What I did to make my ownership of my E60 M5 as stress free as possible was replacing everything that could grenade the car as possible: Replace rod bearings, and replace the injectors + fuel filter ( you could include vanos pump in here but my model year has upgraded pump.) Sure, something catastrophic could still happen, but after replacing those things will reduce those chances by 10 fold. Like someone mentioned in a previous comment, getting a scanner is a life saver and can help relieve stress and put your mind at ease, because lets be honest, if something catastrophic happneed you would know without a scanner. My point being, having a scanner will help you read codes and start researcher so you know where your mechanic will likely start. Throwing money into the car guessing what is wrong will costs thousand upon thousands. A lot of times its a fairly simple fix, however the fix can still be expensive depending on the parts. I have spent my fair share of money on preventative and regular maintenance. You name it, I've done it..(besides actuators, waiting for them to go.) If your car is in need of the actuators you should be relieved in my opinion, these are meant to be replaced and its a common thing on these cars to replace. If I remember correctly you have quite a bit of miles on your car, which to me means your actuators held up for longer than most. Unfortunate timing, but the car needs them and will be good for another 60+k in regards to those parts. My car broke down at the start of summer one time, I know how you feel (needed SMG pump). These are special cars as you know and require special love lol Good luck bro, Zac
This comment was a huge help thank you Zac. Ya the actuators aren't the biggest deal, you're right. I appreciate the encouragement it does help man! All the best
@@ChrisManjuris I'd like to put my reply back here on 505 M5's post because he's spot on in so many ways. I would say if you're going to consider changing your throttle actuators you send them to Michigan to have them rebuilt vs buying OEM replacements (or chancing it with OE). One thing I've learned is these cars hate the cold and I mean with a passion they hate the cold. I could "cold start" my M5 (always left on a 14.7V trickle charger that auto adjusts amps based on ambient temperature) and if its under 50F I will have issues at first start. These are minor and situationally occurring only. Having the scanner (and these can be cheaper scanners Bluetooth driven to your phone) will tell you what occurred and if its a permanent fault. Typically these can be cleared and the vehicle can be restarted and it will not reproduce the error. There are so many electrical issues you can have with this series of vehicles (believe until 2009 production year; correct me if I'm wrong) due to the supplier of the GXL wire they chose the shielding will literally start flaking off of the wires. This is a love hate relationship but I find those who are willing to take the fight head on to keep the car on the road deserve a blue ribbon. Example? I prepped by M5 spending almost 60 hours paint correcting, polishing glass, refinishing my wheels etc. etc. and covered it for the winter. My M5 original one owner purchased it through the German experience and it lived its first life in Florida. This M5 has never seen road salt and it really looks almost brand new if you crawl underneath it; so mine never sees road time if its snowing. I say all of this because everything was working fine before it was stored for winter. We finally are seeing spring temperatures and the road salt has all been washed away. I start this thing up and have a few idle issue codes/emission codes which were deleted and it restarted no problem. Fast forward 2 days and the blower motor/resistor failed. Some things electrical can be blind failures and will not present themselves as a dying component. Other parts of your vehicle mechanically will have controlling module failures that will cause secondary issues.
@@Crushin_Libs Appreciate the advice again man - ya you're right my M5 hates the Canadian winters here for sure. The cold starts over the winter season are always rough. May be worth investing in a scanner like you said. And thats a good call on the actuator thank you! This all honestly helps so much and I'm always looking to learn more about these cars.
@@ChrisManjuris Look at signing up for EuroConnex; he has a group buy platform and some of the options (like the actuators) are year-round. He has low weight flywheel's, carbon drive shafts, equal length headers, tunes from Infinity (I have these, people at Infinity are awesome), exterior mods, interior mods, mechanical mods etc. I only mention this because some of those repairs people do like the actuators really could be better done at a custom shop where the repair turns into an upgrade so your repair has more legs to stand on when the red line is banging. ;) I bought a cheap (to me) scanner from Amazon OBDLink CX Scanner Bimmercode for around $75-80 and it can do everything I need it to as far as resetting maintenance intervals, new battery registrations, deleting error codes and even modifying certain settings in the code to say make the courtesy lights run longer. I fought last year a huge battle. I mentioned 505 M5 hit the nail on the head regarding preventative maintenance and he mentioned the fuel pump/filter + injectors. I didn't do my injectors and didn't have any fuel pressure issues and or lean/rich conditions (or misfire's) so I didn't see a reason to do anything. I had two fuel rail o-ring's on cylinder 9/10 that were leaking. Enough of a leak around 1500-1800 RPM they were causing droplets to form around the fuel rail o-ring's which would land them directly on the exhaust manifold. My car caught on fire last year and I sank almost $13K in electrical and mechanical repairs in this vehicle. If I had just done routine maintenance on components that would cost me less than $200. This is also a segway that you should consider putting a fire extinguisher in your vehicle.
@@Crushin_Libs Awesome I'll look into it. Fire extinguisher sounds like it should come standard with the E60 M5 at this pint hahah. I'm sorry to hear about your car though man that sucks :/ We keep moving forward! All the best
Ya and I don’t think it’s too bad to fix/replace so not the end of the world. We’ll back 👍🏻 have a fresh tank of gas in it and she’s already running much better which is good to see
@@ChrisManjuris yeah if you haven’t yet, there’s a guy on here named M539 Restorations and he has a 6 speed he’s rebuild with like 240k km (around 170k miles) and i think it’s the last part or it’s part 4 or something of his e60 playlist where he does a throttle actuator job and it looks super straight forward. given he’s got years of experience on us both, i think it’s always worth replacing them with higher mileage since they fail early usually.
Do you not have your own scanner to figure out what’s wrong before having to take it to a shop? I have 135K miles on my E60 M5 but what you run into service wise is more so due to the age of the car. Consider how many actuations certain parts have had in this vehicle over the last 16-17 years of age. Also make sure you don’t disconnect the battery for storage. The last thing you want is the computer going zero voltage for 2-3 months. Always throw a trickle charger on it and you really want one that’ll do 14+ volts.
Unfortunately I don’t :( I appreciate the help man that’s really good info to know. Trickle charger is key 👍🏻 how long have you had your M5? If there’s any other tips in terms of preventative maintenance I’m always looking to learn more! What have you replaced or fixed on the car?
What I did to make my ownership of my E60 M5 as stress free as possible was replacing everything that could grenade the car as possible: Replace rod bearings, and replace the injectors + fuel filter ( you could include vanos pump in here but my model year has upgraded pump.) Sure, something catastrophic could still happen, but after replacing those things will reduce those chances by 10 fold. Like someone mentioned in a previous comment, getting a scanner is a life saver and can help relieve stress and put your mind at ease, because lets be honest, if something catastrophic happneed you would know without a scanner. My point being, having a scanner will help you read codes and start researcher so you know where your mechanic will likely start. Throwing money into the car guessing what is wrong will costs thousand upon thousands. A lot of times its a fairly simple fix, however the fix can still be expensive depending on the parts. I have spent my fair share of money on preventative and regular maintenance. You name it, I've done it..(besides actuators, waiting for them to go.) If your car is in need of the actuators you should be relieved in my opinion, these are meant to be replaced and its a common thing on these cars to replace. If I remember correctly you have quite a bit of miles on your car, which to me means your actuators held up for longer than most. Unfortunate timing, but the car needs them and will be good for another 60+k in regards to those parts. My car broke down at the start of summer one time, I know how you feel (needed SMG pump). These are special cars as you know and require special love lol
Good luck bro,
Zac
This comment was a huge help thank you Zac. Ya the actuators aren't the biggest deal, you're right. I appreciate the encouragement it does help man! All the best
@@ChrisManjuris I'd like to put my reply back here on 505 M5's post because he's spot on in so many ways. I would say if you're going to consider changing your throttle actuators you send them to Michigan to have them rebuilt vs buying OEM replacements (or chancing it with OE). One thing I've learned is these cars hate the cold and I mean with a passion they hate the cold. I could "cold start" my M5 (always left on a 14.7V trickle charger that auto adjusts amps based on ambient temperature) and if its under 50F I will have issues at first start. These are minor and situationally occurring only. Having the scanner (and these can be cheaper scanners Bluetooth driven to your phone) will tell you what occurred and if its a permanent fault. Typically these can be cleared and the vehicle can be restarted and it will not reproduce the error. There are so many electrical issues you can have with this series of vehicles (believe until 2009 production year; correct me if I'm wrong) due to the supplier of the GXL wire they chose the shielding will literally start flaking off of the wires. This is a love hate relationship but I find those who are willing to take the fight head on to keep the car on the road deserve a blue ribbon. Example? I prepped by M5 spending almost 60 hours paint correcting, polishing glass, refinishing my wheels etc. etc. and covered it for the winter. My M5 original one owner purchased it through the German experience and it lived its first life in Florida. This M5 has never seen road salt and it really looks almost brand new if you crawl underneath it; so mine never sees road time if its snowing. I say all of this because everything was working fine before it was stored for winter. We finally are seeing spring temperatures and the road salt has all been washed away. I start this thing up and have a few idle issue codes/emission codes which were deleted and it restarted no problem. Fast forward 2 days and the blower motor/resistor failed. Some things electrical can be blind failures and will not present themselves as a dying component. Other parts of your vehicle mechanically will have controlling module failures that will cause secondary issues.
@@Crushin_Libs Appreciate the advice again man - ya you're right my M5 hates the Canadian winters here for sure. The cold starts over the winter season are always rough. May be worth investing in a scanner like you said. And thats a good call on the actuator thank you! This all honestly helps so much and I'm always looking to learn more about these cars.
@@ChrisManjuris Look at signing up for EuroConnex; he has a group buy platform and some of the options (like the actuators) are year-round. He has low weight flywheel's, carbon drive shafts, equal length headers, tunes from Infinity (I have these, people at Infinity are awesome), exterior mods, interior mods, mechanical mods etc. I only mention this because some of those repairs people do like the actuators really could be better done at a custom shop where the repair turns into an upgrade so your repair has more legs to stand on when the red line is banging. ;)
I bought a cheap (to me) scanner from Amazon OBDLink CX Scanner Bimmercode for around $75-80 and it can do everything I need it to as far as resetting maintenance intervals, new battery registrations, deleting error codes and even modifying certain settings in the code to say make the courtesy lights run longer.
I fought last year a huge battle. I mentioned 505 M5 hit the nail on the head regarding preventative maintenance and he mentioned the fuel pump/filter + injectors. I didn't do my injectors and didn't have any fuel pressure issues and or lean/rich conditions (or misfire's) so I didn't see a reason to do anything. I had two fuel rail o-ring's on cylinder 9/10 that were leaking. Enough of a leak around 1500-1800 RPM they were causing droplets to form around the fuel rail o-ring's which would land them directly on the exhaust manifold. My car caught on fire last year and I sank almost $13K in electrical and mechanical repairs in this vehicle. If I had just done routine maintenance on components that would cost me less than $200.
This is also a segway that you should consider putting a fire extinguisher in your vehicle.
@@Crushin_Libs Awesome I'll look into it. Fire extinguisher sounds like it should come standard with the E60 M5 at this pint hahah. I'm sorry to hear about your car though man that sucks :/ We keep moving forward! All the best
throttle actuators are fairly common on these. which might make sense with the old gas. but it’s just a thought
Ya and I don’t think it’s too bad to fix/replace so not the end of the world. We’ll back 👍🏻 have a fresh tank of gas in it and she’s already running much better which is good to see
@@ChrisManjuris yeah if you haven’t yet, there’s a guy on here named M539 Restorations and he has a 6 speed he’s rebuild with like 240k km (around 170k miles) and i think it’s the last part or it’s part 4 or something of his e60 playlist where he does a throttle actuator job and it looks super straight forward. given he’s got years of experience on us both, i think it’s always worth replacing them with higher mileage since they fail early usually.
Do you not have your own scanner to figure out what’s wrong before having to take it to a shop? I have 135K miles on my E60 M5 but what you run into service wise is more so due to the age of the car. Consider how many actuations certain parts have had in this vehicle over the last 16-17 years of age.
Also make sure you don’t disconnect the battery for storage. The last thing you want is the computer going zero voltage for 2-3 months. Always throw a trickle charger on it and you really want one that’ll do 14+ volts.
Unfortunately I don’t :( I appreciate the help man that’s really good info to know. Trickle charger is key 👍🏻 how long have you had your M5? If there’s any other tips in terms of preventative maintenance I’m always looking to learn more! What have you replaced or fixed on the car?
its the smg wiring that goes bad not the pumps!!!!!!?
Unfortunately it was the pump itself for me, couldn’t hold pressure to shift anymore 🥲
older BMW models are called money pits for a reason. BMWs are the best European cars, but too expensive to maintain with the time.
Yeah it’s definitely a financial commitment. But worth every penny! The car is still a blast to own and drive
Firrrst
The fact is: any M car will hurt the wallet if you can’t work on it yourself. So stop crying, man up, get some tools and work on it yourself.