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Those would be mine! And no. Going on my X5 with A/Ts until I get around to rebuilding them

Was taking a casual stroll through Pick-A-Part the other week when by chance I caught a glimpse of a rare sight in these parts - a rogue X5. Must have been a rush on a Friday to duck out of work as it was yet to be listed on the website so I managed to get in there nice and early. Weirdly enough, another thing they forgot to do was remove the battery. Lucky for me, it made removing the rather tidy heated seats that much easier, or even at all possible. Somehow crammed the seats in the trusty old Swift and scooted home. Did manage to grab a few other handy bits whilst I was there, including the boot cargo cover, which ended up having a bit of an adventure of its own. While I was loading up the seats, I put the cargo cover onto the roof of the car, which... of course I completely forgot about. Managed to get all the way to the main road, got on the gas and heard it tumbling all the way along the roof before crashing down onto the road behind me with a massive thump. Lucked out that there wasn't any cars closely following me, pulled over to the side of the road and bolted to grab before it got run over. Got a bit banged up but somehow the damage ended up being purely aesthetic and still works well enough. Another lucky break. Anyway, got the seats home and gave them a good clean. Used some Lux Soap Flakes / Softly Laundry Flakes for the initial wash, a "hack" I'd read about from some thread on here a while back. I've had a leather recoloring kit from Clyde's Leather Company sitting on a shelf for a while and finally put it to good use. Happy enough to recommend the kit itself but goddamn are they annoying - if you end up going for the same kit, do yourself a favour and opt out of all comms as soon as you've placed your order - I must have gotten more than a dozen emails with "news", requests for reviews, "special offers" and whatnot within the first week. Filled in a few of the bigger scratches/cracks with the leather filler, let it dry, sanded it down a bit with some 600-grit, wiped the whole seat down with alcohol and applied 2 coats of the recoloring balm, then let it fully dry for 2 days before applying the conditioning cream. Initially made the seats real greasy but the shine has come down since, leaving a nice, subtle finish. Got the old seats out, gave the carpets underneath a thorough vacuum, transferred over the seat belt buckles and dropped the new seats in. Unlike the E46, the X5 comes pre-wired for the heated function so all that needed doing is hook up the seats, swap out the switch panel and that was that. Did check over all of the fuses - there's two that correspond to the heated seats, both were already installed but one had a 5A fuse instead of the 30A it was supposed to house. Easy fix. The original seats weren't in terrible condition but the base did have more cracks in the leather and were looking slightly more tired. The new ones didn't really need a full re-dye and could have gotten away with just a good clean but figured I might as well. Both had similar wear in the bolsters but not terrible enough to warrant tackling at this stage. Here's the two driver's seats for comparison. ORIGINAL SEAT NEW SEAT - post clean NEW SEAT - post re-dye & conditioner Not a perfect job, the finish is a bit patchy in places with some shinier bits sticking out but on the whole a massive improvement - some bigger cracks filled in, some cracks are still visible under certain light but don't stick out nearly as much being colored in and a much deeper tone of black overall. Was surprised to discover that even the extendable thigh bolsters have heating elements in them. Always assumed only the base and seat back would be heated but that's a nice bonus. That's the wife's biggest gripe with the X5 taken care of, should keep her nice and warm in the winter. Wouldn't mind these in the E46 but hey, happy wife - happy life.

Hello Bimmersporters, There has been a rash of personal messages sent to users who have posted in the Want To Buy section. They are all of the same type, from a new user suggesting to contact an email address for the part requested. Looks very much like scammer behaviour, so user has been blocked, and putting this up as a warning in case we get any more. Be vigilant, stay safe. Cheers.

No, the rears were just regular. Funnily enough I've since gone back to it to grab a few other smaller bits and ran into another X5 owner who was hoping for some heated rears too. I didn't even know that was an option until that point. I was actually relieved to find that mine had the regular coil suspension at the rear, I feel like the pneumatic system might be more trouble that it's worth. Have been vary of air suspension ever since my dad's disaster purchase of a Land Rover Disco II way back when. Amongst a laundry list of issues he had with that car, the rear bags developed a rapid leak at one point and he was stuck riding around nose up for a few weeks like some ghetto low rider. Ended up getting a coil spring conversion kit for a third of the price of replacement air bags. Pano roof would have been nice but another potential source of issues. There was an X3 with heated seats for sale in Otago a while ago with a supposed blown head gasket, think was only asking around $2k. If it were local I would have grabbed it to part out, even just for the seats. I'm still looking for a pair for my E46 but pretty sure they would have also been interchangeable with the X5. I've got a spare X5 switch panel with heated seat buttons sitting in a box somewhere, happy to send it your way if you happen to come into possession of some heated seats.

Had a great weekend working on the car. On Saturday morning Dad and I got the car up on stands and exhaust and driveshaft out. Unbolted the exhaust at the headers and dropped the whole thing, then the same with the driveshaft. So much faster than last time given we're just removing and reinstalling rather than taking it all apart to clean. I'm super happy with how everything under the car is holding up, it's 8 years since we did the underbody refresh and everything is looking really good under there. I did the new gear position sensor first, access is a bit of a mission but the mutilated allen key approach does work. The old sensor was extremely notchy and rough after 20 years of service. Worth noting that we ran the first part of the SMG adaption (up to the point it wants the car started) to make sure it was happy with the new GPS. After that we moved on to lowering the rear subframe to facilitate the installation of the Yurkan Cages 6 point brace. We took off the brake calipers and rear trailing arm pockets and lowered the entire thing about 100mm on a couple of jacks (to give us more control over forward/rearward weight distribution). That gave us enough access to unbolt the front RACP studs and get them out. We then jacked the subframe back into place and loosely bolted it, which gave us a better safety factor while working under it. At this point we drained the diff, swapped out the rear diff cover for a new one and reinstalled with new bolts and drain plugs. I've mentioned previously that I'd long experienced some clunkiness when shifting/loading/unloading the drivetrain. This was vastly improved by adapting the SMG. I wasn't sure whether what remained was the diff getting a bit tired or whether the rear bushes needed replacing but I was pleased on checking the diff that there is no detectable lash in the diff at all, likewise with the driveshaft. I was therefore pretty hopeful that it was just the rear diff bushes that were the culprit. The rest of the process was pretty straightforward, we unbolted one point at a time and using a threaded drill guide that dad turned on his lathe and an extra long 6mm drill bit we went up through each of the 4 points in turn. Then it was simply a case of come down from the top with a 10.5mm bit before running a tap on a long extension up from underneath to complete the thread the whole way through. With that done it was then a case of bolting in each of the 4 points and torquing to spec. The rest of the reassembly took a couple of hours and we had the car on the ground again. The install of the brace was super quick - fitment of the brace was absolutely perfect - Marin's fabrication is spot on. Then it was just a case of running the complete adaption on the SMG and going for a test drive. Today I drove the car on a route I'm very familiar with and I'm extremely pleased with the end result! The last of the clunkiness when shifting is now resolved. Even under heavy acceleration in S5/S6 all you get is the sound and surge of power. I'm super stoked. And the brace. Well, I know others have reported a big improvement, but I wasn't completely sure if I'd find the same. Suffice to say the improvement is not subtle! For me the rear has always felt slightly less co-ordinated than the front (not to say it's not objectively excellent to begin with, but it's always stood out to me that the car is just a little bit more put together in the front). Now with the brace it's the other way around! The change in stiffness is hugely noticeable even just driving around town. As soon as you get to a roundabout or uneven tarmac it becomes very apparent how much more rigidity there is. The car really feels glued together in the back now. I love it and am excited to go for a decent spirited drive.

239,000km glad to say no more pulsing for the HVAC. Over the hill this weekend getting filthy. I’ve taken out the exhaust flap switch as it wasn’t working and the car was a bit loud for my liking at the lower revs. Iv plugged the vac lines together and now the butterfly is closed shut. Have ordered a new switch but in the meantime it’s nice having it a bit quieter. I’m not sure when it failed but I felt it was louder than usual ages ago but didn’t realise there’s actually a solenoid that operates the exhaust flap, not just vacuum. Post gravel road wash I clay’d the entire car and applied a ceramic coating. A mate had sent me the last of a bottle of this hydro G9 to try out. Looking forward to seeing how this performs over winter.

No - I am really happy with the rims on our Touring, but you are welcome to call over in yours if you want to experiment.. I've a buzz gun and jack etc here.

That's awesome. Our Kune's Bert and Ernie help me in the garage as well.

Had the opportunity to tackle Leadfoot last weekend, which led to some epic shots from the photographers on-site..!