, legend700, HF, schpenxel, pcy, bmwoem1, cvshaw, gangplank, 850Csi, TSM35 and many, many more for their contributions and suggestions. Since the downloads count resets for each new edition, there's been about 33,100 up through V 4.4. Seems to be helping someone out there...

Glad to help out 5Series.net as we've been helping E60 owners on Bimmerfest. We hope it helps you as well.


ZF Fluid: And, since it's a critical difference between what ZF and BMW say, here's a link to the ZF fluid change procedure and schedule. Hint: it's a whole lot less than BMW's "lifetime" nonsense. I'll cc it into the doc later. Thanks to Bud B for the link.