Steps 7 to 18 took about 3 hours, including the 1 hour to wash the car, but I am very careful and slow at this type of work, and I took some pictures, unfortunately not for every step. You will need at least a box cutter or blade, a T40 and T30 Torx driver, preferably with a T handle, a small and large flat head screwdriver, and a step to enable you to stand comfortably on the side of your car working on the luggage rack. The shipping for these two parts plus another lightweight and small unrelated part I ordered was $20 total, so this modification costs less than $160 to remove about 10 pounds of unneeded wind-resisting weight from the car.

I bought my European roof rails from Patrick Casey at for a low price when his parts department was moving to a new building.ĥ1-13-8-208-775 ROOF MOLDING PRIME-COATED LEFT 1 $69.70ĥ1-13-8-208-776 ROOF MOLDING PRIME-COATED RIGHT 1 $69.70 With the rack and mounting hardware removed, you can either cover those with electrical tape or by some other means, or you can remove them entirely and buy the roof rails designed by BMW for European wagons without a luggage rack, which look very similar to BMW sedan roof rails except they are made for the longer roof of the wagon. The standard luggage rack roof rails have three open rectangular slots where the luggage rack hardware goes through to be screwed to the roof.

If/when you get that spacer released, I'd apply some silicone to the joints as you reassemble it if you intend to leave the rack mounted year 'round.I removed the luggage rack from my 2005 325iT. The seal around the spacer on the 1up is not water tight, so corrosion is imminent in long term, four season exposure. But most automotive bolting doesn't involved mixed metals, corrosion/fusing is limited, other than rust. The bolt head in those cases provide a pretty good seal. Like steel bolts going into aluminum heads and blocks. But most automotive mixed metal application are somewhat protected or sealed. I know you mentioned that older nuts and bolts, like on yiour vehicles, haven't fused. Unfortunately, it will likely get marred since it's aluminum. I'd also try a gear puller ( 9 bucks) to apply pressure the threaded site of the bolt while twisting and tapping the spacer. Have you tried rotating the spacer with a tight grip using, maybe, Vice-Grips? The spacers aren't threaded, so you can twist it both ways. Jonshonda, it sounds like you actually got the nut off, but can't get the bolt out of the spacer. Click to expand.I was thinking this as well.

E46 roof rack T slot bolt