Welcome back everybody. It's Mark with Exotic Car Play Place. Today you have to
ask yourself if you're looking for an e 70 X5 diesel like this, a 35D, is this
one of the more unreliable vehicles at BMW sells? Now this is old news, this is
an e70 and the e70s were produced in 2007 to 2013 and they had the 3 litre
inline-six twin-turbo diesel engine that had gobs
of power and torque, but I'm gonna talk to you about some of my personal
experience in owning this vehicle, and what I've been through over the years of
ownership, and you determine for yourself whether this is a vehicle that's
unreliable, and whether you'd be willing to own something like this. So here it is my
2009 E70 X5. Now let's do a rundown with some of the failures that we had on
this thing, so let's start at the back of course, going around to the back of the
car, you see the suspension of course the car sits at a pretty nice height right?
Now that's a typical ride height, now what happened with this car was one day
I went out there and this car was sagged down like it was actually sitting lower
to where the fender was actually flush with the top of the wheel. So after some
research, I found out that these have rear airbags, a suspension bag that
basically allows it to carry a little more load, gives you a little bit more
compliant ride on the back end of the car, but unfortunately they do wear and
when the bags go, or you spring a leak in the system that's the first thing to
happen, is one side or both sides tend to sag. In this case the one side was worse
than the other, which would indicate one bag was worse of course, but when I
actually got to it, I did it myself by the way, and you can check out the videos,
I've got links in my channel that show how to do it, but I actually did that
change myself. It took a few hours, was relatively minor change, it wasn't that
bad to do, but anyway that is one thing that you can guarantee will fail on
these x5 diesels or X5 equipped with the airbags. Now
another thing that was weird here too, looking at the windshield now, there's
that mirror here, of course you got the mirror, and right where that line, that
dot, is in the middle, all of a sudden one day at their split perfectly down the
middle. I never understood what happened there. I think it was either a flaw in
the glass, or just maybe some kind of an imperfection where this thing was
mounted, created maybe a stress point, and the whole thing split down the
middle, which was really weird. So now let's show you some of the things
under the hood that I experienced with this X5.
So let's reach out here, pop the hood, now we're gonna open up the hood, and I'm
gonna show you a few things. Okay, there we are.
The infamous E70 diesel 35D engine setup here. The DEF fluid, pretty minor
stuff there's actually two points to fill that by the way, there and there, but
that's not the problem. So I've had a few things happen under here. I've had a
fault code that created an issue where there was a broken vacuum line. Well do
you realize with a modern-day engine especially turbocharged engine and
diesel in particular with all the emission systems and fuel systems and
collection and and all that fun stuff, did you imagine how many vacuum lines
actually exist in this engine? A lot, and that's what happened. I sprung some
kind of a cracked vacuum line, and it spit out a code and this car literally
spent three days in the shop for them to troubleshoot the issue. It took forever
for the dealer to troubleshoot it, and I mean you know obviously there's a lot of
work involved here, there's a lot of stuff to take apart, but that caused a
lot of headache for them I'm sure. Fortunately they gave me a quote. I
didn't actually have to pay for all the time it was in the shop, but it did leave
me without the vehicle for a period of time, which was quite unfortunate. So that
was another failure. Yet another one I had this year actually,
you can't really see here, you actually have to take this of,f take that, and then
you really gotta kind of gut the whole top and then the engine off, and then
what that leaves you is gaining access to the intake manifold. So you take that
off all that hardware intake manifold everything's got to come off and then
gain access to the glow plugs. Once you have access to the glow plugs, then that
is a fun job on itself and I decided not to tackle it myself. I actually took it
to the dealer to deal with. I heard that it's not that difficult a job however if
you break one of the plugs off in the engine block, good luck you're on your
own, you're gonna have to pull ahead and basically manage that whole repair
yourself. Good luck with that, not a fun task from what I hear. So another problem
I have specifically virtually every single year is this DEF fluid, so that's
this container and that's that filler as well, that those are the
fillers where you add the diesel exhaust fluid the DEF and that fluid is really
essentially injected into the exhaust system to keep things cleaner at the
tailpipes. Now the problem is that stuff works really, really well when
temperatures are nice temperatures, when it's warm, and it's not too cold out.
Problem is here in Canada where I live it often hits -30 degrees Celsius,
which is close you know sometimes even as low as 40 degrees below zero Celsius
and Fahrenheit, as I believe that's the crossover. So it often gets very, very
cold here and when it does that, this diesel exhaust fluid freezes up, and when
that freezes up you get a code number. One it doesn't work efficiently, number
two you actually get a code that tells you there's a fault, it's called
high reductant pressure. High reductant pressure tells you that you've basically
started to freeze up the system, it's gelling or freezing. I've had that every
single year in the last, I don't know handful years as soon as it hits about
minus 28, minus 30 degrees Celsius. Guaranteed I've got that high reductant
pressure code spit again and again and again and then I'll
take the car to a car wash, let it sit and thaw for six or seven hours, and then
reset the code and it's good for a while. So it's just a common flaw with the
diesel engines her,e and this diesel exhaust fluid that you find you know as
part of the add-on for these cars. So then I've had others problems here too,
some of which also spit out codes, so let me pull this for a second here, let's put
this just up there for now. We're looking at the EGR hardware you've got the EGR
cooler and you've got the EGR valve and some other miscellaneous valves that you
know working part of the intake some of its to recirculate some of it actually
shuts off when the engine shuts off a sort of chokes the engine there's a few
different things going on in here this is part of the throttle body assembly
and all this I've had this fail I've had to replace this part here before this
thing started failing it's spit out a code that was a problem the EGR cooler
itself which is this part down here that guy is also cracked that's also a very
common problem with these cars you know what it's just an expensive part it's a
pain in the rump but that's parts commonly known as well
as a failure point so all this EGR bit through auto body hardware has been
known to fail on this engine as well on my car here specifically and it's very
common for many of these cars out there so let's just close the hood right now
and I'm gonna show you one other thing that's kind of unusual with this car and
this is a common issue that you find with this thing it's a beautiful machine
altogether I love it but it isn't without its faults so I'll show you
something inside here so I'm gonna open up the door
know what we're gonna do this is a common a really weird thing so I'm gonna
start the car it's running everything's tickety-boo no codes no faults that's a
nice thing on a BMW not to see any issues but what I'm gonna do this is
always a fault that seems to kick in all the time on this car so the normal way
to go to reverse you squeeze and you push it backwards that's gonna drop me
into reverse but when I do that and if I get too quick onto the throttle you will
see a code many many times over and over again so I'm gonna do this down here but
I'm gonna show you up on the dash as I do this so I'm gonna switch it into
reverse.
Oh there it is you see and there's that park fault it always
spits out every single time I try to back out with the car it gives me this
fault which is really weird you know I go to Reverse that's all I'm in Reverse
and it gives me this weird park light all the time so it's you know you can
reset it sure it's not an actual fault because otherwise you'd have the red
light but now you've got to restart the car and go through the whole sequence of
events on me okay everybody I really hope you enjoyed the video just a quick
summary some of the things that I actually had happened to this car aside
from standard maintenance you asked the question would I own this vehicle again
if I could do it all over again absolutely I would why would I do that
again well mainly because it's blistering performance
it's amazing fuel economy comfort beyond what you'd ever need
it's got third row for those people with kids at least in the way this one's
equipped it looks great it handles like a car and that's why I would own it that
being said it is not the most reliable BMW as a matter of fact is probably one
of the more maintenance intensive BMWs on the market available in the used car
market today so if you want to buy one would I recommend it I enjoy it but be
prepared to dish out the cash thanks again everybody make sure you give it a
thumbs up like and subscribe to the channel I'd love to see on the next one
hope to see a real soon everybody doctor dad bye bye