XSeries-forum

been out tonight , to  go out in car. started car up as normal ,  seemed to be low on battery power a tad,  ping , trans failsafe popped up. now this has never done this before ,so I'm slighty worried, turned car off and tried again ,no error , however the cluster had remembered the error ( 2 red arrows) car drove as normal , sport (triptronic) everything works, as it should. got home and the  2 little arrows still on ,
some one reassure me that the error popped up due to the battery being a tad  down on juice

kinda worried Steve

X5's are hungry beasts when it comes to amps so the probability is its your cars sense of humour causing a mild constriction of your heart and wallet.
Get the battery checked I would guess it needs changing

disconnect the battery and leave for 30 mins before reconnecting which may reset the errors. Then take for a long run to charge (or use battery conditioner - CTEK type etc). then monitor it for a few days. Battery tests don't always show the battery as the problem. i believe the proper (and only definitive) test is called a drop test, where they effectively hit the battery with a big load to see how it responds
If its over 6 years old replace it anyway. Bosch silver is the one you need S3 model has 3 year warranty, S4 is 4 years and S5 is five years. I had S5 replaced after 3 years under warranty no questions asked (keep the receipt) - get it from ECP - around £100 ish. Difference between the S3 and S5 is about £20 as ai recall.

See

Almost certainly a low battery issue as said above.  They can throw all sorts of scary warnings that are false if the battery is low. 

It needs a full charge by the sound of things - 6-8 hours on a decent (10A) charger, longer for lower output one (my 3.8A one takes up 12-16 hours to charge our E46 with the same engine/battery combo with a flat battery).  I now keep that car on a CTEK conditioner all the time.

Well , just to update you kind peoples,

after my drive out to wakey yesterday, I went to Halfords and they tested my battery, he said it was ok ,  my alternator  was ok too
so I had a spirited 20 miles run back home ,  and thought nothing more of it

then she went and did this to me

failsafe prog illuminated again, along with this lot
not workings are
speedo, rev counter ,  gear selector thingy
got all 3 warning lights in the bottom right, abs and them, fuel and temp gauges are full
but to top it all off shes stuck in what seems to be third !!!!!!


this CANT be a battery fault can it?.

I lost the clocks on mine once but 20 mins later they were fine.  Only affected speedo and rpm, not the rest.

3rd gear is definitely in fail safe mode (uses either 3rd or 5th).  Check the battery connections in the boot in case Halfrauds disturbed something.

After that you need a Bosch Autocentre, or Indy with the right software, and get a fault code dump done to see what she's not happy about.

shes not happy at the moment that's for sure ,  ive got her booked in on Thursday morning ,
looks like I'm going to work on the bike for a bit

update
left car for a few hours with the new battery connected , while i was in bed, went out tonight before work , just to see what its still doing
everything OK , no errors , no daft guages, nothing
so decided to go to work in it , she ran as normal , and at 6 am I drove home in it  , so was it a technology fart??
will still get it checked though as somethings not right

steve

Starter Motor ? I have read that the starter can draw insane current when cranking if they are on their last legs. Enough to kill a fit and healthy battery

Good call on the starter.  Known issue and worth investigating.  Should draw ~180A but can draw in excess of 900A which the battery cannot cope with and the volts plummet.  Dealers very bad at diagnosing it as no fault is recorded anywhere.  Needs an in line 'current clamp' to pick it up.  Battery will test as fine so needs the starter looked at.  The bad ones are almost universally Magnetti Marelli.  Bosch versions are better and if you are willing to diy it can be done.  New starter from ECP was about £225 with £120 surcharge.

Both my E53 and E46 with the same 3.0d engine and production year (2005) suffered from the fault and had new starters.

just to let you know

errors are as follows
DME
220 DC transmission EGS?AGS Can time out
221 DD ASC?DSC CAN TIME OUT

EGS  130 82 Can time out ASC
128 80 monitoring can bus (p0700 . p1747)


now I'm getting very worried

None of those look like the box, but do look like an ABS sensor fault or chassis angle sensor which upsets the DSC (Stability Control) and could well put the car into limp mode with the ABS and other warning lights on.  Which ones actually show?

DME is the engine computer (DDE for diesels).  EGS is the gearbox brain.  The timeout simply means that whatever was talking to it didn't get the answer from those modules quickly enough.  That could simply be the software doing the interrogation wasn't up to the job or didn't understand the messages, or didn't gave a BMW decoder driver.

Was it a 'generic' code reader used, or BMW GT1, or Autologic?  The latter 2 being preferred.

Well, it seems i have a  common theme here , if i start the car and run it for a bit then re fire it up after lets say 15 mins i get the problems,
i left it this afternoon at 2 pm , with all the faults went to bed and re fired it up at 9pm before work  everything is clear,
its been like that for the last 2 days tbh, 
drive to work ok , drive home from work ok ,  repeat
parked up at garage this morning , left it 15 minutes and bam faults,
so tonight before work i read the codes with inpa, granted there all in german , but i thought id share them , more brains the better.
bugger cant upload file ,

If you have a voltmeter it might be worth checking the voltages engine off (and left for 4 hours to kill the stray charges) and engine running.  I'm wondering if the alternator output might be low?  It should show at least 13.8V and no more than 14.4V at a fast idle (1,200rpm).

For the engine off test release the bonnet, lock the car and come back after 4 hours.  Lift the bonnet and check at the jump points.  If you unlock the car before checking you will have to wait 16 mins for the car to go back to sleep or your readings will be wrong.

well, just an update for you guy's took it over to my electrician  yesterday, left it for 8 hours , then drove to Bradford from leeds , with no problem at all , he plugged his machine in and  the damn thing went off as soon as he did a scan
left it 30 mins while we had a natter , and tried it again ,
we finally got a scan on it
there were daft errors,  but nothing major , apart from this one.

"onboard monitor/control panel (BMBT)
0B I-Bus fault
01 Control unit reset
03 PL Line, short to ground"

he said , that this would most probably be a fault on one of the modules connected to the radio
Bluetooth module, satnav, cd player or the huge , motorway , and a roads module in the boot.

so its not as grave as we thought
here's a question though , I have a mk3 , cd based sat nav drive in there ,  when do them things, stop reading disks?.
if I unlocked the car the player scans for disk, arm the car and it still scans for a disk, ?, checked that by watching it with boot open , red light was on for ages on the player  maybe 5 mins
are these on the switched 12v feed or  they powered up all the time?