Why would webasto activate after fitting towbar??!!

[Darnicmax]

Fitted a westfalia towbar today using the excellent 'how to article' by Urbanflow.

After finishing this evening I started the car up to put it in the garage. Immediately I noticed a ticking noise coming from the front passenger area and a ' turbine like' noise from under the bonnet. Strange.......never heard any of these before and popped the bonnet to see what the noise was. It was immediately obvious the Webasto was running.....it was hot and singing like a good ' un. It ran for about 5 or 6 minutes before switching off....

Now I have owned the car for 4 years and have never had the Webasto activate. The aux heating is not on option on my head unit.....it shows (and still shows) aux vent only.

Can anybody suggest why this might have happened??!! I can only assume it is in some bizarre way related to me fitting the towing module (which is plug and play).....but this seems so very unlikely..

Any ideas on why my Webasto suddenly sprang to life?

My car is a 2005 E53 diesel.....

[jonnyivy]

I'm so glad I looked in here today,.... why?... because I done exactly the same 2 weeks ago and asked a similar question on here about it.
You see,.. I thought that when I was fitting my electrics in the boot for my new towbar (plug and play),.. I kinda dropped the levelling 'dome' when I was lowering it back down and thought I had done some damamge. The reason I thought this was because when it came to giving the car a 'run round the block' to settle the electrics I too heard this strange ticking noise coming from under the passengers seat area(under the car), and hearing like an auxiliary fan under the dash ?
So now I may have my answer ??
I know what the Webasto is for , but I have no idea how to switch it on or off !!
One thing that my X5 has changed since the towbar fit is that the reversing sensors have stopped working, only a longish beep when you select reverse then nothing ! I haven't even had a trailer anywhere near it yet , so it can't be detecting anything through the electrics.
On the positive side,.. my fuel consumption read-out has never worked since I got the car, even after resetting it, it just read the same 19.4 MPG. Now though it will rise and fall from a 17 MPG up to 33.5 MPG when we were on a long trip recently.
I'll wait in the wings to see what others have to say on the subject,

Cheers,

Jonny

[X5Sport]

If the air temp is below 5C it is completely automatic. It's used to warm the interior faster as diesel engines run cooler and take longer to warm up than petrol models.

If you have Auxillary Heating as a fitted option then you will find controls on the Nav Head Unit. There are threads on here for how to activate the function if not fitted.

The towbar fitting and Webasto activating are probably coincidental. I can't think of any obvious connection between the two.

[jonnyivy]

Maybe just the fact that the battery had to be dis-connected to fit these towing modules, and maybe that re-sets some of the electronics that got 'tired' of working earlier ???
I dunno either,.. but was strange to see another member picking up the same symptoms as me when doing the same job. (2 weeks apart).

Jonny

[philip600]

If you have disconnected the battery whilst fitting the towbar this may explain why the heater has now started working. The heater can go to 'lock-out' for various reasons & one way to re-set it is to remove the fuse in the glovebox ( can't remember which one ) Maybe your heater had 'locked-out' in the past & by disconnecting the battery they have re-set ? As said, they should fire up automatically when the temperature is low, mine came on yesterday morning as the outside temperature was 5 degrees.
I suspect many X5's will be running around without the aux heater working as most people don't know it's there & what is does ?
Phil.

[Darnicmax]

Thanks for your replies.....

Jonniivy.....reassuring to know I am not the only one who noticed this.....!

I'm going to specifically listen out for it in future (temp dependant obviously!) to see if if decides to run again.....although I am going to draw a line at removing and fitting the tow bar to see if I can to get it to repeat...

[X5Sport]

Oh go on........it'll be fun proving it.....