trans fail safe prog!

[vfurlong]

Help! I tried starting my car yesterday (54 plate fsh less than 100,000) and the engin took ages to start and when it did the trans fail safe message came up! It sounded really dodgy but I only needed to go 10 mins up the road and staying in town so I drove it. Then left the car for an hr or so before getting back in where it started fine and no message! Then today (was quite cold around 3 degrees) and the same thing happened, I dint think it was going to start then I could hear for the whole of my journey which was about40 mins, it was running in the wrong gear. On my way home again the engin started fine and no message appeared! I live in the mountains and there are 3 garages in my town but dont think they will have the diagnostic s for the engin! Any hints/tips/ideas?
I have to travel to the airport tomorrow to pick up my husband and its about 100 miles away and will be on the autobahn for some of the journey,  do you think it is safe to take my car?
sorry really long rant!

[X5Sport]

unknown but it could be any number of issues including a possible gearbox/transmission component failure.  You need to get it to a specialist or BMW Dealer to get the fault codes read.

Will it change through all the gears manually?

Without knowing more as to where the noise is coming from or a description of it, pinning it down will be harder.  If it is a gearbox/transmission issue then 160km trip may kill it altogether.  On the other hand if the noise is not from that area then it may have no effect at all.  No loose covers underneath?

Richard

[vfurlong]

Its an automatic and the noise was just the engin running high like it needed to change gear. But the next time I drove it a few hours later it started fine and there was no message and felt and sounded fine for the journey home?

[X5Sport]

As long as it keeps doing the latter you'll be fine.

It's just possible that your battery is dying as that can throw all sorts of problems!  If you can, charge it.

Richard

[vfurlong]

I had a new battery this time last year and on cold mornings it still took ages to turn over, I had to call ADAC with is German AA and the guy started the car and said I needed glow plugs!? When I took it to the garage I was told that a light would come on if it was glow plugs!?

[X5Sport]

Those who have had Glowplugs fail in the UK have not seen any warning lights.  If the plugs gave gone down, that would cover the bad starting and drain the battery so flagging a spurious warning message and computers getting confused......

Richard

[Steamyrotter]

My money is on glow plugs.
the error message is probably due to the low battery volts after long term cranking.
when message is live the gearbox is set in limp mode (locked in gear) which is why it sounds like high revving.

I think the error message will come up if you lose many of the glow plugs
an error will be logged in memory though.

The engine should start with minimum fuss even if very cold.
There is potential that it may be an injector fault, but historically that usually shows up when warm.

[chrisn7]

This message is very common in BMs due to low battery voltage, when the battery old, or insufficiently charged from short journeys, or lack of use, or some component not allowing the car to enter sleep mode.

[brewer]

1. Error thrown due to low battery voltage.  Hence, disappears after a short run (charge).
2. Once error thrown (transfailsafe), the system locks the transmission to a single gear - don't worry, this is almost certainly not a gearbox issue.
3. If battery is struggling to crank, but charges on short runs (i.e. battery OK), then it could be alternator.

A new alternator fixed it for me (exact same symptoms).  Circa GBP 100 / EURO 120.

Brewer

[MrCam]

A new battery fixed this for me, sometimes my battery must run really low because I don't do many miles and it'll be slow to turn over engine then transmission fail safe comes on when I pull away