thanks eddie,dont really know if i should remove them or not,shaft 69 reckons there ok left in there but mines done around 100k now and im finding myself increasingly worried about them as mine is the earlier e60, cheers
Yep, i know exactly how you feel. Mine was built mid 2004, just when they increased the swivel pin to 4.5 mm., but I don't know whether or not it applied to mine. I've only got 40K up, and, like you, I'm undecided too. It's a pity BMW don't do blanking off pieces to replace the swirl flap units if removed, so that they could be replaced if the car wasn't running well without them. I suppose the answer would be just to renew the swirl flaps - now there's an idea, I wonder if BMW just sell the swirl flap units, in which case we'd have the best of both worlds, keeping the flaps and peace of mind.
I read an article recently where a Finnish customer had a conversation with his dealer, who in turn had removed these flaps on behalf of another customer, and the dealer assured him that there would not be any noticable effect, and no programming was required either. - In fact, it may even have been the same bloke that carried out the cleaning job in the link above, in which case, interestingly enough, he just cleaned them, rather than remove them. (I'll try and find the artice again).
Edit; Here it is-(post number 28 on 28th.May '08 at 1.23 pm.);
http://forums.e60.net/index.php?showtopic=55558&hl=