Friday, October 14, 2016

Wet differential

When I jacked up the rear end of the car to fix a punctured tire, I saw this.  I have seen at least one other post about a leaky rear differential.  I iwll mention this to BMW at the first service.  The leak is minor, but it should be dry there.


How to Jack an F15 X5 (rear)

Haven't seen any posts on how to do this.  Here is how I did it.  As always, feel free to do it your way.

On many of the newer BMWs, I have seen BMW official documents that say it is OK to jack using the rear differential.  This is unusual to me because on cars like the Z3/E36, this was forbidden.  So I'm not comfortable with it.  Still, I could not find any official BMW documentation on F15 jack points.  I haven't bought a 24-hour subscription to TIS yet to verify.

I needed to jack up our car to patch a puncture in a run flat tire.  This is the second puncture in less than 10,000 miles.  Bummer.  For the first patch, the tire guys (Hay Tire Pros in Charleston) scratched both the rim and the Xpel on the front bumper.  Not cool.  I will never go there again.  For this repair, I am taking the wheel (not the car) to my wheel guy, Hugh Jett at Jett Wheels of Charleston.  Hugh doesn't normally do tire repairs but he will for previous customers.  Anyway, I jacked up the car to put it on jackstands while Hugh fixes the tire.  I used the rear subframe as my jackpoint.  To access it, the jack needs to go in under the car at an angle because the center input pipe to the muffler is in the way.  I used a piece of 2x4 to help spread the load.  Worked like a champ, no issues.  Esco jackstands work perfectly with the F15 side jack pad receivers.

UPDATE: Bimmerpost member E90Fleet posted this diagram directly from TIS.  It shows you can jack directly by the differential.  That still scares me.  Also shows the front jack point and mentions you can jack by the outboard subframe points in the rear.







F16 Leather Knee Pads



For this mod, I followed the excellent how to provided here:  http://f15.bimmerpost.com/forums/showpost.php?p=20110778&postcount=1

The only deviation/change I have is with respect to installing the passenger side knee panel.  The F15 X5 center dash does angle slightly towards the driver.  It is not as obvious as say the E30 center console, but it is biased to the driver.  This creates a clearance issue for the passenger side panel.  The front clip of the knee pad cannot mate with the female slot on the center console.  There isn’t enough space.  My solution, which wasn’t mentioned in the link above, was to leave the 2 T20 silver screws out of the new bracket (comes with the knee pad part).  This way the bracket can float a little.  Dock the metal locking tab into the center console completely.  Then drive home the 2 silver T20 screws from the passenger side.  This will help greatly.  In fact, I cannot see doing it any other way without scratching something.  Other than that, this is a great mod.

51169299125, Left Knee Pad, Black Dakota Leather with Black Stitching, $263.14r

51169299126, Right Knee Pad, Black Dakota Leather with Black Stitching, $263.14r



Total cost of this mod = $526.28r

Total investment in vehicle to date = $3721.40


"Before"



"After"