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Nice work @Vass - that previously janky wiring strongly incentivises working on my car myself. Some people just have no interest in doing things properly (but are quite happy to be paid as though they do)

Have been slowly chipping away at this thing over the past month or so. First order of business was a good deep clean inside and out. Discovered quite a few dings and scratches as you would expect but still presents quite well. The headlights are starting to get quite faded and unfortunately these are similar to E46 facelift coupes in that the lenses are molded into the headlight and aren't easily interchangeable for new ones. A mate of mine has the knack and gear for headlight restoration so get him to have a go as that cleans up the look quite drastically. The inside got a good deep clean and vacuum. The bigger mission was sorting out the various messes that someone had made of the wiring. There were some weird unconnected cables added on at the headunit end that I ended up removing and tidying up. In the trunk area, instead of a towing module I found whatever this contraption is. Haven't tested whether the trailer lights actually work yet but that also needed a few dodgy wiring joints tidied up. Hopefully it works as I'm having a hard enough time chasing down one towing module, let alone two. The car came fitted with a reverse camera that was refusing to work. I had a spare one sitting on a shelf so decided to investigate. Hooked up the new camera to the existing wiring - nothing. Hooked up the new wiring to the existing camera - nothing. Hooked up the new wiring to the new camera - works like a charm, so somehow, someone along the way had managed to mess up both the wiring and the camera itself. Upon closer inspection I was again greeted with a whole bunch of dodgy wiring - a combination of wires soldered, crimped, taped together, added plugs and even a terminal connection all covered in copious amounts of electrical tape, sticking out from behind trim pieces in the cabin along the length of it. Ended up ripping the whole thing out and running a whole new length from the headunit to the tailgate, using proper solder-heatshrink butt connectors and taking off door sills and trim pieces to tuck the cables tidily out of sight. The car came fitted with both front and rear parking sensors but neither were working so tried digging into that issue as well. I was fearing the sensors being faulty but the scan tool only gave a code for the gong so dug into that. Taking off the kick panel I discovered the gong wasn't plugged in at all and the plugs were nowhere to be seen. Took a bit of digging around to find the ends deliberately tucked away in behind the carpet. Someone really didn't want these to be found. Figured it would have been done because the whole system was faulty but to my surprise both front and rears work perfectly fine after plugging in the gong. So now the car has fully functional parking sensors and reverse camera. Steady progress.

Thought I was watching 'The Office' for a minute haha

Got everything assembled and bled after getting the correct retaining springs ... have ordered some retrofit pins also which take a R clip instead of having to be smashed in. Hopefully they arrive soon and ahead of (re)certification. Got out for a drive to bed everything in, feels pretty good ... would like a firmer initial pedal so will likely do the M3 master cylinder swap at some point.

Got to love these e53 X5'S!!