daps87
New member
Good Morning Everyone,
Firstly I need to apologise if I'm creating a duplicate post about this issue. As always, just point me in a direction and I'll do some reading up. I do hope, however, someone is able to assist and/or advise me on the problem I'm experiencing.
About 6 months ago I sold my E87 118i for a nice sexy 2011 E90 330d (LCI). Besides it being a really beautiful and elegant car; and driving like a dream with so much power under the hood, the electrical system is getting me down big time. So this is what happened in the last 6 months:
I would drive her with no incident. I get to work/home, park her, lock her with the remote as one would do. But upon returning to the vehicle, I press the unlock button and off goes the alarm, no hazards flashing, with the remote being completely unresponsive. I would then unlock the vehicle with the mechanical key and insert the remote into the key slot and the alarm would be silenced.
She did this about 4-5 times until one day the entire car stopped responding to anything I did. The alarm would go off, but inserting the remote into the slot did absolutely nothing. She would eventually respond after a few seconds (which increased to minutes later on). Car Track kept phoning to claim that the car has had an electrical power loss. It didn't make sense to me because the battery is still good, and obviously I'm starting her without incident.
A few weeks after that, the car did the exact same thing but this time around, she lost complete electrical power. Doesn't matter what you do, she would be dead. But what I have noticed is that after a while (45+ minutes) of leaving her undisturbed, she would magically regain electrical power again. It might be worth noting that at times (not always) the time and date would be lost.
This prompted us to start diagnosing the problem and essentially we bypassed the power distribution box (the red box on top of the battery). This seemed to have solved the problem for at least 3 weeks. And then she started again with her nonsense.
But by now, the footwell module went corrupt and I had to have it re-programmed. About a week later, the electrical issue started again. I went out to JHB for a meeting and when I was ready to leave, she lost all electrical power again. I opened the fuse box (in the glove compartment) and fiddled with the connections which restored electrical power again.
Last week Wednesday afternoon she did the same thing, but this time she immediately responded to the remote in the key slot. But strange enough, this was the first time she lost all personalisation settings (the ones that are supposed to be saved to the remote) and the climate control settings were also out of whack (not where they were when I parked it the morning). The time and date was 100% however.
The very next day when I arrived home, the same problem occurred but this time only the time was lost.
This now leads me to conclude that there must be a connection problem with one (or more) of the connectors connecting to the fuse box. Some googling has lead me to articles where the same (or similar) problem has been experienced with some US models, and some guys in the UK have also experienced this problem.
In the mean time, I've contacted BMW AG to get some assistance on this issue who referred it to BMW SA. But as usual, they cannot take the blame and they need to first "investigate" to see if it's really a problem. It's been 2 weeks since the last communication with BMW SA.
Obviously, they have time on their hands to sit and "investigate" but I unfortunately don't. This is the only vehicle I have, and work doesn't give a fly about our problems. So somethings gotta give.
Is there anyone out there who has experienced this (or a very similar) problem on their E90's? And if so, how was this fixed? I'm actually too scared to phone a BMW dealership to find out what the cost would be to have it fixed out of my own pocket. But I guess if I have no other choice, then that's what I'll have to do.
Firstly I need to apologise if I'm creating a duplicate post about this issue. As always, just point me in a direction and I'll do some reading up. I do hope, however, someone is able to assist and/or advise me on the problem I'm experiencing.
About 6 months ago I sold my E87 118i for a nice sexy 2011 E90 330d (LCI). Besides it being a really beautiful and elegant car; and driving like a dream with so much power under the hood, the electrical system is getting me down big time. So this is what happened in the last 6 months:
I would drive her with no incident. I get to work/home, park her, lock her with the remote as one would do. But upon returning to the vehicle, I press the unlock button and off goes the alarm, no hazards flashing, with the remote being completely unresponsive. I would then unlock the vehicle with the mechanical key and insert the remote into the key slot and the alarm would be silenced.
She did this about 4-5 times until one day the entire car stopped responding to anything I did. The alarm would go off, but inserting the remote into the slot did absolutely nothing. She would eventually respond after a few seconds (which increased to minutes later on). Car Track kept phoning to claim that the car has had an electrical power loss. It didn't make sense to me because the battery is still good, and obviously I'm starting her without incident.
A few weeks after that, the car did the exact same thing but this time around, she lost complete electrical power. Doesn't matter what you do, she would be dead. But what I have noticed is that after a while (45+ minutes) of leaving her undisturbed, she would magically regain electrical power again. It might be worth noting that at times (not always) the time and date would be lost.
This prompted us to start diagnosing the problem and essentially we bypassed the power distribution box (the red box on top of the battery). This seemed to have solved the problem for at least 3 weeks. And then she started again with her nonsense.
But by now, the footwell module went corrupt and I had to have it re-programmed. About a week later, the electrical issue started again. I went out to JHB for a meeting and when I was ready to leave, she lost all electrical power again. I opened the fuse box (in the glove compartment) and fiddled with the connections which restored electrical power again.
Last week Wednesday afternoon she did the same thing, but this time she immediately responded to the remote in the key slot. But strange enough, this was the first time she lost all personalisation settings (the ones that are supposed to be saved to the remote) and the climate control settings were also out of whack (not where they were when I parked it the morning). The time and date was 100% however.
The very next day when I arrived home, the same problem occurred but this time only the time was lost.
This now leads me to conclude that there must be a connection problem with one (or more) of the connectors connecting to the fuse box. Some googling has lead me to articles where the same (or similar) problem has been experienced with some US models, and some guys in the UK have also experienced this problem.
In the mean time, I've contacted BMW AG to get some assistance on this issue who referred it to BMW SA. But as usual, they cannot take the blame and they need to first "investigate" to see if it's really a problem. It's been 2 weeks since the last communication with BMW SA.
Obviously, they have time on their hands to sit and "investigate" but I unfortunately don't. This is the only vehicle I have, and work doesn't give a fly about our problems. So somethings gotta give.
Is there anyone out there who has experienced this (or a very similar) problem on their E90's? And if so, how was this fixed? I'm actually too scared to phone a BMW dealership to find out what the cost would be to have it fixed out of my own pocket. But I guess if I have no other choice, then that's what I'll have to do.
