I thought I would write up the steps taken to strip the X5 enough to get to the washer bottle.
A mixture of descriptions here, I know they are obvious but for completeness ....
- Fender = Wing
- Fender Flare = Wheel Arch Trim
- Rocker Panel = Side Skirt / Running Board
- LH = Left Hand
- RH = Right Hand
My car is a 2010 E70 LCI (XDrive 5.0i M-Sport).
If your BMW X5 / X6 has the washer jet power of a small ant with bronchitis then it seems there are three things you can do.
1.) Drive the car hanging out of the window whilst trying to spray water on the screen
2.) Take it into BMW and watch the face of the service manager change from medium happiness to "oh no, not an X* washer bottle"
3.) Take on the repair yourself.
I chose option 3, being handy with the tools and up for a challenge. I did the usual searches on Google and found small number of guides and couple of youtube clips for certain removal of components but for those who have/haven't looked here's a summary of what I found:
- The screen washer bottle is located under the RH fender / Wing (UK car).
- The poor washer jet performance is likely to be either a damaged washer bottle or blocked filter.
- It's not uncommon to have a bad smell coming from this bottle
- Headlamp washers may still be working fine but the screen ones not.
- The washer bottle has three separate electrical pumps (each with it's own filter)
- You *May* be able to get away with loosening the wing to get to the bottle.
- Its a pretty time consuming job.
So the guide I followed suggested you can get away with doing the following:
a.) With the car jacked up, remove the front RH wheel
b.) Remove Front RH fender flare ** Held on with clips (blind rivets) on the underside of the flare and clipped through the fender.
c.) Remove the rocker panel (in the case of the M-Sport,
side skirt - which means also removing the rear fender flare).
d.) Remove the four (
if you intend to remove the fender) T30 Torx bolts from the inside of the Fender (between door opening and fender) -
one of these goes through the washer bottle (see the attached photo).
e.) Remove two hex bolts (8mm socket) at the lower part of the fender, normally covered by the side skirt (rocker panel)).
f.) Remove the Torx bolt securing the filler neck to the top side of the engine bay, Remove the washer bottle filler neck (is locked into place and needs to rotated to unlock)
g.) Remove hoses and connectors from the side of bottle
h.) Remove the last (but very hard to get to Torx 30) bolt. Its located between the chassis of the car and front of the washer bottle (towards the filler neck). You get to it from underneath the car and reverse side of the bolt can be seen from the top of the car beyond the filler neck.
If you're lucky you will be able to get to this Torx bolt, remove the washer bottle, service / clean and re-install!! If not read on
Edit - Here is the challenge we had, the frame that sits on top of the chassis leg completely obscured the bolt securing the top of this bottle. it would appear to me that the bottle must have been fixed to the frame either loose to before the frame was secured into place. Note**When you loosen the frame you possibly effect the line of the bonnet / wing alignment**
Continue to strip enough of the car to get to the hidden Torx bolt:
i.) Remove the LH fender flare, bolts and clips (BMW call these blind rivets) on the underside plus clips through the fender.
j.) Remove the front bumper - (youtube)
k.) Remove the windshield trim (RH side), just pops out
l.) Remove the small hex screw and the top of the fender (was covered by the windshield trim)
m.) Remove the RH fender, If you have followed the instructions so far you will still need to remove the following:
- The Torx 30 bolts along the top edge of the fender
- One Torx 25 bolt at the front of the fender (under the lamp washer area)
- One Torx 30 bolt that goes into the under side of the headlamp
- One Torx 30 bolt on the inside of the front frame (to the left of the main radiator) ** follow the angle bracket from the inside of the bumper front of the chassis leg to locate this **
- Don't forget to unplug the headlamp and washer pump feed (if you have headlamp washers) ** You should have already disconnected the side repeater
n.) You should be able to get to the plastic frame that is bolted to the top of the chassis leg, loosen several of the bolts to allow you to pull the bottle away from the chassis enough to undo the last tricky Torx bolt from underneath the washer bottle.
I have attached some photos of the washer bottle (clean) to highlight the fixing points and one to show how far we had to strip the car to do this job.
It's now time to clean all of the components. - Photos to follow
Reference Material:
Here is a link to realoem to the waterbottle:
http://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/show...diagId=61_2146
Here is a link to realoem to the fender (wing):
http://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/show...diagId=41_2043
As they say in all good manuals, "installation is the reverse of removal" .. and three days of your life!
So what state was the bottle when we took it out..
It looked more like it had been used to store crude oil than water. Every filter was totally blocked. I'm going to assume another design floor here with the breather vent open on the top of the bottle inside a wheel arch...
We set about cleaning the filters in warm water and soap using an old toothbrush. We used steradent tablets to shift the black marks and dirt from the bottle but had to do this a number of time (I think 6 or 8 tablets at a time), the trick we found was to use a had full of pea gravel to help shift the muck. I took the pumps and clean them by hand and flushed clean water through them.
When we started to re-fit the washer bottle I used
Autoglym vinyl-rubber-care on the filter seals.