PSA: Lost my brakes today.

[Letsgo]

Grateful it happened at 7:30am on a Sunday otherwise I am not sure how this would've ended up.

This X5 has been nothing but one surprise after another from what the previous owner did/didn't do. Lesson learned on buying someone else's unfinished project.

Unknown to me my ground cable has been heating up while rubbing up on the brake booster vacuum pipe and it finally melted it today. Lost all brake pressure and stopped half way through an intersection.

I am not sure if this is another one of the long laundry list of "this is typical for an x5", but for those of you in the know or not, check your ground cables just in case. I have no idea why mine is like this.

I was planning to do a bunch of maintenance over the holidays including finishing the PO's unfinished "stage 1" where he deleted everything but the downpipe. I've had a CEL for glow plug module which I am planning to replace as well, along with the thermostat which I just did.

Left (OEM BMW original), right is the replacement.






And as a pity post, I have a never ending leak from my turbo area that I can't figure out where it's coming from. Any thoughts?

[wcs531]

I haven't seen the ground strap on my x5d but that looks as if it could be aftermarket. Maybe the previous owner routed it incorrectly?

For the leak, it looks like one of the lines or connections feeding oil to the turbos could be the culprit. I'd be very careful if you mess with those lines though, starving the turbos of oil for too long can ruin the bearings. This is probably a bigger issue for brand new turbos where there's no lubrication at all out of the box, but still something to keep in mind.

[Nyc Dito]

I think I can see that the top "J Line" is leaking. Easy to change, even for a guy like me with 10 thumbs. Heres a vid from a fellow member;

Then that ground strap looks like the other one that I have yet to see an issue with according tot he forums, so weird yours was getting hot. more importantly WHY was it getting hot? The smaller one is the one that I've only heard of corroding and causing issues.

Glad you made it to safety though..

[sunny_j]

WOW that is scary! Like others have mentioned, that ground wire is not factory. Total hack job