E60 - blocked windscreen washer jets

[thebullettrain]

The windscreen washer jets seemed to be jammed on my E60. A small flurry of water comes out and then nothing! I have checked my water levels and it is fully topped up.

Can anybody suggest anything to sort this out?

[V88Dicky]

A pin?

[GarryA]

Are they the fan jets?

Using non-approved wash fluid can bung them up.

[NateWM]

As said, a pin.

Failing that, take the tubes off and blast them through with an air line.

[thebullettrain]

Just tried the pin; that hasnt done the job.

[soda]

It'll be the filter in the bottom of the tank gummed up, you'll need to pull it out and rinse it off. Never been near an E60 but in an E90 you have to take the wheel arch liner out to get access.

[Needa308GT4]

mine still work fine on my 17 year old Alfa and have never bunged up.

BMW "quality" eh? I'd rather shag a donkey than believe that drivel.

[phib]

My old e60 did the same, basically Jack up, take off front passenger side wheel, remove wheel arch liner and then remove water tankmand clear out. Took me about 1.5 hours and much swearing !!

BMW wanted £800

Phib

[Contigo]

Leaves down front of car, rotting, smelling when the air con goes off, Yes unfortunately!

[V88Dicky]

By the Beard of Zeus!

It's good to see that BMW make their cars easy to work on. Like they were built by forward thinking engineers.

[Fleckers]

why not put a hose on full blast in site the fill bottle thing, see if you can flush it out first before taking car apart ?

[Stack]

Had it on my E90 all the time despite using BMW screen wash it was pain in the neck, had it flushed out 3 times

[phib]

Fleckers said:

why not put a hose on full blast in site the fill bottle thing, see if you can flush it out first before taking car apart ?

You won't get any where near the tank without taking it apart !! I tried everything in order to save time and effort, it is so buried down in the bottom you can't even see the hoses going to it


Okay the first thing to account for is lifting the car as you need to remove the front nearside wheel. BMW in their infinite wisdom has located the washer bottle on the E60 in the space just in front of the wheel, it is hidden by the arch lining. This is the only way to get at the washer bottle.

You will need.

8mm and 10mm socket
Small flat head screwdriver
Small brush

1. First you must remove the front nearside wheel. Please make sure the car is safe before you start to work beneath the wheel arch.
2. Remove the five 8mm bolts and one 10mm bolt that secure the wheel arch lining. The 10mm bolt is on the left against the edge and fits between the two panels - it is vertical whereas the 8mm are all horizontal. You do not need to completely remove the lining, just peel it back and the bottle should be accessible.
3. You will see the pump and connectors. If you have headlight washers the pump is the larger one on the left. The pump for the windscreen washer pump is on the right and is slightly smaller. They are not fixed as such, they are just pushed into the recess.
4. You can pull out the hoses from the pumps and the electrical connectors can be also be removed. The larger pump on the headlight washer pump has a larger diameter pipe that is held using a plastic circlip (horseshoe shape) that can be removed using the flat head screwdriver.
5. I also removed the power connectors because I wanted to ensure the impeller wasn't clogged - this isn't always necessary and you can leave them dangling. This is removed using the flat head screwdriver to prise them off.
6. The filters are in the base of the bottle. Where the pumps pushed in you will see the rubber seal of the filter. As I mentioned mine has the headlight washer so there are two filters. You can pull the filters out by hand.
7. Once they are removed I suggest running them under a tap and cleaning them with a small soft brush - I used a small cut down paintbrush.
8. Looking from above you will see the hose that fills the bottle. I removed this hose (by hand) and put a hose pipe in there. I then ran the water to ensure it flushed out all of the crap from the bottle.
9. I removed the hoses from the windscreen washer jets and blew down the hose to flush out any crap that may have been in the pipes. Crazy as it sounds I took a mouthful of clean water and blew it down the hose from the jet end!!
10. When it was all clean and I felt there were no blockages left I refitted all of the filters and reconnected the hoses.
11. I poured a litre of water into the bottle and then tested the washers jets!!! I didn't want to put it all back together only to learn it was still blocked.
12. Success - the water was firing out of the headlight and windscreen jets and I was feeling better!

Phib

Edited by phib on Saturday 16th June 08:40