E60: Replacing headlight-washer caps / hinges!

Despite how it looks, you can't replace them with the bumper on. This is best done while the whole front bumper is off the car, but thesis the quick and dirty method, of course.

1. Lift each cap out of the bumper on the hinge and remove them by depressing the clips at the back and sliding the lugs out of the hinge.

2. Remove the screw holding each corner of the bumper to the wing using a 10mm wrench.

3. Pop the corner out of the wing and bend it out enough to reach behind the headlight-washer cap.

4. Remove the hinge / lever by bending one side out and unhooking it from the outer lugs, the other side should then come away easily.

5. Remove the spring by squeezing the coils towards each other and unhooking them from the inner lugs.

6. Fit the new spring as a reverse of removal.

7. Lift the spring up forwards and fit the new hinge / lever as a reverse of removal, then release the spring ensuring it is tight against the flat-bar on the hinge.

8. Refit each corner of the bumper.

9. Lift the hinges / levers out of the bumper and fit the caps.

New trim pieces for M-Sport bumper + painting!

As my bumper didn't come with the cover-caps or hinges, I had to source them separately. I got the headlight-washer hinges directly from BMW Parts [Williams, Liverpool] and they were only £2.70 each inc. VAT. BMW are good for clips and random bits, but trim pieces are a bit more expensive, especially if you have them painted in your colour-code.

I turned to eBay, but was surprised to find used pieces are thin on the ground and no silver ones coming up. New, the headlight-washer caps start at £16 each and go up, plus delivery, so a pair of genuine ones for £30 delivered actually seemed reasonable. These came from MM Autos [eBay ID: adrian5882745], the same place in Wrexham I got the bumper, but I checked and the silver caps from mine are long sold! The tow-hook caps start at £25 for a new one and again no used ones in silver, so I recommend buying from a seller on eBay Germany called bmdoubleyou24. A new genuine one in primer is £18 delivered and only took 5 days to arrive so was worth the saving.

£70 worth of plastic. Headlight-washer caps, hinges and tow-hook cap, only the essentials.

Finally, I bought a can of Titansilver (or Titanium Silver, same paint-code) spray from Halfords, along with a fresh can of clear-lacquer, £6.49 each. After giving the caps about six coats of both, I gave them a good rub with T-cut so they look OE, though I have a feeling they will look a lot shinier than the bumper. I will have to get polishing and sort those scratches...

M-Sport Bumper Total Cost:
Bumper - £200
Hinges - £5.40
Washer-caps - £30
Tow-hook Cap - £18.11
Paint/lacquer - £12.98
TOTAL - £266.49

Pre-primed ABS-plastic is a piece of cake to paint and was going great...

...until it rained and spotted the lacquer...

...so needed a bit of flatting back...

...and repainting, followed by a quick blast with rubbing-compound.

New 'M-Paket' hinges do indeed need the corner of the bumper pulling out to fit, they can't be done from outside.

E60: Fitting M-Sport Front Bumper

1. Bumper Removal:

1.1 Remove the bolt holding either corner of the bumper, just inside the wheel-arch, using a 10mm wrench. The edges of the bumper inside the wing should be free to pull out of join.

1.2 Remove the screws holding the wheel-arch liner to the front bumper using an 8mm socket. *If you are replacing your arch-liners then remove them entirely.

1.3 Remove the two screws from the lower centre of the bumper, using a T25-Torx socket, located just under the lip below each corner of the licence-plate.

1.4 Remove the two screws from the lower centre of the bumper using a T25-Torx socket, located inside each spotlight-grille recess.

1.5 Remove the five screws holding the upper-centre of the bumper along the top edge of the grille/slam panel using a T30-Torx socket.

1.6 The bumper should be free to move, so wiggle it forward and gently rest the front-centre on the ground.

1.7 Unplug the wiring to the spotlights and four parking-sensors (PDC).

1.8 Unfasten the wiring from the hooks along the inside edge of the bumper.

2. Preparing M-Sport Bumper:

2.1 Swap over the spotlight bulb-holders. They are removed by rotating a quarter-turn anti-clockwise.

2.2 Swap over the four parking-sensors (PDC). Remove them by pulling them out from the back while gently pressing from the outer side. They should fit the lugs on all E60 bumpers, regardless of year.

2.3 Ensure the grilles, headlight-washer hinges and springs are fitted to the bumper as they cannot be fitted once it is on.

2.4 On the car, remove the wiring from the foam-polystyrene blocks and remove the blocks from the car.

2.5 Fit the 'M-Paket' foam-polystyrene blocks to the car and re-insert the wiring to them, or if you do not have compatible foam blocks and are leaving them off, find a suitable route for the wiring over the top of the grille / air-ducts.

2.6 If you do not have 'M-Paket' brake-air-ducts on your bumper, then swap the existing ones left to right and flip them upside down to clear the M-Sport grille-recesses. 

3. Fitting M-Sport Bumper:

3.1 Place the M-Sport bumper in front of the car and reinsert the PDC/spotlight wiring to the hooks along the inside edge of the bumper.

3.2 Reconnect the wiring-plugs to each parking-sensor (PDC) and spotlight.

3.3 Lift the bumper up to the car, so the front-undertray slides above the deeper M-Sport lip and put one screw loosely into the centre hole on the top of the grille.

3.4 Hook each corner of the bumper round into the slot in the wheel-arch and replace the 10mm screws, but not tighten fully.

3.5 Find a suitable placement for the bumper, where the shut lines at either side of the headlight are as equal as possible. Do this one side at a time and fully tighten the 10mm screws.

3.6 *If you have the adapter-brackets on your bumper then fasten these to the two centre screw-holes from step 1.3.

3.7 Loosely replace the remaining four screws along the top of the grille / slam-panel, find a suitable placement for the grille panel where it does not disturb the shut-lines at the headlight corners and fully tighten the top screws using a T30-Torx socket.

3.8 Fit the M-Paket wheel-arch liners and fasten them to the bumper using the 8mm screws, or if you are keeping the SE ones, measure where the outer edge of the liner fouls the M-Sport bumper and cut a sliver off. One of the 8mm screw holes should still line up and hold the cut liner in place.

3.9 Replace the weather-strip trim to the top grille-panel.

3.10 Check the headlight-washers are clearing their apertures and refit the cover-caps.

E60 M-Sport Bumper Retrofit: '08 LCI to '04 SE

I have mentioned hankering after an M-Sport or M5 style front-bumper for my 530d, but they are expensive. A new spurious one will cost about £230, the same price as a damaged genuine one and either of these require painting. A mint one already painted in Titansilver, complete with grilles, parking-sensors and trim will run £400. I've been looking for a few months and this week spotted an undamaged '08 front bumper for £250 with new spot-lamps and grilles, but no sensors or trim. Best of all it was in Wrexham, less than 30 miles away, so when I emailed the seller offering £200 cash on collection and he accepted, I realised that I was now bound to the idea. I got the bumper on in 2 hours, but a lot of bits had to be removed to do it and before I start modifying them to fit I'm sat on a fence between bothering at all, or just going back to stock - I can still get £200 for this M-bumper all day long.

Before you consider doing the retrofit to an SE, I must mention that even if the M-Sport bumper is fully-loaded with trim and bits, you will still need to buy a heap of extra parts to make it fit properly. If you don't, stock parts that get in the way will either have to be binned or modified to fit...

Things that DO fit:

• Wing and top-grille mounting points.
• Spot-lamp bulb-holders.
• Parking-sensors (PDC).
• Grille-top weather-strip.

Things that do NOT fit:

• Headlight-washer caps.
• Headlight-washer cap hinges.
• Tow-eye cover cap.
• All 4 lower-grille mounting points.
• Left + right brake air-duct.
• Under-tray left + right corners.
• Front wheel-arch liners.
• Bumper shock-absorbers (foam-polystyrene blocks).

Assuming your bumper comes bare, you will need these essentials:

H/Light Washer Hinge (Lever) Left [51117896601] (22 in below pic)

H/Light Washer Hinge (Lever) Right [51117896602]

H/Light Washer Cap Left [51117897211] (21 in below pic)

H/Light Washer Cap Right [51117897212]

Tow-eye Cover Cap [51117897210] (9 in below pic)

You can get away with leaving the bumper unbolted in the lower-centre, or easily fab-up some custom brackets, but if you want to buy them then you will need:

Holding Strap [51111973721] (10 in below pic)

2x Adapter Bracket [51117896611] (33 in below pic)

The foam-polystyrene bumper 'shock-absorbers' can be cut to fit or just left off, but if you want them they are:

Shock-absorber Left [51117896589]

Shock-absorber Right [51117896590]

The plastic wheel-arch liners only need a sliver cutting off to make them fit, but if you really want to replace them:

Front Wheel-arch Liner/Cover Left [51717896605]
Front Wheel-arch Liner/Cover Right [51717896606]

The diagram above with all parts can be seen on this page of RealOEM.com.

E60: Unbearable rattle with new Alpine install + shonky fix.

No sooner have I got the Alpine install sounding heavy in the E60, it shakes some trim loose and begins to cause the world's most annoying rattle. At first it was barely audible and only at high volume. Now it's all the time and louder than ever, all music and even low volume. 

It turned about to be the plastic trim-panel behind the centre arm-rest. I've stuck some foam-sponge into the gaps around it for now and hopefully this will help, but it will need something more like Dynamat at some point.

The low-end rumble produced by the E60s stock-subs, amplified again through the Alpines is shaking panels loose on a very well built car. There is a 22mm thick carpeted MDF panel behind the rear-seats that forms the back of the boot and the front-facing subs are driving straight into it, which already muffles the bass considerably and gives vibration in the cabin. I have read posts where large holes are cut into the MDF in front of each sub to get the bass through, but I can't see that helping vibration and and am reluctant to cut the panel yet. Turning the subs to face away from the rear-seats might help the vibration but I doubt it'll make the bass sound any cleaner and am loathe to expose the sub-cones to loose luggage and lose space by bringing the amp / x-over out onto the boot floor. Again, some sort of sound-matting such as Dynamat will need fitting around the boot and between the rear-seats and parcel-shelf to iron out the remaining hum. As for getting more bass through, the best quick advice would be to open or remove the 'ski-hatch' if your E60 has one, sadly mine does not.

The optimal settings I've got so far since taking RCA-feed from the stock-subs is to have the iDrive bass set to +3 or 4 and the X-over on less than a quarter gain, as the low-end frequencies are just so loud on the Alpines. The low-mid frequencies don't really get to the subs at all though and this where the stock-system needs to take over, but turning the bass over halfway on the iDrive is over-driving the subs and there's no choice but to keep turning down the x-over gain. Hopefully I can turn the x-over back up a bit again now the rattle is sorted.

E60: Bumper damage + fix!

Calamity! As I was reversing out of where I was parked at work on Thursday, the edge of the front bumper caught the corner of a kerb I didn't even know was there. Parking at work has become mental lately, with a big influx of new drivers who start at 7am, so those of us in at 8 are being forced to park further and further up the lane and now into a gravel clearing that belongs to the Woodland Trust. During a short phase of image-adjustment my company lined the lane with brand new kerb-stones, but as it doesn't own the clearing the kerb ends suddenly at the exact boundary point. This has now been well overgrown with long grass and, although the kerb is barely 6-inches on our side, a dip makes it about 10-inches on the far side. That's the side my front-bumper hit as I reversed round to drive out.

I was only doing 5mph and it only sounded like a bad scrape, but I didn't realise the full extent of the damage I'd done until I got home. The front-bumper was hanging off, the plastic under-tray has broken, the headlamp-washer cover and tow-hook flap were missing and a reverse-sensor had broken off. I returned to find the absent parts, but couldn't find the reverse-sensor. It had dropped down into the bumper, luckily not falling out somewhere while driving and best of all it still works, because buying another sensor so soon would be a tough pill to swallow. The rest of the damage is bad enough, but today I have re-fitted the bumper flush and glued the sensor back in. The only lasting scars from the accident is some cracked gel-coat on the bumper, pictured. It can't be rubbed-in with T-cut and would need re-painting, so I think when I can afford to do so I will buy an M-sport front-bumper, as long as I can find one already in silver.

This will teach me to be more cautious when driving over grass!

First, I took the 10mm screw out from the corner of the bumper, just inside the wheel-arch and pulled the bumper right out to get to the reverse-sensor. The plastic mount had snapped off with the sensor and superglue just wasn't doing the trick, so I headed to Halfords and bought an Areldite 'syringe', £5.49. It's pricey, but does the job every time. Next was to remove any snapped off bits of bumper from the wing. The bottom edge of the wing, where it meets the bumper shut-line, had bent round the threaded-clip and created a high-spot underneath that needed beating in with a hammer and chisel before the bumper could be re-seated flush and the screw replaced to hold things tight. Finally, another blob of Areldite sorted the headlamp-washer cover-flap, as the clips had sheared clean off the back of it. I would have gotten away with it being unnoticeable if it wasn't for that pesky gel-coat cracking! 

E60 Audio: Getting a Bass RCA (Audio) feed from the Stock-Subs.

If you want an aftermarket amp + subs in the boot then you need an RCA-feed and tapping into the rear speaker-wires does not work on the E60 and other iDrive BMWs as it does on the E39, E46 etc. All US E60s and others with factory-upgraded sound-systems have two subs under the front seats run by a stock-amp in the boot, on the left-hand suspension turret behind the panel. If you have this see this guide on //// to tap into the wires on the stock-amp.

Most non-US cars don't have a built-in amplifier in the boot, but they still have subwoofers under the front seats. These are driven by the head-unit and the EQ sends a different set of frequencies to each set of speakers. [See: http://musicarnw.com/bmw-factory-audio-explained/]. The rear speakers are only 4" so they don't get much low-end at all. To get proper bass it's worth going the extra mile and running cables all the way to the stock-subs, which get the real low-range frequencies.

** NB: This is to fit subwoofers on a bass-only channel. If you are fitting component speakers or 6x9s then you will need a broader range of frequencies and are better to tap the rear speaker-wires, covered in THIS POST, which is a lot easier. **

PROCESS:

Getting to the sub-wires is quite involved, but not difficult if you have the right tools. There is a + and - wire to each sub, so two new speaker-wires will need running either side. I used one length of twin-core 1.5mm wire on each sub, about 6 feet of wire is plenty.

1. Slide the seat all the way back and remove the plastic caps from the front of the runners.

2. Remove the two bolts from the front of the runners using a T50 Torx-head wrench.

3. Slide the seat all the way forward and remove the two bolts holding the rear of the runners using a T50 Torx-head wrench.

4. Lift the seat up. tilt it back out of the way and prop it up.

5. Remove the four crosshead screws from the plastic-grille above the sub and lift it off.

6. Move the carpet on the door-sill out of the way and cut the fabric-tape binding the wires going to the sub together so they can be pulled apart.

7. Splice your new speaker-wires into the wires going to the sub as pictured below. O/S - Red/Blue for [+] and White/Brown for [-]. N/S - Red/White [+] and Brown/Yellow [-]. [Soldering would be the best way, but I just went for the quick and easy Scotch-lock way again].

8. Run the new speaker-wires out from under the carpet and
along underneath the door-sill trim, up the side of the back seat and along the top of the back seat to the middle.

9. Lower the centre arm-rest and remove the plastic-trim panel from behind it by pulling out the two push-clips from the lower edge and working it off.

10. Thread the new speaker-wires down behind the back-seat at the centre. Be sure to thread the wires just behind the seat-back, but not down against the parcel-shelf, which ends at an annoying ledge. If you see the wire passing down behind the small round hole near the top of the seat-back behind the arm-rest then your on the right route.

11. Inside the boot the new speaker-wires should be seen poking down into the boot, or if it isn't you should be able to reach under the lip at the back of the boot and pull it down.

12. Install the four wires to your amplifier either directly by adding red/white RCA-type connectors to them, or via a crossover-box, which is the better method. Fitting a crossover is covered in THIS POST.