K-Bus down !!!

[kanewesley]

Please Help !

The latest in a long line of faults with my car....I think maybe the "K-Bus" is down.

I have a 2006 3.0D facelift E53 X5.

few days ago i got up to an extremely weak weak weak alarm coming from the car.
There was JUST enough power in the battery to unlock one door.
The battery was as flat as a witches T**s !
Cutting a long story short, I fully recharged the battery over many hours .
The car is now drivable but as others before me, I have no turn indicators showing in the car (althiugh thewy are working), the indicators don't flash setting / resettin alrm, no radio, no TV / Sat Nav / Radio display in the car, No functions from the steering wheel.
Tried to do lots of reading and homework and I believe maybe something ( module) on the K-Bus / I-Bus (?) is dragging that BUs down.
Hooked up BMW Scanner and various modules (LCM, PDC, MID, MFL, RAD, TEL, VID, NAV etc) are "not found".
Further reading suggests isolating these control modules one at a time in order to find the culprit.
I believe and hope there is a central hub somewhere where I can disconnect modules one at a time and hope things come back online when the faulty mod. is diconnected.
Tried further research to try and find out if and where this hub may be but all paths seem to take me to E39 / E46.
Does anyone know please where I can find this "hub" if there is one or has any good advice for me before I have to throw even more money at the car taking it to be diagniosed repaired.
I am pretty technically minded so any help would be very much appreciated.....especially if there is a HUB I can work from to facilitate isolation of various components.
Thank You

[Greydog]

Have you checked www.newtis.info as with realoem use the last 7 digits of your Vin to bring up your model then search by description Kbus or Ibus controller it should bring up what you need.

Good Luck

[kanewesley]

I,ve looked Greydog.
That is an absolute minefield.
It doesnt say if its K-bus, I-bus
But the main thing i need is the location of the K -Bus hub then I can disconnect things one at a time !

[Greydog]

OK so that wasn't much help.
I am not sure there is a single Ibus controller in the E53 each module that can be linked through the Ibus has a bus chip built in that allows the ack/nack signal to be interpreted most of the Ibus is on the radio/Nav/coms side though signals are taken for display in the binnacle through the LCM.
About 3 years back I was getting all sorts of strange happenings mainly with the radio/nav/bluetooth and couldn't find any obvious issues, I was on the edge of swapping it to Dynavin. One odd thing was the Multi Function Steering wheel couldn't be found when I scanned the car. Everything worked OK so I didn't think to much about it.
I was in the boot testing or trying to, to see if I could isolate the problem, at the back of the boot is a comb type earth point it looked a bit rusty around the mounting bolt I took it off cleaned it and the area it mounted to (I used some paste they use to mount CPU's in computers) bolted it back and suddenly no more issues. There are several of these points around the car the one by the LCM in the passenger footwell was iffy looking, so cleaned and remounted as the boot and hey presto my steering wheel appeared next time I scanned.
I have no idea if this is your problem but it helped me.

[kanewesley]

Thanks again greydog. . Good that you have taken the time to try and help.
I don't think it's an earthing issue because this problem began with the battery draining.
I would think something went down and dragged the battery with it overnight.
When I first looked at the problem and before I realised some comm. Modules were missing . . . I charged the battery and monitored the current drain with the car stood.
It was drawing 7 to 8 amps so I would think something had gone down and was dragging the battery with it.
That battery drain seems to have stopped as the car is now entering the "sleep" mode and the battery is holding up.
Thing is. . Now I have lost communication with a number of modules

[kanewesley]

What's a Binnacle. ? ? ?

[Alan Gunn]

What's a Binnacle. ? ? ?

The bit with the speedometer/gauges and rev counter live lol .

[X5Sport]

You could try the ‘standard’ trick for many modern cars. Disconnect the battery for about 30 mins. It will reset everything. Some modules only come up with the engine running and unless you are using genuine software there may be comms issues anyway. All three of ours show no responses from certain modules. This could be because Carly can’t talk to them or they aren’t physically present on the bus or in the car.

I have often wondered if there is a standard list that the software pings out for regardless of whether they are actually present or not, but it doesn’t tell you that they aren’t fitted just there was no response! Not very useful.

The no reply message has never indicated a problem though.

[kanewesley]

One of first things I tried X5Sport was disconnecting the battery.

Didn't work for me.

Hooked up PA Soft 1.4.0 and all the modules, relating to the faults I have are "not found".

I thought it was K-Bus but now believe it to be I-Bus communication. ??????

I got to the star connector behind the glove box which connects about 10 or 12 Bus wires together.

I disconnected the wires one at a time hoping the fault would go away if I uncoupled a faulty module.....but it didn't

The voltage on this star Bus connector (be it K-bus or I-bus) is measured at 12.5 v so I don't think the voltage is getting dragged down by anything.

Once again.....no radio, TV screen, tell tales on instrument that indicators are flashing, no click click when indicators are flashing, no fasten seat belt warning, no "gong" sounding,
No indicators blink when alarm is set / disarmed, no reversing lights.

Speedo, rev counter, oil and fuel gauge OK

When I do a software test on the instrument cluster....all lights and clocks light up and work as they should.

Checked all fuses I believe are related and all seem OK.

Bloody Stuck !

[marti]

With the ignition switched on does the passenger vanity mirror come on?

[Greydog]

Just a thought you are using PA Soft 1.4.0 what operating system are you running?
I have read that if using Win10 it has difficulty finding some modules ?

[kanewesley]

Hi...

I took the car into a garage today to see if they can look into it with the software they have .

iMarti

Never got chance to see if the passenger vanity mirror lit.......why do you ask?

Greydog

I'm using 1.4.0.7 on a windows 7 laptop.

Not 100% but I think the modules not found did use to show up and it's a bit of a coincidence that the symptoms I have relate to all the latest modules that are missing.

There are 3 pages of modules in 1.4.0.7 and the first two pages were just about full....it was the last page where most modules didnt show up.

I bought it originally to switch in the auxillary heat function so the car woul be warm at 5am in the winter for work, but it did not bring the correct module / page to allow me to do this.

I know 1.4.0 works on XP and I bought a laptop with XP as its operating system.....could I hell get it to work on this XP laptop !!!!

[Greydog]

Oh well another thought out the window.
As I understood the Ibus is used mainly by the entertainment stuff Radio/Nav/TV/CD then linked through the LCM and ZKE to show information in the binnacle.
I had so many issues with my 4.4. Similar to you the car wasn't going to sleep my radio turning on randomly and draining the battery that I replaced the whole system with a Dynavin unit.
The 4.6 was starting to get similar symptoms when I found the dodgy earth point in the boot.

Let us know what the garage find

[kanewesley]

Will do Bud. . Thanks for your interest and ideas.

[marti]

Passenger vanity light: After reading you problems ,I've had the same on an e38 and e39 which the e53 has many parts and electrical systems the same, if the passenger vanity mirror doesn't light up its down to the ignition switch, not the barrel!....if you drop the steering column cowls you'll see a black box on the end of the barrel that's the module and the culprit and needs to be replaced, 2nd hand is fine as no coding required......