New car, new problems. E70 X5 40d No heat inside cabin, please help it's freezing 🥶

[0cT4g3n]

Hello everyone, I recently picked up a 2011 BMW X5 E70 40d. 150k on the clock.

I'm not getting any heat inside the car. Today I noticed that the entire cooling system is filled with just tap water, zero coolant in there.

There are no leaks from what I can tell & the car doesn't overheat.

I scanned the car but nothing obvious related to this issue came up.

My first port of call was to change the thermostat, cheap & easy enough to do. I filled it back up with tap water just to test it.

Still no heat inside car. Temp gets up to around 90 degrees.

I also noticed a damaged expansion cap. Could a bad cap have something to do with my problem? I've ordered a new cap anyway.

What temp is the fan supposed to come on?

Thanks in advance.

[Alan Gunn]

Daft it might be but is the little wheel between the centre vents turned to the red side and not on the blue mark.

[X5Sport]

What state is the climate control in? Does it have enough gas? Is hot coolant getting to the interior heat exchanger? There are a number of valves that are controlled by the climate system. Do the interior fans run - there are a number of them built into the dash area? If you cycle the temperature from minimum to maximum, what happens?

If normal water has been used then there is also a risk of the heater matrix getting blocked. It may be an airlock in the system as well. Refilling normally gets done under light vacuum to pull air out. It can be done via running the engine with the pressure cap off to allow gas to be pushed out of the various pipes etc.

When you do add coolant, make sure it’s the correct one. The car uses aluminium & magnesium in the engines. Safest would be BMWs own coolant.

[Greydog]

Check the water valve in the engine bay mine was playing up sometimes toasty sometimes heat to one side, Mine eventually threw a fault brought a new one through ECP all toasty now
It goes without saying dont leave tap water in there if no leaks drain and put correct coolant mix in otherwise all sorts of issues may show up not least tap water freezes and with this cold snap the result could be a load of pain

[Leslie]

The cap won't be the issue although needs fixed to stop a steam leak under pressure , whoever put tap water only in there is a right bodger given the cold snap a busted engine block could have been the result.
I'm guessing there has been a big leak and it was topped up with water to keep going over time.
Try turning heater to max temp low fan and warming with rad cap of to try to purge any air but I suspect it won't be that simple.