M54 Intake Removal on BMW E39 530i

[0:00]All right guys, so in this video, I'm going to show you how to take the intake off of an M54 engine. Uh I'm working on an E39. This engine would also be in your E53 X5 or your E46, I guess. Um, So first thing I'm doing here is we're going to pull off the cabin air filter on the driver's side. Uh, you probably have to pull the whole thing off on the E53 or the E46. Um, but just the driver side on the E39 will get you enough room here. It's held on by this little clip and there's a little rubber um, oval shaped thing here that goes into a little hole. The lid also goes through these tabs. After we got that out of the way, we're gonna pull the airbox. Um, for that I'm using a flathead screwdriver. I like to use my long one all the time. Um and a 10 mm socket for the airbox bolt. Got to unplug the mass airflow sensor and get the wire clip off of there and then you should be able to lift the airbox out of the way. So here's what holds the airbox in. You got your 10 mm bolt. There's these two rubber, uh, protrusions here that go into little slots on the on the car. I'll show you here. You got one down here and one kinda on the side of the wheel well here. There it is. Remove the beauty cover. That's uh held on by 10 mm as well. Remove the oxygen sensors out of the way. The plugs for them anyway. Next is to remove this battery positive jump spot. Um, it's held on by a 19 mm and it's just a 10 mm stud screwed into the plastic intake. And on mine it was kinda stuck to the wire and I ended up breaking that starter wire. Um, we'll fix that when I put it back together. The next thing I did was unplug the fuel line. Uh it's just a like a little quick connect coupler and I was able to just do it with my hands um by just pushing the plastic collar in and and slipping that thing off of there. Here you can see me undoing the clips for the fuel injector connectors. Uh, they're I've worked on a lot of BMWs motorcycles. Um, they use these connectors in a lot of places and I've never found a really good way to, uh, undo 'em, there's nothing to just push and unplug 'em. So there's a little wire. I'll show you in a minute here and what I did here was just use a screwdriver and push the wire out of the way. I don't get the clip all the way off. I just move it out of the way enough to, um, release the plug and then once I get the the plug off of there, then I put all the clips back in place so I don't lose 'em. So here's what they look like. I have already pushed the wires back on. Um, when you're installing 'em, you can just push 'em on over the injector and those wires will spring into place. I also got to unplug this and the air intake sensor. Here you'll see me removing the little holder for the dipstick. Uh, you gotta unplug the breather line from the dipstick tube and unbolt it from the side of the engine to move it out of the way a little bit. Used a 13 mm socket for that. Intake boot's up next. I got my long flat screwdriver out again. Uh, there's a little tube going to the idle control motor and then there's the big boot on the throttle body. Mine ripped as I pulled it off. It uh, everything rubber and plastic on this car is pretty much old and brittle. So I've broken quite a few plastic and rubber pieces since I got it. You can see the tape on my breather line going to the valve cover there. Here's the broken tube I was talking about and the other end. So there's a big plastic holder down under the intake where a bunch of wires are coming out of and you see me unbolt one here and then I'm working behind the intake to get the rubber holder off. There's a rubber holder that slips on to the back of the intake. I'll show you here. This is the tab that we're working with and this is the the rubber holder. Next thing I did was unbolt the intake, maybe a little out of order but it's okay to have it loose so I could wiggle things around and see what else was holding it. I used a 11 mm socket with an extension to get in there and get the nuts off. Last one's a little bit harder to get to. Kinda loose, not quite there yet. So there's a bracket on the bottom of the intake that bolts to the engine that's holding me up here. Uh I was trying to just pull it complete, but you do have to pull the throttle body off. I used a 10 mm ratchet. 10 mm socket on a quarter drive ratchet and there's four bolts holding on the throttle body. You can see me working those loose here. Uh there's also that wire holder I was talking about down there and those are also held on by 10 mm. And here's the bracket I'm talking about. Once we got all the bolts off and the intake loose, we can undo the vacuum line on the back of it and pull it up and off of there. Make sure you have that disa valve unplugged as well. Um, your breather unplugged from the valve cover, breather unplugged from the dipstick tube and intake should come right off. Your fuel tank vent hooks to the bottom of the intake and there's another hose going to it. Uh I think from the brake booster. If you wanted to remove it completely, I just flopped it out of the way cuz I'm just trying to get to the starter. Uh which can be replaced without removing the intake, but I'm trying to investigate a little ring gear grinding issue here. So, uh I wanted to get a good look at the ring gear through the the starter hole. That's it. Intake's off. Now you can get to your starter coolant lines, anything else you might be after under there. Thanks for watching.