I want a divorce!

So after 3 weeks in the body shop after the deer hit, I get it back on Friday. The drivers side headlight seal is poorly installed and the hood does not line up well with the bumper or new headlight. It's pissing rain, it's after 5pm so there is nobody left in the shop to adjust. has to make a return trip. Upset yes.... tolerable....barely. the paint quality is spectacular!!

Driving home, my ipod dies. fried, toast, see ya later. It's done!

Last night i'm on a mission about 20 minutes from home, charge system light comes on the dash. Alternator, battery, voltage regulator? who knows. i have roadside, if it dies i'll call, no big deal. On the way home, light goes out, charging as normal. This morning, grabbing a coffee, light comes on followed by traction control, abs, seatbelt, emerg. brake and then every warning message across the screen. It goes into Transmission safe mode. limp it to the store/shop. swap out the battery, everything else goes away, warning lamp stays on. I just fired my technician, so nobody in my own store to help. lol

BMW OEM alternator $1200 MY jobber cost. aftermarket cost, $500
2.3 hours labour to swap. it's a liquid cooled alternator WTF
Nobody can look at it for a week! So i'm back driving the shop truck (07 gmc)
until someone can fix it. Regular alternator i'd do myself.... don't think I want to do this one.

FUCK!!!! I love driving this thing but it's been a pain in my ass.

This is why I don't like owning anything made after 1999.

Posted by jeepdave This is why I don't like owning anything made after 1999.

Even then, I am sure the liquid cooled alternator isn't that common

Some Jeeps use liquid cooled alternators. At least they do down here in the south where deep water is the most fun thing they can find.

There's a reason old BMWs get cheap. They're expensive to keep running,

Well due to a ridiculous work schedule making it tough to get into the City and nobody in this small town willing to work on the BMW, I got frustrated seeing it sitting in the driveway, so i grabbed the instructions rolled the car into my garage and started wrenching.

3 hours (and a broken water pump pulley) later, old alternator out, new alternator back in. Took me another 45 minutes to reassemble the beast, an hour on a battery charger and she roared back to life, No warning lights, full charging system as it should be.

I belong to xoutpost.com - a forum specific for x3, x5 and x6 owners and it gave me a detailed instruction sheet. Literally bolt by bolt clip by clip instructions...and it went smooth.

SO I learned that the liquid cooled alternator is basically a normal alternator wrapped inside a big sealed can. The can sits inside another housing with a coolant inlet and outlet port essentially making a double walled housing. Coolant flows freely through the inlet port (no valves) surrounds the alternator in about 1/2" of coolant and flows out back into the cooling system.
I've been told that the design was scrapped in 2009, and brought back again in 2011, so there must be an advantage to it!


Now back to the body shop with it because the assembly quality after the deer hit was shit!