XSeries-forum

Every time I remove the battery, usually to charge it up due to a drain, the car will not fire up. The car turns over but does not fire, the last two times I have had to take it back to the garage who charge £72. The last time it would not start I called them out as they meant to have sorted the drain, they hooked my car to a small ish computer and within 1 minute it was started.

They will not come back out and I do not have the funds to have the car towed and then the problem sorted at the garage rates.

Does anyone know what the cause could be? and does anyone have the computer to hook up to the car? I am in the midlands area and will pay all traveling cost + the time to sort it.

Thanks

Lee

could you ask your garage , what the fault was , / that they remedy each time, with their pc/ laptop, that maybee would be a good starting point, for somone

best of luck

On the receipts it says EWS immobiliser recoded

I maybe talking out of my bottom here as Range Rovers are my line of expertise, but they bothe use a Bosch engine management system. On the RR the common problem after a flat battery is the BECM loosing the four digit code to the engine ecu. This cuts the ignition but will allow the engine to be cranked. It's such a common problem that there is a small plug in gadget called a sync mate that reads the code from the engine ecu and re-writes it back to the the body electronic control module (becm)
I'm not suggesting this will work for you as the x and re are different beasts but I will investigate on my other forums.
Hope this gives you some idea of what may be happening.

Thank you

Anything you can find will be appreciated

Just checked some forums, an searched google, and it says when you take your key out of ign it get a code sent to it, so next time you put it in, it starts talking to ecu etc, it only needs to be out a didgit, and thats it, it says you need to get your ews and ecu allinged together and in sync, only done at main dealer, and maybe a fault code number would be good from your garage, some have had code 209,
ps what you want, if you go down this route, is assurance from bmw that this will once and for all clear the problem, and also ask the previous garage is this what they have tried to do, then you you will be more informed, and ,hopefully can put it to rest , and no more outlay £££

hope this is of some use, good luck

Why are you removing the battery to charge it, you can charge via the terminals under the bonnet, or is this possible due to your parking situation.

It is down to my parking situation.

Very annoying that I can not remove my battery without the car losing its code.

[quote=""Lee_thefirst""]It is down to my parking situation.

Very annoying that I can not remove my battery without the car losing its code.[/quote]

charging only sendsa trickle current, not a massive 60amp current like when jump start.

so i suggest park the way you do if its restrictive, extend your charging cables and connect them under the hood as opposed to removing your battery every time you have to charge!! man ur compressor assembly must be all wonky by now, if u remove it every so often to charge the battery!

Just got this reply back from a diagnostics guru...

Dear Rewmer,

BBS SPY has just replied to a thread you have subscribed to entitled - BBS Syncmate and X5 - never the twain ? - in the Diagnostic Equipment forum of RangeRovers.net Forum.

This thread is located at:
http://www.rangerovers.net/forum/12-dia ... -post.html

Here is the message that has just been posted:
***************
Hiya Rewmer

You called

That's quite interesting to hear.
Assuming the years are much the same, the ECU's and therefore the immobilization method used in the BMW X5 is the same as the 02 to 06 L322.
Namely it uses the EWS3D immobilizer which not only gets initially learned (one time only) to the Engine management but does also have a rolling code type sync feature.

Have a look at the bottom of our help page for the EWS3D for the functions that cover this.

https://www.blackbox-solutions.com/shop/help/SM044.html

I do recall when working on the L322 software a few years back that there were quite often times when we would loose sync between the Immobilizer and the engine management, but we were doing pretty unusual stuff and the L322 is not known for this AFAIK. IIRC it was more so on the Diesel.

Although our Sync mate does instantly fix the super common loss of immobilization sync on the P38, It does so by reprogramming the EMS start code back into the BeCM which has a nasty habit of forgetting it. As the X5 does not even have a BeCM, i can tell you that it will not do the same.

However we have all the know how and expertize that we could possibly produce a cheap Sync mate type device that would just re sync the EWS3D to the EMS. We would have to look at the numbers and make further investigations as to if that is what they are doing to fix the problem though.

So if this issue is common enough, BBS will take a look at building a dedicated re-coder that plugs into the OBD socket.

Sureley you'd be instantly better off just buying a new battery?

At least then even with a drain, you will probably still have enough juice to start the car and charge it up again? (when you do finally get it started)

I've only had my X a couple of months and it had the original battery fitted. I was having a problem with the fuel gauge giving an incorrect reading, and because of that I ran out of fuel on a few occasions in the first 2 weeks I had it. This wasn't a major problem since I was already armed with a full can of Diesel in the boot each time, but even when I got the can out and filled the tank, the fuel takes a while to get through the fuel injection system and just turning the car over for 20 seconds or so without it firing up would nail my battery and it would just die!

This was really frustrating because what would start off as Running out of Fuel, then evolved into a flat battery each time, and I had to call out my brother with a set of jump leads!

Even on one occasion I had the radio on for about 15 minutes while I was doing something in the car, and even that was enough to drain it! A few days later and my girlfriend sat in the passenger side with the engine off and adjusted the electric seat to see how it worked, and low and behold, I tried to start the car straight after, and just got click,click,click....

I decided that the original 7 year old battery had to go, so I bought a Bosch S5 Silver battery from Halfords, and I've not had a single issue since. It starts first time every time. We had the stereo on for over an hour while we changed the brake pads, and the other day I realised I'd left the interior lights on overnight and it still started on the button immediately. With my old battery it would be time to get the jump leads out!

You might even find that a new battery sorts out your problem! I have read a few times (and it was certainly the case on my E46) that a duff battery can cause all sorts of random electrical gremlins!

If you're still on your original battery I'd certainly get it changed! it was a PITA for me to just get the jump leads out, so I can't imagine how pissed you are if you have to keep taking the battery out to charge it all the time!!

Just to add to this also,

When I bought my 2003 Z4 a few years back, it only came with one key, and every now and then, totally at random the car would not start.

I had the RAC out a couple of times and they would mess about with the battery and stuff and then after a while It would just randomly start.The first time they told me it was a battery terminal issue and they had sorted it by cleaning the contacts etc, but then a few days later, it would not start again. Sometimes if I just sat in the car for 15 minutes and just tried it again and again and again it would just start.

I took it to a BMW specialist in Wolverhampton who said I had an intermittent fault with my Key, and it was the immobiliser not starting the car. I ordered a new key (£125 IIRC) which arrived 2 days later and it was perfect. I never had a problem with it again after that.

have you tried your other key to make sure it's not an immobiliser fault?

Thanks for the above comments....

I had a new Bosch battery 3 months ago and a new key from BMW 6 months ago. When the battery is drained I always try jump leads for a great length of time but it never fires up and I only ever remove the battery when all else fails.

Also to add I had the FSR replaced 6 months ago

[quote=""Lee_thefirst""]Thanks for the above comments....

I had a new Bosch battery 3 months ago and a new key from BMW 6 months ago. When the battery is drained I always try jump leads for a great length of time but it never fires up and I only ever remove the battery when all else fails.[/quote]

when you jump start i'm assuming that you accelerate the other cars engine so that a sufficient current comes to your car, while cranking your engine? also i hope its not a super micro car with a 30VA sort of teeny weeny battery.

the V6 takes a decent amount of power to crank!