How to Replace Idle Air Control Valve 2001-05 BMW 325 Xi

What's up guys. I'm Andy from 1A Auto. In this video I'm going to show you how to replace the idle air control valve on this 2001 BMW 325 XI. If you need parts for your vehicle, click the link in the description. Head over to 1AAuto.com.

I'm going to remove this piece. I just want to take some side cutters. Remove these push pins. Be careful not to cut them. Pull that out. Now I'll just grab this. Pull this aside. There is a couple of clips on there. If it's not coming out too easy, just take a straight blade screwdriver and push those in. Disconnect the mass air flow sensor and just push down. Wiggle the connector off. Set that aside. Take a straight blade screwdriver, loosen up this worm clamp right there. Just like that. We can take that snorkel off right now.

Next I'm going to take these two 10-millimeter bolts out. You could take this top cover off first if you want to unclip it, pull that off, pull the air filter out. But I'm going to keep that all together. Use a 10-millimeter socket extension and the electric ratchet. If you don't have an electric ratchet, you use a regular ratchet.

Loosen these up.

Take those two bolts up. Now you can grab the airbox all as one and just slide it up. Take this cover off right here. Just take these clips, twist it to the side, just like that. Grab this and slide it out. This weather strip might be in the way. It should slide forward. We take the cabin filter out, slides out as well. I need to remove these wires from this housing right here. You can either take the cover off or you can slide it up right there. I like to take this cover off. Just take a screwdriver, slide that off like that. Pull that out of the way. Grab these wires, pull that down. Pull this one down.

Now I'm going to use a T30 socket extension and a ratchet and they have four screws right there. Take those off.

So it's all loose. Just slide this panel up, slide it out of your way.

I want to take this intake snorkel off. I want to take these two hoses off right here. You can just grab them, twist them, slide it out. Could use a little pick in there if you're struggling to get this off. All right, let me just go around like that and you should be able to twist it off. It should come off a little bit easier. And if you have hose pliers, you can use hose pliers. Always makes it a lot easier. Take that off.

So there's a hose that slides off this intake, intake two right here. So there's two different hose clamps that I have to remove. This one and then one that's further in there. It's kind of hard to see. So I'm just going to take a pocket screwdriver, slide underneath here. Try to get on it and loosen that hose clamp. You'll be able to see it a little better once I get this snorkel out. It was actually a little bit easier to take a six-millimeter socket and extension and a ratchet and loosen that worm clamp up like that. Now I'm going to put it on a longer extension. I'm going to try to get this one out. If not, I'm going to have to use a screwdriver. We use the ratchet, six-millimeter socket.

Try and get this to loosen up. So those are both loosened up. Just grab it, wiggle it a little bit, twist it back and forth. Make sure you don't rip it. And slide it up. Just like that.

We want to take the dipstick tube out. There's a bracket right here that has a retainer that holds this vacuum line. And then also the fuel line right here. Just slide the fuel line out, pop it out like that. And then this little bracket, I'm just going to take some needle nose pliers and just pinch this together. Push it through. A little bit tricky to get in there, but there we go. Push that through. And then there's a bolt down here that's going towards the front of the vehicle. So we're going to take a 13-millimeter socket and ratchet. If you have a flex head ratchet, that would help out.

All right, so I was able to break it free. If you struggle with this, you can try breaking it free with a wrench. It's just really tight in there. So take that bolt out. All right, so I'll just take a right angle pick, try to get in underneath it. And you just go around the hose, loosen up that seal. It's kind of made a seal and that's what makes it stick to the hose. Now with that loosened, I should be able to twist this. Yep. And pull it off. There we go.

Grab the dipstick tube and just slide it up. All right, so we've got the dipstick loose. What we want to do is take this cover off right here because we can't get the dip stick to slide any further up. So we'll loosen this up right here. Take that off. Take this weather stripping off right here. Slide this up. Slide this wire out of the way.

Oops, it fell down. Just make sure these hoses are not attached. Slide the hoses out of the way. Should be able to slide this cover back. Reach out for this vacuum hose right here. And it slides out pretty easily. So then you can slide the dipstick up. A little bit easier to get that out. There you go.

I would recommend taking this cover out before you started taking the dipstick out. It'll give you a little bit more room in there, and it'll be less of a struggle for you. Disconnect the connector right here. This is on the purge solenoid, and just push that little tab down right there.

Connector right here. Remove this connector. A little tab right there, push down on that. Slide that off. And there's another connector right under here. It's kind of hard to see. Push down on that. Slide that out. You can mark all these connectors if you want to, but they pretty much don't give you enough wire to connect them in the wrong spot, so you should be all set trying to figure out which connector goes where when you're going to put it back together. Slide that one out.

And right here there's one that goes to the alternator. Disconnect this connector just like that. There's one more connector down here. This goes to a camshaft sensor. You can disconnect this one. I think we could probably leave this one plugged in but we'll disconnect it anyway.

Use a 10-millimeter socket extension and ratchet. Take this bolt out right here. Then you're going to take this nut out. Still use the same socket and ratchet. Take that nut off. Right by the throttle body there's another bolt, a nut that's attached. You're going to have to go under the wire, or over this wire right here, to get a 10-millimeter socket extension and ratchet to get that one out. Once you crack it free, you can loosen it by hand. Pull the nut out. You'll be able to slide this out. And that should be out of our way.

Next I want to take this idle air control out. I'm going to use a T30 socket, extension and ratchet. Take these two screws out. Take that out. Take this one out. Pull that screw out, then grab the idle air control valve. Just pull on it, should come right out.

All right. So I really had to force it out. Kind of grabbed it like this and then used my other hand and pulled it real hard to get it out. There's just a rubber grommet that holds it in there.

Take this idle air control valve. Make sure the grommet is in the intake, in the proper location. And then we'll align this little part right into that grommet. Slide it in. And take these screws. Get these lined up. And then get the other ones started over here. Let's get them both started. Then you can snug them down. We'll just take a T30 socket and a ratchet. We'll snug these up. That's good.

Now I want to reattach this piece, but just make sure any connectors you can get, plug those in. This one was to the oil temperature sensor, so that was right there. Now once we attach this, there's a stud right here, like that. There's a stud down below here. Make sure you get that bracket on the stud. And then take the two nuts. This one that goes up here. Get that one started. One goes through this lower stud.. Get that one on and then we have a bolt that goes right there. Install that bolt.

Now just take a 10-millimeter socket and ratchet, tighten this up and those other two nuts. For this lower nut, I just used a extension. It's kind of hard to get to. And just snug this one up as well. Now I'm going to plug in the throttle body connector right there. Line it up. Lock it in place. And there's a crank sensor connector right here. Line that up. Lock that in place. This connector right here goes to the alternator. Plug that in. Lock it in place. This connector is going to go right here. Lock that in place. This connector goes to the idle air control valve right here. Line that up. Lock it in place.

Where the dipstick hole is, where it goes into the engine, there's an actual O-ring there. It's a good idea to replace that O-ring if possible. You're going to have to use a pick and try to pick it out, and just make sure it doesn't fall into the engine oil pan. But ours looks okay so I'm not going to. But if you end up with ... you could end up with a vacuum leak afterwards or even an oil leak. So just keep that in mind if you're pulling the dipstick tube out. So with the new O-ring or take the old O-ring out of the engine. Just slide that up there and you can lubricate this with some white lithium grease or some engine oil. Now just line this up in position. These coolant hoses kind of get in the way a little bit. Kind of got to move those out of the way.

And then slide that down. Just like that.

All right. Push that dipstick down. Make sure it goes down all the way. What you could do is take a mirror and just check the bracket. Make sure the bracket's lined up with the bolt hole. Sometimes that can be tricky. Just make sure you lubricate the O-ring, and you should be able to get it. Now I'm going to put the bolts in. I'm just going to get it lined up. All right, now I'm going to tighten that bolt down. I'm actually going to use a 13-millimeter swivel socket and an electric ratchet. If you don't have a swivel socket or an electric ratchet, you can use a regular one. It just, there's not a lot of room to work back here. So we'll just tighten this up. Snug it down. I'll go back with a wrench. Just use a 13-millimeter wrench and just snug it. You can use a ratchet wrench also.

There we go. That's good. So here's the other end of that breather, or the drain hose, and we're going to slide that onto the dipstick tube right here. There we go. And just slide it all the way on. And that's good.

Now I did take this bracket off before I put the dipstick tube on. This is just going to hold the fuel line, so I'm just going to reinstall that. Just slide that back into the bracket on the dipstick tube. Right there. Kind of hard to see. And then slide the fuel line back in there. So if these hoses got in your way, you could remove this bracket when you were doing the dipstick. So just reinstall this. Slide these hoses back in, and then this will slide right over here.

Yeah, that's good.

Next, before I install this panel right here, it is going to be significantly easier to install this snorkel. So we're going to install this now. When we took it up, we did it the other way. It's a lot easier to get this in. Just line this up. Make sure your worm clamps are on there.

And from up here, I'm just going to use this screwdriver, straight blade screwdriver, and tighten up that worm clamp that goes on that top hot port of the snorkel. Snug that up. And then do the same with the bottom one. So we're going to take these vacuum lines. One goes to the top. This comes right off the intake right there. And then this one comes from underneath there. So install that. That's good. Now we'll take this cover. Slide this over here. If you struggle with this, you can pull the brake booster hose off, get a little more room.

There you go. Got it lined up. So it's actually one of these push twist retainers that hold this in. So we'll just get that lined up, push it in. So yeah, so that's good. You may have one over here. This vehicle did not have one there. So keep that in mind. I'll take this vacuum hose that goes to the brake booster. Line this up right there. Reinsert it into the booster. And then same with this wire. Slide this right there. Now we can take the weather strip. Get this lined up just like that. Take the connector. This is the connector for that, and lock that in place.

Install the dipstick. Can reinstall the air box. Fit it back in position. Move this clamp over here. Install these two bolts here and here. Take a 10-millimeter socket extension and ratchet. Tighten these bolts up. Just snug. That's good. Use a straight blade screwdriver. Tighten up this worm clamp snug, and plug this connector in to the mass airflow sensor. Lock it in place.

Take this intake. Put this back through the air box. Clip it in place. Take the push pins. Get these lined up. I'm just going to get them all started first and then lock them down. Lock it down. Right. Now we want to install this. Just get this lined up. Get these screws started.

I'm going to take a T30 socket extension and ratchet. Tighten these up. Now reinstall these wires in this cover right here. Just like that. Take this cover, line it up. And that's good. Take the filter. We're going to slide it in with the curved side towards the vehicle, so the bowed side more towards the out of the vehicle. Just slide that in position like that. We'll take this cover. Going to just slide in underneath this weatherstripping. Just push it in. Get these lock tabs to line up and lock them down. They're spring loaded. And the last one. And you're good to go.

Thanks for watching. Visit A1Auto.com for quality auto parts shipped to your door, the place for DIY auto repair. And if you enjoyed this video, please click the subscribe button.