X5 owners - have you done your homework? (archive)

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I'm sure many of you are like myself... you frequent this board often, but post rarely. I have a 2001 X5 4.4 which I bought new, and I am thrilled with. It's been a great car for the 3 months I've owned it. In that time I've put on almost 5,600 miles.

I started seeing posts about various vehicle fires (it seems I see at least one new post a week about someone else having problems), and I started to see posts from BMW and others with bits and pieces of information as to how to find out if your particular vehicle is affected. So, with fan part #, VIN #, flashlight, and build date ranges in hand, I went out to my garage tonight and checked it out on my X5.

I start with the build date - March 2001 - included in the recall. Then I checked the VIN # and it matches one of the the VIN #'s included in the recall. Then I checked the fan part # - 6 908 124 - the fan included in the recall. Bingo. I don't know if I can describe what an odd feeling it was to realize that I so far have "lucked out" - no fire with 5,600 miles on the car (knock on wood).

So at this point I got to thinking that there's obviously thousands of owners just like myself who have an X5 included in the recall, but don't know it, and/or don't care because their car is working fine. You see posts from people that have had fires, and thank God no one has been hurt that we know of. But we rarely see posts from the majority of folks like myself who have the bad parts, and have had no trouble. Obviously there's a few fans that go bad right away, and many that don't.

I made it past the 200-800 mile mark where most of these fires took place. Up until today I didn't even think about the fan, so I really have no idea if it turns on or not, but I know the car stays nice and cool when the A/C's on. I also drive almost 90 miles each weekday round trip, so I would imagine if the fan was going to short out, it would have done so by now.

That said, I'll take it to the dealership Monday morning and see what can be done. I have yet to receive any recall notice, but I can either think that it won't happen to me because I've driven so many miles already, or that it will and it's just taking much longer than usual. I'll choose to be cautious :)

The reason I'm writing this is because I know there are scads of folks reading this out there who, like myself, haven't bothered at all to check the parts on your car, and I would suggest that you do so if only to arm yourself with data so when you go to the dealer, you can tell them without question that your car is one of the vehicles in question, and insist that it be fixed.

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