I wish everyone giving a tutorial on anything that needs repairing would do it as well as you have. You are succinct, articulate, cautious and definitely know what you are doing. Excellent presentation. If my 2017 X5 gives me any trouble after the Certification ends you will be getting a call! Where do you live and how much do you charge an hour!
Thanks worked great - Pro tip : unbolt the air bag but do not disconnect. Just hang with a long twist tie from the door lock. Saves you much time and hassle by not digging around the trunk , unplugging battery, and then having to reset all the dash warning light as a result afterwards.
Thank's for showing most of the process of this replacement, but for the uninitiated you have omitted to point out some important little details like the need to hold the inside door opening latch in the closed position while attaching the cable to it, I noticed you did that, but apparently it is something a novice might miss, also after the battery has been disconected I believe that some process is needed to get the computer to function properly, that could justify a mentioning. Your "how to" video was very well done as was your explanatory comments. I guess you are so familiar with this job that you may forget some ordinary folk who initially haven't got a clue may need every step illustrated and explained so they can follow the process successfully. Still, 9.5 out of 10, so thank you for sharing. Stay safe, regards Niels.
Hello and thank you for this tutorial. I followed it to the letter and was able to change out my driver side door handle. Although, it took my several hours to complete 5hr. in fact, My mission to do this DIY was accomplished. No longer do I have to leave my window half open so that I can gain access to the inside door handle. Yay!! Thanks again.
Just finished repairing my doorhandle, these are the most thorough instructions I have ever seen. Thank you!!! The only difficult parts were positioning the new door latch and securing the ball joint, I had to use pliers to give it a squeeze other than that these were great instructions
Thanks so much x2. Did this 2 years ago and had to do it again. Greatly appreciate your video as I watched it back then and most recently now. Some parts obviously look deceptively easy so for anyone doing this as a beginner - please reserve lots of time for trouble shooting.
Great instruction video man, just happened to my today and I heard some part falling down into the door cavity thinking that's that. So I removed the trim and found small metal pieces there so I knew I won't be fixing this problem. Then I watch your video and ordered new assembly. Thanks brother!
Hi, Have just completed drivers door internal carrier. Replaced front passenger door handle carrier about 3 years ago. Your instructions are very precise and I followed stage by stage using your video. Only this time I did not disconnect the battery and carefully unscrewed the side Air Bag leaving it connected to it's plug and hung it up from the door using cable ties. I did find as previously having an issue removing the cable ball and the plastic cable bracket locator, also with fitting the new part. BMW X5 are always a pain to work on, so thanks for your video
Its crazy, almost everything that has gone wrong with my recently purchased 2006 x5, you have a video to fix it. My driver side handle broke so I went to get it fixed. Now my passenger handle broke (I feel like my car is cursed) but I will try to fix it myself this time around. Thanks again for these DIY videos. Keep them coming!!
Dani Maynard congrats on the new ride! Haha yes I thought ours was a lemon too; the X5 provides a glorious bounty of problems to make videos on. The pain will stop after a few months once you tackle the usual problem areas. Try to stick with it for a little while!
Hey Bimmer Zeit, like others you have my appreciation. I have swapped out both driver and passenger fronts. Have just done the driver again lol. Your video is easy to follow and get the job done. Great work. Very appreciated.
Great video it helped me out a lot, I have just replaced my rear right door handle that went on my 2003 X5 E53 last week. I did have a bit of hard time removing the internal mechanism but I just unbolted the door latch which really freed up the area. I noticed someone said about leaving the airbag connected but I removed it as those buggers scare me (I did also remove the cars battery). All back together now and working better than before. Thank you for making this video!
Thank you for this video. Mine busted yesterday morning when it was 12F here in VT after a warmer night of sleet. Ordered the carrier immediately off of amazon for $40 with next day shipping (BMW wanted $160 and it would of taken 3-5 days to arrive). For anyone doing this repair in cold weather - the vapor barrier glue gets rock hard when its cold, it takes a lot of motivating. I, sadly, put a couple of little tears in mine but nothing major. A hair dryer or something would of made a world of difference. Thanks again, keep up the videos.
I have just replaced the door handle carrier out side in between rain showers with the temp around 50f, used a paint stripping hot air gun to soften up the mastic when removing the vapour barrier & again when refitting, the black goop gets every where!
Thanks for this video, perfect instructions, i would never have done this without your guidance. Took me 90 minutes but it rained twice and hailed once, not ideal!
on my car, turned out that just the cable balljoint came off 😂 i've put a zip tie to make sure it doesn't come off again. thanks for the instructions @bimmerzeitt! very helpful, only thing i was missing is that for the top clips on the doorcard (just under the window) i needed to really put pressure towards the inside of the car to get the doorcard off
Thanks buddy for taking the time to do this....job well done....I've done this about 4-5 times on both of my E53s but it's always nice to be able to pull up a well done video to "freshen up" my memory.
Thank you for sharing this. This is a great instructional tutorial. The only issue I had was the plug in the door was plastic, not rubber. It was a bear removing it. Patience, really listening to you, and application with the right tools and parts make for a great project and sense of accomplishment.
Great video and thank you. Could not had done this without breaking things although it was crazy to me how you spent 2 seconds snapping things together like it was nothing when it took me forever to do the same. Don't know if I'll ever figure out how to reconnect the inner door handle. This was a job from hell.
lol, great video, but where’s your window though? Sure makes it a pain to navigate the carrier around the window, but my regulator wasn’t broken, amazingly, so I didn’t want to pull that whole thing out!
Actually, you don't have to disconnect the battery. You can take a bungee cord and hang the airbag from the lock once you remove everything. Additionally, if you do decide to disconnect your battery, you're probably gonna want to leave it connected long enough to pull off the door panel, access the window, and move the window up/down to the access ports where you can then remove the bolt and plastic retainer clip(s) that move the window up/down along the window regulator.
this is very concise and gives me confidence to do the repair myself. my handle on my x5 won't open the door too. what are the specific tools you used besides the nylon prying tools? i only have a screwdriver. size of allen wrench?
thank you for sharing your knowledge with us a very well-done video do you have by any chance a video for the same procedure but for the passenger side? cheers and keep up the good work
I have an 2011 X70 with the same condition. From looking at the parts list on the X70 it seems that the carriage assembly has changed. Is the replacement still the same?
Thank you, Good video, could be even better if you came and demonstrated on my X5! I just broke both front door handles when the car got iced up, I guess tugging on them hard when the doors were frozen shut broke the remarkably fragile parts. I'll hold the video camera. More seriously, what should I expect tp pay someone to do these repairs?
+andrew houlding thanks Andrew! I don't know the exact book time that this job calls for, but I would expect an indie BMW shop to charge somewhere around 2 to 3 hours labor for this job.
2 quick notes. This is a great diy. If you're doing a rear door, you don't need to disconnect the battery (no air bag in rear doors). Also doing the rear doors, you have to remove the 3 screws holding the door lock mechanism on and drop the lock down or you can not slide the carrier out of the door. It's an easy fix, I've owned my E53 for 14 years and have done it too many times. be patient.
I replaced both the driver and passenger side door handle carrier per instructions of this video. It was easy to follow and everything went ok. I tested to make sure the door handle open and closed several times and everything seems to work just fine. After I was all complete with both doors, I reconnected the battery, I locked and unlocked the door with the key remote to test and make sure the locks were working. Then when I tried to open the door with the door handle and the door won't open from the outside or inside the car. What do you think went wrong? Everything seem to be working good till I reconnedted the battery and now neither door opens from inside or outside. Any advise?
+David Jordan Hi David. Did the doors lock/unlock from the key remote once you connected the battery? Is it possible you left one of the door lock module plug disconnected on one side? It is a big job and easy to make a small mistake, especially if you did both sides in one day.
+BIMMER ZEIT I checked it out again to see if the door lock mudule was unplug and everything is good. My replacem ent part is an after market and not from BMW. So I think it sticks a little bit. I slightly hit on the handle to make it sit right and it opened the door. I will need to open the door panel again to ensure that I tightened the lock handle securely. Thanks for your help.
Same mate, I had to yank the hell out of it, cut my finger on the bare metal 😂 currently stuck getting the ball bearing back on underneath the white clip
Perfect tutorial, thank you so much. I can't understand why ANYONE would give a thumbs down, other than they have no life.. Helped a lot. Thanks again ;)
I followed exactly the same steps on this video, replaced the door handle and now my central lock won't work with the key. I don't have the remote for this car so I gotta use the key to open all doors which ain't happening now. Any suggestions? I checked fuse and it's fine, not sure what went wrong.
+David Gomez Good eye David! We did the window regulator, door lock cylinder and handle all at the same time. So there may be some clips where the window is out of the door :-)
+Fix The Bimmer I replaced mine yesterday and everything went well using your video as guide so thank you for putting this together for people like me to use as a great tool. I had trouble getting the little locking clip inside the door in. The one you use to manually loock the door from the inside. Is there a magic trick to get this in so it doesn't fall off everytime I try to put the plastic cover!!
Thank you in advance for this informative DIY video. I have a question, do you have any idea how to fix the driver side mirror. It does not respond for adjustment when the arrow buttons are pressed. Fyi the passenger side mirror works fine. Not sure why the driver side won't move or adjust. I've been manually adjusting the window from the outside. Any suggestions work be appreciated. Thanks
It is possible that the side mirror motor is bad, but is also possible that the switch itself is bad. You can try testing both to see if power is going to them. Try this: hold down the adjust button for the driver side with your window down and put your ear up to the mirror - can you hear any noise, whirring, or is it totally dead?
I can't believe it, I actually did it! I changed the driver's side carrier, it didn't go as smooth as your video but at least now I can open my door from the outside. Just wondering did you change yours with your window up or down? Or doesn't it really make a difference? Also that little Alan key for the lock was a right little bitch to get back in! Put back together, battery on and it works. I guess I'll see if it stays that way, fingers crossed!
Shouldn't make any difference. Just have to be careful lifting the lever up, vs yanking on it with your body weight - can stretch the cable out prematurely. It's not a great design to begin with, and they all stretch and fail in time. So, it wouldn't be anyone's fault that they fail, it is just a matter of time.
Thanks so much I was having a problem with the fitting of the rear door carrier on my 2003 bmw x5 and it was the rear of the door carrier that has to have the black clip part on the outside of the door and i did not do that and the key assembly part was not fitting on correctly and I could not fit the Allen screw into the back of the key assembly
Dear Bimmer Zeit, I replaced the front passanger side handle carrier assembly, and after put back the door panel, I realized it cannot be closed or opened from the key. The handle works well, I can open the door from the inside as well. Using the car key or the interior locking switch every other doors lock and open fine. But this one can be closed (and opened) only manually using the locking spike. I know, the source of this problem must be somewhere in the locking mechanic, but I can not see iexactly which part went wrong. Do you have any idea? Thank you in advance!
great video but there is no way the new carrier slotted into place that easily-i have just tried for nearly an hour and couldn't get it into place so have given up until the morning.
Sorry to hear that bud, every car is slightly different. Some are easy and some not so easy. You have the right idea though, take a break and get back to it when you're fresh.
Hi my front passenger door can be opened from the inside but not the outside. Can it be fixed from the outside so i don't need to remove inside door panel.
Hi there, you probably need to replace the door handle carrier as shown in this video... there is no way around it. The cable in the handle stretches and no longer functions to actuate the lock, so it must be replaced. Very very very common on the E53!
Bimmer zeit, I have replaced the lock open door and close door works fine . But when open with key manually only its opening & closing only driver side door not others. from inside switches also the same lock all doors except driver. Could anyone please help me to solve this issue? Regards Thank you
