Vass

I reckon it's a god-tier chassis-engine pairing. I do appreciate an original build but this looks real tastefully done, I'd probably take it over the S14 if I'm honest. If I were to nitpick anything at all about it is that they kept it LHD. Since originality got sacrificed anyway and all the effort that's gone in they might as well have converted it to RHD.

Yet to crawl under the car since being back but did address the most in-you-face visual defect still present - the beat up cluster face. Someone must have whacked it in a fit of rage since the plastic cover was cracked all the way along the bottom and had one crack running almost the full height of it. Stumbled upon a used cluster being sold on Marketplace so grabbed it and swapped over the front panel onto the existing one. The mileage was looking quite dim and not fully illuminating - one of the small bulbs behind the LCD turned out to be blown, which I also swapped over. All lighting up evenly now, no dead pixels (knock on wood) and looking nice and crisp. Wifey's that wee bit happier.

FCP used to be good until a few years ago when they switched from FedEX to UPS, feel like the shipping experience has gone down the drain since and now only use them on the rare occasion Spareto or Schmiedmann don't stock the odd part. The latter two tend to be cheaper as well. UPS also use Aramex for the final leg of the delivery which is a disaster in itself. I did tack on a few bits onto @Eagle's FCP order recently and that turned out to be a clusterf**k. Ordered end of November, only got shipped 11th of December, then for some weird reason the package got returned to sender on the 18th, then sent out again on the 20th and finally arrived on the 30th so took a whole month in total. Previous experience with them was back in mid-2023 so not sure if this is a one off or the new normal. At this rate won't be in any rush to use them again any time soon.

The mighty tractor successfully survived its first outing, although wasn't left completely unscathed. The main issues we did encounter were to do with the transmission. On the way there I went for a brisk overtake and was met by a slight thump, a warning gong and a transmission failsafe message on the cluster, leaving the car stuck in 3rd. Pulled over, off-on and she carried on as usual. The first subsequent shift from 5th into 6th came with a slight jolt but smoothed out thereafter. Still accelerated and changed gear without issues unless you were absolutely mashing the throttle. Knew to take it a bit easier from there on but same thing did happen once more on the way back on an uphill passing lane. Seems like the same issue @euroriffic is experiencing although flagged up different codes, 4F51 - Gear check 5 in my case. Another less pronounced issue I noticed was that when steadily cruising between 50-60 & 70-80 kph at around 1600-1700 RPM, the transmission would produce a slight jolt as if it was shifting gears but would then just stay in the same gear. If I kept the revs constant it would do it roughly every 10 seconds or so, so I just started slightly accelerating out of that range. This did not generate any fault codes. I've yet to do any sort of service on the transmission so that'll be the next mission. Will do the mechatronic sleeves, new filter and fluid as a first stage and see what, if any difference that makes. Will note down the separator plate number and then look into doing new solenoids & Sonnax Zip kit in the future. The only other, more humorous problem we ran into happened on the final toilet stop on the way back. Upon returning to the car the driver's door handle decided it'd had enough and left me stranded like a muppet. Turns out it had succumbed to a very typical fault with the door handle carrier where a pivot point for the rod just breaks off. Luckily managed to do a hack fix with some safety wire which is potentially sturdier than the original design. Will add a new carrier to the next order to have on hand just in case though. Must not have been the first time the car suffered from this issue as the vapour barrier was rather crudely hacked up to gain access so had to get creative with some duct tape until I source a replacement. Why people do this kind of sh*t instead of just peeling it back is beyond me. Overall though, really happy with it as a road trip car - nice and comfortable, plenty of room, cruises as a steady 2,000 RPM at 100kph, holds the road well and just feels solid overall. I find myself being way calmer at the wheel of this thing than the E46. In the latter you're just constantly tempted to row through the gears and act a bit silly, whereas in the less rev-happy X5 is a nice relaxing cruiser that keeps the heart rate nice and stable. Clocked up a good 1,200km's across the 4 days, averaging under 9L/100km, which for a big 'ol lump isn't all too bad. There's definitely something up with the fuel level sensor though. Filled her up in Nelson, clocked up 650km's since and it's claiming to still have over half a tank left in it. I somehow doubt it'll do 1,300km on a single fill but would be beautiful if it did. Who needs a Prius, ey...

The engine's barely broken in at that mileage. Just bought an X5 with the same M57N engine with 290k on the clock and it's ticking along beautifully. Delete the swirl flaps & EGR and it'll easily be good for another 200k with basic servicing. Bimmertune have some good kits with free shipping. My main concern with it would be the transmission. Looks like it's rocking a 5-speed GM which don't have the greatest reputations. The recent flush might be a good thing, or could be a red flag. I'd grab a scan tool along and see if there's any codes saved in the EGS module.

Keen to hear how far down the rabbit hole you'll end up going with this and what the outcome is. Think I stumbled upon your post in some FB group on the topic as well, looked like some knowledgeable suggestions in there, Sonnax Zip Kits and all. Just took our X5 on its first roadie to Nelson, halfway through went for an overtake and got hit with the transmission failsafe error as well, got stuck in third. Pulled the codes (screenshot saved on the laptop but something to do with 5th gear), cleared them, off-on and has been fine since but does seem to have a very slight thump going from 5th to 6th. I've got the mechatronic sleeves and new filter on hand but am yet to do a service on the transmission, still on the fence as to how far to take it. Just accelerating gradually doesn't seem to be an issue, only when really stepping on it. But then again has only happened once so far.

Tinkered on the sled a bit further. Got the torn CV boot replaced, the axle came out and went back in painlessly enough so that's the only obvious WoF concern taken care of. Also had a mate do his magic polishing up the headlights that were starting to go all foggy and yellow. Got the lights out to make the job a bit easier, which turned out to be way more involved that I'd anticipated - the headlight housing protrudes downwards and gets caught behind the bumper and you can't lift them up because of the radiator support so the bumper cover needs to come forward quite a bit to have enough room to wiggle the lights out. E46/E39's are a breeze in comparison. Just waiting on an order of chrome bulbs to swap out those yucky ambers. Same day the EGR delete kit arrived so quickly threw that in the next morning as well. Looks a quality kit from Bimmertune, took roughly 3 weeks to arrive which isn't too bad over the festive period and especially with shipping being free. The parts fit well at both ends and should permanently eliminate sludge buildup as a worry. Weight reduction. Taking the new sled to Nelson tomorrow, will see how it fares on its inaugural proper road trip and will dig into fluid services once I'm back.

Following @Eagle's lead, I finally got around to hooking up an additional air inlet from the brake duct to the bottom of the air intake box to emulate the full Dinan kit. I wasn't going to bother until Eagle pioneered it, doing some excellent investigative work to discover that the elbows used by Dinan were awfully similar to the ones used on the E39 to connect the airbox to the duct in the chassis leg (part number 13711437886) and matched it up with a suitable hose. I got my hands on a pair of those elbows, a meter of hose, a spare air box, a 57mm hole saw and went to town. The clearance is really tight and with the airbox installed, the elbow ends up kinked. Once you hook up the hose it straightens up but ends up moving the kink further up into the airbox end. Fiddled around with it as much as I could, even ended up getting a spare airbox and drilling a new hole as much towards the edge as possible but didn't manage to get it perfectly straight - the room just isn't there. Not ideal but will still feed air through so very much an improvement. Might benefit from a slightly more flexible hose to help straighten out the kink at the airbox end, will do for now but keen to play around with it a bit if I find something suitable. The Dinan box also comes with a gasket of sorts to seal up the airbox lid better. I filled the groove with some adhesive backed foam to emulate that to finish up. No real way of telling how much of a difference it makes but definitely doesn't hurt. Combined with the ram intake scoop I'm pretty happy with the intake side of things now, near enough maxed out on any gains there were to be had short of any invasive mods. Swapped out for the new spark plugs having gone through the tank that I put some injector cleaner into. Stuck an endoscope down cylinder 2 - still looking slightly gunky but does look to have cleaned out somewhat, no more obvious big chunks in sight so not nearly as bad as first feared. Tried out some NPD100 and clocked up some 50km along back roads with some harder pulls. Can't say it's night and day difference as others have experienced, will need to do some more longer drives to know for sure as there were still remnants of the previous fuel in the tank. There seems to be some sort of weird resonance/vibration when accelerating hard, I'm wondering if it might be due to the headers not being perfectly balanced and the difference in back pressures since they're far from equal length. Or might just be shitty road surface. Neither the intake, the new spark plugs or the different fuel have made much of a difference to the LTFT's though with both banks firmly stuck on -7.8%. Haven't cleared adaptations yet but figured 50km would have been enough for the DME to fully adjust. Don't know what else there is left to try and rectify it, guess it just is what it is. At least it's not running lean.

HPR 5 half price at SCA, finally. https://www.supercheapauto.co.nz/p/penrite-penrite-hpr-5-engine-oil---5w-40-5-litre/14911.html?cgid=SCN8006450

I don't have any metrics to back up its effectiveness but for that kind of money I reckon you might as well, can't see how it would hurt. Install is 2 minutes, no logos on it so blends right in without looking tacky and does its job with no fuss. Marginal gains and all that. Might grab some next time I'm there if it's cheap enough. In this instance it turned out my issue was the new washer reservoir cap not having a vent opening and nothing to do with the fluid or the washer jets themselves, funnily enough. Was a classic case of if it ain't broken...

Yeah true, didn't realize which type you had until you uploaded the photos. They do a version with the bolt-in style coils too, which is slightly more expensive for some reason though - Amazon / eBay.

Awesome stuff! Love your meticulous approach. With the valve cover, haven't succumb to the impulse of buying one yet but have been contemplating one of these Mitzone aluminium replacement ones for a while. I'm bound to get one eventually, can't remember if eBay or Amazon worked out to be cheaper. Reviews and fitment seems to be decent, just need to make sure to give it a thorough clean before install. Probably cheaper than buying a brand new plastic one and should last a good while longer too. With the PS pressure lines, you're probably better off taking it to a hydraulic shop and having them reseal it. Last I checked a brand new hose through the dealership was $545+GST and you'd be waiting on it a few weeks. Took my old one into Enzed and had it back the next day with brand new rubber installed onto the existing metal fittings. No issues nearly 2 years later.

Nice! Which EGR delete kit did you get? Haven't received mine yet but got a Bimmertune one on its way. Didn't manage to find any local or much cheaper that that. Which mechatronic seal kit did you get also? Have ordered a full Vaico kit but @Eagle apparently had some issues with his so am dreading it a bit.

Beauty! Welcome to the diesel E53 club. Love that color. Just working through my major servicing regimen on the new purchase. How fun was cleaning out the intake? Haven't thought about the transfer case actuator gears, might have to add it to my list.