The E91 335d’s rear wash wipe (bidet!) stopped working recently. Unlike its predecessor the E46, and every other BMW I’ve ever owned, the E91 has its washer fluid tank stored in the wheel arch. It is a very effective use of space, but it makes servicing the washer pumps a complete pain, which I imagine also boosts BMW dealership revenues.

Nevertheless I took on this challenge. Rather than removing the pump, testing it and potentially replacing it, given the size of the task versus the parts cost, I elected to order in new pumps for both the front and rear systems, with washers, and last weekend set about replacing them.

Parts cost: £29.60 delivered, including a wiper for another car.

This post isn’t supposed to be a step-by-step guide – plenty of those out there already, but this photo sequence does give a taste of the job. Car up, wheel off:

Always nice to give those 348mm disks an airing. Then all that wheel arch lining has to come off.

The tank can be seen above on the left – just slotted down the side of the car body. Out it comes…

There are three pumps: rear wash, front wash, headlamp wash.

I removed the lot and set about cleaning everything up. Here’s a comparison of the two screen filters. Guess which one was on the rear pump leading to that system failing?

The headlamp system has a giant filter.

Comparison of outgoing and new filters.

Nice clean fluid bottle.

Cleaned up the wheel arch:

New pumps fitted, old ones in the box.

All done. Good as new!