10-Year Ownership Of My BMW X5 - A Long Term Review

life's too short to drive boring cars there's many car reviewers out there that talk about all the great features of these new vehicles or they might even talk about used vehicles to a certain perspective but few can provide the insight that i'm going to offer you on this bmw e70 x535d that has almost 230 000 kilometers or 130 000 miles i have owned this vehicle for 10 years and i bought the vehicle with 50 000 kilometers and it was three years of age and what we have here is a culmination or essentially a summary of what that looks like there's been lots of great times there's been lots of tough times and there's been lots of repairs and fun and frivolity but what i am going to share with you is my previous 10 years experience of owning this bmw e70 x5 35d let's get into it now first of all it's never had the luxury of being inside the garage second of all the big thing with this vehicle of course is the fact that we live in canada and northern climate we're living in the prairies as you can see there's lots of snow on the ground so what does that mean cold temperatures i can truly say that the conditions that this vehicle has been subjected to are harsh i mean if you live from california or you live in florida maybe even central states for example utah maybe even across a lot of europe the conditions likely will not be as rough and tough as they are here in canada in the prairies so this is literally the worst case scenario and let's start with talking about how this vehicle structurally holds up what are the cosmetics like today how does the vehicle you know the paint the body work the plastics the interior what is all that like and how is it held up over this long duration we'll talk about that first and then we're going to talk about what the mechanical situation's like and what have i put into dollars and cents and i'll share that with you guys my overall cost of ownership for the last 10 years of this vehicle and for most of you have been watching you'll know that i recently spent a significant amount of money just making some substantial repairs so i want to share all of those dollars and cents and the mechanical failure points of these bmws but first let's talk about the cosmetics and how this vehicle is held up how is that beautiful x5 hold up over many many years of use well first of all headlights they get a little milky sometimes you need to polish them up a little bit take your lens cleaner to them and then you make them bright and shiny again so that's been a wear and tear item here unfortunately when we bought the vehicle it didn't have any expel or paint protection film on it so as you can see if you look up close it has its share of little rocks and chips and dings and what have you there's all kinds of little rock marks because of the rocks and the pebbles that come off the road to damage the vehicle but because what we have here is a lot of plastic on the lower bumper section it actually holds up very very well and if i could honestly say this is probably the best way to equip an suv of course we also have all this fender guard here and as a result of that the whole lower body section does well now this section here we have this rocker guard or running boards here that actually does a great job of keeping a lot of the splatter from the wheels from hitting the side of the vehicle so as a result all the body panels hold up quite well door handles always held up well none of them have ever broken sunroof has always worked has never come off of the rails and has been as solid as a rock come around to the back of the vehicle it's done very very well although i will comment that closing this lower section has resulted in a dent as you can see right there because it's aluminum it's actually dented there i put my knee there to close this once and it resulted in a dent a little bit on the flimsy side and here this light this actually is controlled by a module and we're told that this is a bit of a pricey piece so those tend to burn out not so much the regular lights themselves but those intersections right here watch out for those panels sometimes one side may not work or the other side might like you can actually see moisture in there that's not uncommon failure point typical wear items like this you can see the sun taking a beating on there and as a result parts are missing or definitely just show their age but generally hold up well and also worth noting because these vehicles here there's much aluminum on them you'll notice there's no rust on these vehicles there's no rust anywhere no rust to speak of on any of this bmw x5 these panels are sturdy and they hold up very very well and if we can honestly tell you if there's one brand or one manufacturer that resists rust better than any other manufacturer it's probably bmw we've owned five bmws to date and only did our earliest versions the e36 start to pump out a tiny bit of rust at the rear fenders but that was a vehicle that was over two decades old when it started to show a little bit of rust these bmws do hold up very well and do resist rust very very well so this vehicle is no different you do not see an ounce of rust anywhere and for a 2009 model year that is an exceptionally great thing especially considering they throw salt and sand all over the roads here most vehicles in this climate tend to rust but how's the inside holding up well what i would say is typical bmw of this generation you'll find you get some of this trim that peels away this is not an uncommon issue for vehicles of this era this is very typical it starts to bubble and then it starts to peel away as you can see what's happening right there this is not uncommon for sure now the rest of it actually holds up very very well the plastics are well made they're solid they're durable there's no cracking on the dash and the quality of the materials looks very very good and well above many other manufacturers here we have this wood trim beautiful look in these vehicles but as you can see we've noticed some cracking on the wood there but that's not uncommon for vehicles of this age and generation and all the controls and knobs and buttons have held up very very well over the years nothing's ever come off nothing's ever come apart everything still works this slides very very well and smoothly of course you'll notice more cracks here but the knobs and buttons and all the controls have held up very well over the years we can open this up this all works very very well here we have the little screen infotainment system for the little hooligans in the back that is fine and functioning but here you'll notice typical again we have this wear and tear on the handle looks kind of disgusting but this is what you'll find happens with some of these soft touch finishing in some of these bmws and this one's no different other than that the aluminum trim list looks very very nice as does the wood finishing everything's holding up very well the only other thing to comment are the wheels as you can see you get some peeling and pitting going on on this cover this is your center cap it's starting to peel away but that's not uncommon given this is exposed to heavy amounts of salt and corrosion the rims themselves have done very very well there they really do resist curb surfing because the style of the wheels and the fact that you've got a heavy sidewall means that you rarely ever curb surf these rims and they generally hold up very very well over time so most of the structural components of these vehicles tend to hold very well and they have for me as well but you know there's been a few things you get these random pieces of plastic like these i don't know where they show up from but they just sort of randomly show up and you find them under a seat or on the floor somewhere don't know what that's all about there's another problem that you find structurally with these vehicles and it has to do with the pass-through bag right there right there you have this bag and this is meant to push skis through so when you push these seats down you're able to run some skis right through so if you have longer items maybe hockey sticks or skis that you want to run through the seats you can do that there's that bag but the problem is you've got this door and it doesn't always latch there's these little latches in here there's two little releases and it's junk and it doesn't always like these just start coming apart you'll see there's a little latch there a hook but these pieces that come off there's little parts that are missing here all the time they pop off or they break and then this no longer locks into place and quite honestly that's annoying more than anything for me once a vehicle rusts you might as well just chuck it in the garbage because it's kind of done and it's gone but you don't want to throw this in the garbage because the body is holding up very well so it makes you want to keep putting money into it unfortunately that's where you're into the diminishing returns and the other thing gets very frustrating of course we look at the rear brakes and we'll talk about the mechanics now let's dive right in to the conversation of the things that i've experienced that have gone wrong with this vehicle or the things that i've learned in the last 10 years and the worst part is when the dealers get their hands on it for the most part i would say they do a pretty good job of diagnosing what the issue is get to the bottom of the problem and fix the part and send you the bill and of course usually quite substantial but it's not just about that sometimes i've had dealers say and i've had a situation on their rear brakes with the electric controls where you pull the lever it activates the the brakes it's an electric brake system for the park that's great perfect right until it doesn't work properly every once in a while we've had this nagging fault being here this cute little light on the dash pops up it's the yellow brake light and that represents a brake light control module fault don't know what it is the dealers couldn't really figure it out they said we'll we'll inspect the rear brake assembly they charge me a bunch of money for an inspection and they still couldn't confirm definitively whether it was a module problem or some other issue they just said well maybe we'll change the module hopefully that fixes it if it fixes it we're good if it's not we'll have to keep going and that's all well and good except that the module was close to a thousand dollars i'm not going to start throwing money on a whim you know but that's unfortunately where sometimes we've been snookered so since we're talking about mechanics let's look at what we're dealing with at the rear you've got a conventional suspension on the front but it's the rear where it gets interesting on the e70 x5 is the 35d as you see right there the 35d this vehicle has third roll seating and with the third row seating you get the optional rear air self-leveling suspension sounds all great right and it is when it's working and what's happened here three times now i've had failures there's a set of airbags in there down in this area you can't see them from here but looking through there now i have some coil springs i've retrofitted because i got tired of changing the airbags now what there is is an air compressor and when this levels down the air compressor senses the level and it starts injecting air and pumps it up and it keeps the level on the vehicle now it's great when it's working and it's generally pretty reliable but what my personal experience with the original airbags lasted about seven years then the second set of airbags lasted about two and a half years and so i decided on the third set i said the heck with it i was just gonna change and put some springs because i just got tired of putting these damn airbags in you get out in the morning and you find the car's ass sitting on the ground that's the signal number one that your airbags are leaking down because that's usually what it means you're they're losing air there's a hole there's a damage to the airbag and then finally of course it dissipates the air overnight and if the vehicle's not running the air compressor is not going to feed that and it's just going to sit on the ground that has been a common problem on these vehicles and honestly can certainly do without now unfortunately there's a few parts that can go on this air suspension other than the air lines you've got the rear airbags there's one on either side there's an accumulator level switch of course you've got an air compressor and all the electrics that go with that so there's multiple parts that can fail with that and any one of them is going to cost you some money so the airbags cost me about 500 bucks aftermarket for a pair to get the whole thing done at the dealer if you're gonna pay the dealer to do your rear airbags you're gonna spend over two thousand dollars it's absolutely ludicrous but that's a common failure point let's get into another one and the next issue let's open the door right in there we have another common problem i've created videos on this very matter and it's the heater fan system down under the dash now of course here you've got the fan speed control right there you'll notice the little fan to the big fan and that's all well and good until it stops working and the fan assembly is down under here you'll actually get the motor and the resistor and it's tucked underneath this panel here you get to unbolt that and then you get to work under the dashboard and it's a very difficult tight area to work i've now had to change a complete assembly but before that i just did a resistor which only lasted about a year and a half and to get the dealer to do that it's significant amount of money but i bought the fan blower as well as a resistor all in one assembly for about 500 bucks and i spent an afternoon in the shop of my own now i warn you don't do it in cold weather because you can break the squirrel cage and then you're into a heap of more troubles and hassles so it's a bit of an awkward thing to work on do it in warmer weather in a warm shop but again it's going to cost you a few bucks and it's a guaranteed known issue with these vehicles and the next bunch of issues are under the hood let's take a look pop this up and there's a bunch of problems that i've experienced under here firstly i've had some vacuum leaks that's costed me several hundred dollars took the vehicle to the shop they had to put the smoke machine to it and do some troubleshooting diagnostics because it spit out an engine light and they did get to the bottom of it there was a vacuum line that was cut and slightly abraded and of course they had to replace that not a huge expense but it can become a diagnostic nightmare because this is a diesel as well this is another problem i've had glow plugs that's the preheat system of course when you press the start button the vehicle senses the temperature humidity and it applies the appropriate amount of preheat to the engine in case you didn't know diesels require a bit of preheat to help in the compression now it's those glow plugs and there's one per cylinder they cost a significant amount of money to get them done i personally get the dealer to do it because there's actually tricks in removal and if you don't do them right you can actually break off part within the cylinder and then it becomes a bigger nightmare either way i've had glow plugs fail on this vehicle as well and more problems are the egr valve and the egr valve cooler down in here you'll notice the cooler is that tin and those have been known to crack and split if they do that's a problem as well as the egr valve that's been a problem i have replaced that myself slightly awkward repair but it's doable for the home do-it-yourselfer mechanic for sure also gives you an opportunity to clean out some of the carbon that's starting to build up in the recirculation valve assembly but it is diesel it makes soot and carbon that's what you're gonna get but before i share my most controversial failure of this vehicle that i've experienced in 10 years i want to talk in general we've done many many long trips of course this vehicle has had a variety varied amount of use we've driven it to california and phoenix and vegas all over the u.s we've done long distance highway trips you're able to get six to almost 700 miles on a tank of fuel if you run it end to end so it does very well probably over 30 miles per gallon and the other thing i'll mention this has the wonderful zf auto transmission shifts flawlessly works every time and has been an absolute bulletproof piece the other thing is the core engine in these vehicles is the turbo six-cylinder diesel engine and these is absolutely bulletproof too it's not the engine that you're finding as many problems with as it is all of the emissions crap tied to it for example the dpf the diesel particulate filter the egr valve the diesel exhaust fluid active tank there with heater and temperature sensing element as well as the passive tank that's located in the back it's all of that emissions equipment that brings this vehicle down the core engine is great has barely ever used an ounce of oil between oil changes we've never had to top it up but let's talk about some of the controversial issues now where i start getting heated is the diesel exhaust fluid tank and that's tucked in front of that front wheel here on the passenger side right here you'll notice you actually have to peel away this fender liner right here and it's tucked under there there's a tank and it's a diesel exhaust fluid tank and if you cycle up here you'll notice this is the filler for that so there's an active diesel exhaust fluid tank reservoir right there and there's a second one over here there's another filler here and these two both essentially fill up the active tank which consists of a built-in heater element a temperature sensor and other miscellaneous components which tie and inject that diesel exhaust fluid into the exhaust system there's also a passive tank that's on the other side on the driver's side down below and that's essentially how you fill this system up now that's all well and good when you live in florida or california but here in canada we see extreme temperatures we actually had almost minus 40 degrees this winter on a few days in a row and that's not uncommon every time we hit that minus 35 minus 40 this vehicle starts to suffer some problems number one is the battery starts to get weak because the battery needs the preheat system to activate even more intensely as well as because it's a diesel higher compression it needs the battery cranking power and on top of it it uses the battery for not just the options and extra features that you find in a bmw x5 but also the diesel exhaust fluid has a heater and it uses that so the system just drains the vehicle down drastically and the x5 has had a lot of problems with replacing batteries every three or four years and of course the diesel exhaust fluid tank that's where the controversy is the def tank why do i say that well as a matter of fact bmw said and extended a service bulletin through a tsb that owners of these vehicles are to experience an extended warranty up to 10 years or 120 000 miles to replace the original tank because it was a known failure point they wouldn't extend a warranty outlet like that if they didn't know there was an issue they were forced by that their hand was forced to support customers with this issue but unfortunately not only did we get one replaced under the warranty because we had first one a diesel exhaust fluid tank replaced at 160 000 kilometers and the vehicle was just coming up on 10 years they did one under that extended warranty we just had another one fail just two and a half years later bingo another one blue and this time no warranty you know what that cost thirty five hundred dollars parts and labor to get that installed clearly a deficient part by bmw and they're not taking the accountability or the responsibility of replacing that for customers who are experiencing these issues it's a sad sad state of affairs i get it they don't necessarily need to keep replacing parts over and over but it's clearly a deficient part and not one that doesn't come up with a significant cost so recently again i had to replace that tank and even if you want to do the replacement yourself the part itself is going to cost over 2500 canadian and then that's if you want to tackle that job yourself the other thing that we just recently had was this so then we take this off and i'm going to show you what else we had to do the fuel injectors once you remove the air box the intake plumbing and this all this foam then you're able to see not just the egr and all the other hardware but take a look under here and now what we're looking at here is a fuel rail you have a common fuel rail and you'll see this light little hose right there that is essentially feeding the fuel to one of the injectors now there's six injectors there's there's six cylinders six gold plugs and six fuel injectors and we just happen to have one of these fuel injectors failed number five so it goes from one two three four five six and guess what it's actually commonly known that often the fuel injectors number four five and six so the back three often fail and they often fail in spurts so we replaced number five because that one was actually shorting out the driver board the dde board is what drives these in fuel injectors and what was happening is number five injector was faulting out it was shorting and it was killing the board and because of that it was stalling the vehicle the vehicle would no longer would fall it would protect itself and isolate the back bank and then of course the vehicle wouldn't run so once we replaced injector number five on the back end then all was good that's great right well what's not so great is their piezoelectric injectors and unfortunately in about nineteen hundred dollars parts and labor per injector you don't just start replacing them all just on a whim and after reading a little bit online as well as i consulted i talked to the mechanic himself as well as reached out to other third party or independent shops and they all more or less say the same thing and that is sadly because of this cowl design what often tends to happen is if you have bad seals water can migrate down and what happens is those back three injectors number four five and six are subjected to moisture and if they get moisture on them or they get water on the injectors they start to short out so often what you're going to see is if you have one injector fail you often see maybe the other two injectors fail it's the back three that quite frequently do fail altogether repairs can be expensive there are weaknesses with this vehicle you just need to be aware of them but let's look at a few of the bills that i've had and i'll give the overall tally of how much his vehicles has cost me over the last 10 years of ownership that's the most recent one with the injector and the def tank 5300 we have 1100 we have another 11.50 we have another 1600 we have another 240 we have another 375. we have another 250 and so you're starting to see the picture here right the only time this vehicle comes out of the service shop for less than a thousand dollars is for your basic oil service pretty much any repair beyond an oil service is going to cost you in excess of a thousand bucks to get that battery changed recently we paid twelve hundred dollars all it was was a battery change and an engine shampoo just to diagnose a leak that we thought we had which turns out we didn't but you must understand that this vehicle is not cheap to fix and so over the course of the last 10 years i've accumulated all the bills oil service every year one or two oil services every year the brakes we've done a couple brake jobs we've done a few sets of tires plus all the repairs that i've spoke of this vehicle has literally cost us about 16 000 in a 10-year time frame so if you want to break that out to an average we're talking about 1 600 per year of maintenance and repairs for this vehicle now do you think that's excessive the recent repairs that start to worry me you know we got into the conversation about having a bad injector and unfortunately the dealer said we can't guarantee we don't have a problematic dde board failure as well they couldn't diagnose that they said not until we put a new injector can we actually say we do not have a board issue and the problem is what had me really worrying was i was already committed to the diesel exhaust fluid tank for 3 800 then along comes the injector for another 1900 then the dealer's telling me i might actually have to ante up for a new board if the injector didn't fix the problem so now i'm already at almost six thousand dollars plus a board the board costs about twenty seven hundred dollars just for the part plus labor you're another three or four thousand dollars now we're talking about potentially a ten thousand dollar repair and it was just all hinging on the fact that that board was either cooked or not and i was a little worried because the dealer couldn't definitively give me an answer on the diagnosis of the board now i even talked to the mechanic themselves i personally recommend it why don't you put a fixed resistor on the output of that driver board and simulate an injector and see if the car comes alive because as soon as he isolated the bat injector it would run again it wouldn't run when the ejector was connected but at the end of the day pricey car to fix pricey car to maintain at about 250 dollars for an oil change and a thousand dollars for a battery with labor and parts it's not the kind of vehicle you want to hand down to your parents or hand down to your child who's essentially a starving student you definitely have to have a significant bankroll or a strong do-it-yourself sense and a great selection of tools and diagnostic equipment so if you're shopping for an e70 x5 35d and you're not sure what actually does go wrong trust me that's what goes wrong and i hope i helped you with that today and with all of that said i'm sure you enjoyed the video and if you just want to learn a little bit more why use bmws are so cheap definitely check out that video it's going to share the whole summary in the background for you hope to see you guys real soon catch you next time bye

Channel: ExoticCar PlayPlace

Views: 69,320

Keywords: bmw, x5, bmw x5, bmw x5 review, bmw x5 long term review, bmw long term review, bmw long term reliability, bmw long term ownership review, x5 bmw, bmw review, car review, bmw x5 walkaround, bmw x5 features, bmw reliability, bmw x5 air suspension, are bmw reliable, new bmw x5 review, bmw suv, x5 review, 2022 bmw review, bmw reliability problems, how reliable are bmw, car expert bmw review, e70 x5, bmw engine reliability, exotic car play place, bmw reliability issues

Id: Mc4kEK7pi8o

Length: 23min 47sec (1427 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 23 2022