Russ' Do It Yourself Home Workshop

Here are some pics and procedures for taking apart your x5i and reassembling it.  It’s not comprehensive, but it will give you the main idea if you need to take it apart for any reason.

The bottom shroud that wraps around the back end of the machine can be removed without taking anything else off.  It is held in place with six machine screws and, once they are removed, you simply pull it back to remove it.  The power jack is attached to the metal frame, so it doesn’t get in the way of the removal of the shroud.

If you want to remove the long “arms” on the elliptical you need to remove the bolts (9/16”) at the front and back of the arms by first removing the covers.  Each cover half is held in place with a single machine screw.  You can take either side out first, as the order doesn’t matter.  This will expose a bolt with a self-locking nut that can easily be removed.  Here are some pictures, but they are not very good.  Hopefully you get the idea.

Once you have these bolts removed, you need to remove the bolt holding the stride length adjustment mechanism on the crank.  This bolt is accessed by removing a plug that covers it.

Now you can remove the 9/16” bolt, lock washer and flat washer that hold the mechanism on the crank.  I found that using a magnet to retrieve the hardware from the hole was very handy. 

After removing the stride length adjustment mechanism, you can remove four machine screws that hold on a plastic cover.

Once the cover is out of the way, you can remove the two screws that hold the metal plate on the crank and then remove the bolt that clamps the crank on to the flywheel.  To pull the crank off the flywheel, you may need some kind of puller.  I used a sliding hammer/puller that is used for doing bodywork.  These things have a knack for being wedged on so this may be the hardest part of the disassembly unless you have a puller to help you remove it.

Now you can finally remove all the screws that hold one half of the shroud in place.  These are a mixture of machine screws that attach the shroud to the frame and plastic/wood screws that screw into the other half of the plastic shroud.  Once you remove all the screws on a given side (this is the left side we’re working on) you should be able to remove half the shroud and expose the innards. 

To expose the other side simply repeat the process.  It’s a lot of screws, but nothing very difficult.