[E92_William]

What's the best way to get the damn 18mm bolt in after removing the bracket? It's an automatic so putting it in through the front is not an option. This is a complete afterthought of a design and it shows when stuff like a simple transmission mount is a problem

[E92_William]

Here is the subject. Spent more time at this than I have doing transmission fluid change, disa valve on the e46 and rear pads and rotors on this

[Tambohamilton]

I'm not familiar with this issue. How did you get the bolt out?

[E92_William]

Removed all bolts that attach the bracket to the body of the car then loosened the 18mm bolt and janked it out. Of course you an easily jank it out because the transmission mount will flex down when pulling it but when installing that's impossible to replicate

[Tambohamilton]

Can you lower the transmission at all?

[E92_William]

I got the bolt in place.. maybe this is going to help someone in the future maintain their mental health and not lose 5 years of their life due to struggling with this shit.

The way to get this bolt in with an automatic is to jack up the exhaust near the area where the transfer case bushing is by, then put the bracket up lined up to where the rubber mount is, once it is lined up you can twist the bracket towards the side where the bolt needs to come in through and since the bracket and the bushing will be so close together the bracket will actually twist the bushing down with it, then you can put the 18mm into the hole in the bracket and hammer it from the head of it and it will go in.. it sucks to do but this is the only way I see feasible, going through the top is impossible without lowering the exhaust

[drawz]

I'm going to try to avoid removing this bolt in the first place using the method described here:
https://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=740011

[relative4]

Are you talking about the bolt that goes through the transfer case mount? Never had a problem, just fiddle the transfer case up and down a bit with a floor jack or bottle jack.

[E92_William]

I didn't try with the bracket in place even though I should have because I didn't think putting the bracket back up would be that bad.

Also I realized my transfer case bushing mount is cracking and very soft so I'll need to come down here very soon again to replace that just hope I didn't completely destroy my tc with it having almost no fluid in it for who knows how long

[Brian86]

The salvage yard tore the transfer case bushing on my replacement completely to shreds removing it from it's donor car (5 series)

The old bushing came out relatively easily.

It's a major pain to push a new bushing into place. I have a press, but there is no good way to apply force without just deforming/bending the bushing. If I remember it's rubber molded around a couple of pieces of metal. There isn't a steel ring on the OD, it's just rubber getting forced into the bore. Clearly the factory/manufacture has a special driver for that bushing.

[E92_William]

I've only read massive struggle by guys trying to get that thing in. There's supposedly a BMW tool for it and I saw a video of a company in Taiwan that makes a tool for the X3 but I can't understand anything in their site lol. I think maybe a puller with two wide washers on each end and threaded through the center. Not easy to make I bet. BMW tool costs the same as a whole tcase lol