As a side note for those curious, Lemforder are the suppliers for the track rod ends for BMW.
Here's the old rod. Notice the logo:
And on the new one:
Then things got worse. The drivers side front pinch bolt was quite literally frozen stuck in the hub. No amount of smacking it with a hammer, use of the impact gun etc. was going to make it move. To the point it made it very difficult to remove the shock absorber from the hub. The only way again was with the angle grinder where I had to cut the head part of the bolt so that the bracket for the anti roll bar link could be freed. At this point, a replacement hub was going to be needed. The wheel bearing was in perfect working condition so had to be salvaged. On the E60's, the wheel bearing is held in using 4 bolts and to access all 4 properly, the shock needs to be moved out of the way or removed. So a cut was made on the threaded part to enable the hub to be spread open.
Scrap:
Luckily, the front hubs are exactly the same on all E60 models including the M5 which meant findng a replacement was very easy and not expensive.
I then had to wait for parts to turn up so I turned my attention to the engine bay......
Draining the coolant. On the radiator, the there is a drain plug which simply needs undoing with a flat head screwdriver:
The old main hose had started to brown. This is plastic and is meant to be black:
View post on imgur.com
Waterpump being prepared to be removed and there is a reason for this:
More pipes being disconnected:
And to deal with a problem part. This is the coolant control valve. So when these fail, you will notice irregular heat coming into the cabin from the fans. With the heaters on, the drivers side was blowing cool air while the passenger was blowing warm. This was not ideal during winter.
You can replace this part without having to do a coolant drain but I was doing an overhaul anyway. In order to remove the hoses attached to the coolant valve, you will need a hose clamp plier to squeeze the clamps to loosen up and then pull the hoses off.
Old valve out:
New valve from Febi:
Installed:
Main hoses out:
Engine bay empty of coolant hoses with the waterpump and thermostat out:
New hoses from Febi:
