Hi Everyone,
I have been using this forum quite a bit for help with my cars, so I felt that it would be good to share my recent experience in the hopes that it might help someone else down the road! This will probably be lengthy, but I took a lot of pictures along the way and want to get it all down in a few posts. I acquired a 2007 E61 530xi that belonged to my grandparents (I even helped my grandfather fill out the custom order form when he went to buy it back in 2006!), and boy did I get thrown into the depths of E61 woes quickly. At this point, I am sure everyone is aware of the sunroof drain issues in these, and that is where this experience began.
We had an ice storm here that started off with a good amount of rain as the temperature dropped (so pretty much everything that was wet turned to ice). My wagon, which spent the vast majority of its life in the garage, happened to not have a spot indoors for this weather - I believe the wet grommets at the end of the drain tubes in the D pillars froze shut then filled up with water/ice. As the sun melted the ice on the roof, the water had nowhere to drain until the drain tubes fully defrosted, causing the dreaded flooding of the trunk area of the car. I came to find out later when I removed the grommets that there was essentially no dirt built up on the tubes (again, garaged for all its life), so that is really the only way I could see the flooding happening.
The drains are located in the far rear corners on the other side of sheet metal from the tail light connections. On the right side, it sits behind the fuse panel tucked around the corner. I ended up pulling the tube out with a good amount of force and the grommets popped out and down to the ground (the right side fell into the underside cover of the air compressor).
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As I didn't expect to have the water build up when the ice melted, I got in to move the car and was greeted by a barrage of warning lights and a deep sinking feeling as the rear of the car lowered to the ground. There began the investigation in the trunk. The carpet was damp when I opened the tailgate, so I started pulling out everything I could remove from the rear to dry out in the sun. When I pulled out the spare tire, I noticed that the lining was not only damp, it was soaking wet. Sure enough when I pulled out the lining, I found the styrofoam molds that house the electronics in that terribly space-efficient and drainless location bobbing up and down in a few inches of ice-cold water. Sigh. I figured it was done for at this point, but that also gave me the "confidence" to just take a stab at fixing it myself, as I figured I couldn't make it much worse than it already was!
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When I tried closing the tailgate, I found a few more symptoms to add to the growing list of concerns.. augmented by the quick death of the massive year-old battery shortly thereafter. In the end, here is what I was faced with:
I have been using this forum quite a bit for help with my cars, so I felt that it would be good to share my recent experience in the hopes that it might help someone else down the road! This will probably be lengthy, but I took a lot of pictures along the way and want to get it all down in a few posts. I acquired a 2007 E61 530xi that belonged to my grandparents (I even helped my grandfather fill out the custom order form when he went to buy it back in 2006!), and boy did I get thrown into the depths of E61 woes quickly. At this point, I am sure everyone is aware of the sunroof drain issues in these, and that is where this experience began.
We had an ice storm here that started off with a good amount of rain as the temperature dropped (so pretty much everything that was wet turned to ice). My wagon, which spent the vast majority of its life in the garage, happened to not have a spot indoors for this weather - I believe the wet grommets at the end of the drain tubes in the D pillars froze shut then filled up with water/ice. As the sun melted the ice on the roof, the water had nowhere to drain until the drain tubes fully defrosted, causing the dreaded flooding of the trunk area of the car. I came to find out later when I removed the grommets that there was essentially no dirt built up on the tubes (again, garaged for all its life), so that is really the only way I could see the flooding happening.
The drains are located in the far rear corners on the other side of sheet metal from the tail light connections. On the right side, it sits behind the fuse panel tucked around the corner. I ended up pulling the tube out with a good amount of force and the grommets popped out and down to the ground (the right side fell into the underside cover of the air compressor).
As I didn't expect to have the water build up when the ice melted, I got in to move the car and was greeted by a barrage of warning lights and a deep sinking feeling as the rear of the car lowered to the ground. There began the investigation in the trunk. The carpet was damp when I opened the tailgate, so I started pulling out everything I could remove from the rear to dry out in the sun. When I pulled out the spare tire, I noticed that the lining was not only damp, it was soaking wet. Sure enough when I pulled out the lining, I found the styrofoam molds that house the electronics in that terribly space-efficient and drainless location bobbing up and down in a few inches of ice-cold water. Sigh. I figured it was done for at this point, but that also gave me the "confidence" to just take a stab at fixing it myself, as I figured I couldn't make it much worse than it already was!
When I tried closing the tailgate, I found a few more symptoms to add to the growing list of concerns.. augmented by the quick death of the massive year-old battery shortly thereafter. In the end, here is what I was faced with:
- Spare tire well full of water
- Tailgate didn't fully latch when closing
- Rear wiper was unresponsive and stuck in a mid-swipe position (why it tried to move is a mystery to me, though I heard that sometimes they move on their own when the battery gets low...?)
- Rear air suspension sitting down as low as it could go, with no audible attempt to fix itself
- TPMS failure warning
- Dead battery
