Bad few days!!!

[Kerryx5]

So in the last two days I've had nothing but problems!

New Bosch battery fitted yesterday after a weekend of being awoken by the alarm going off due to battery being flat!

Now today I arrive home after work to the check coolant warning! Pop the bonnet to find the expansion bottle has split right down the side!

Seriously unhappy x driver! Had nothing but trouble since I purchased it!

[shadrack]

i had no end of trouble with my old x5, so i bought this one and only had little niggly bits, you will cure it but you need deep pockets with these cars!!

[Denis O]

Coolant issue is quite common and any car will need a new battery every now and then so don't get too paranoid just yet.

[Rusty]

Keep on smiling, you'll love it when it's all going ok, and as Denis O put, those are just a couple of common little issues.

Hope you get to enjoy the X better now

[n1k85]

As above, once you get most of the main issues out of the way you'll feel a whole lot better. You could have bought a 2005/2006 car with 80k on in the hope that it will be trouble free, but you might well end up having to do all the same repair work as a 2003 car on 180k that cost half the price to buy in the first place and has already had the work done.

My gf's uncle has a 2005 X5 3.0D SE on approx 85k and (before I bought mine) he was reeling off a long list of repairs he had just had done at nearly £4000 at the dealer! It almost put me off buying an X altogether!

Since buying mine I've replaced quite a few things to get it up to standard, but once they're done they're done and (hopefully) wont need doing again for a few years (Driveshafts/Window Regulators/battery/etc)

I bought a VX220 in 2007, I spent about £4000 repairing it over the next few years, and then sold it.... But by the time I sold it, all the usual jobs that need doing to all VX220s after a few years (radiator/coolant tank/steering column/suspension/engine mounts/etc) had been done and someone else got a mint car at my expense while I had 2 years of breakdowns while I owned it, I should have at least kept it for a bit longer

Same kind of thing about the mileage too, mine had 90k on when I sold it and had all the work done, it was mint and well maintained. But being such a specialist sports car, there were always ultra low mileage cars for sale (like 2002/2003 cars with 7k on the clock for example) and people rushed out to buy them over the higher mileage ones. But those cars had just sat in a garage for years under a dust sheet hardly ever being used, so the people that bought them (and paid top money too) then found out that loads of parts were seized, they hadn't been serviced...ever, because owners assumed the 10k service was not due yet since they were only on 7k, and they had way more problems with them than a well maintained identical car with 90k on!

Don't do what I did and just stick with it!

[Cannondale]

[quote=""n1k85""]As above, once you get most of the main issues out of the way you'll feel a whole lot better. You could have bought a 2005/2006 car with 80k on in the hope that it will be trouble free, but you might well end up having to do all the same repair work as a 2003 car on 180k that cost half the price to buy in the first place and has already had the work done.

My gf's uncle has a 2005 X5 3.0D SE on approx 85k and (before I bought mine) he was reeling off a long list of repairs he had just had done at nearly £4000 at the dealer! It almost put me off buying an X altogether!

Since buying mine I've replaced quite a few things to get it up to standard, but once they're done they're done and (hopefully) wont need doing again for a few years (Driveshafts/Window Regulators/battery/etc)

I bought a VX220 in 2007, I spent about £4000 repairing it over the next few years, and then sold it.... But by the time I sold it, all the usual jobs that need doing to all VX220s after a few years (radiator/coolant tank/steering column/suspension/engine mounts/etc) had been done and someone else got a mint car at my expense while I had 2 years of breakdowns while I owned it, I should have at least kept it for a bit longer

Same kind of thing about the mileage too, mine had 90k on when I sold it and had all the work done, it was mint and well maintained. But being such a specialist sports car, there were always ultra low mileage cars for sale (like 2002/2003 cars with 7k on the clock for example) and people rushed out to buy them over the higher mileage ones. But those cars had just sat in a garage for years under a dust sheet hardly ever being used, so the people that bought them (and paid top money too) then found out that loads of parts were seized, they hadn't been serviced...ever, because owners assumed the 10k service was not due yet since they were only on 7k, and they had way more problems with them than a well maintained identical car with 90k on!

Don't do what I did and just stick with it! [/quote]


Intresting that, as a probably future X5 owner I have been looking at a lot of car on Autotrader. There are a few V8,s with very low mileage on (less that 40k on a 2004/5), I know the car will be mint but the mecanicals could be worse than say an 80,000 miler that has been fully serviced.

Probally just down to luck i=at the end of the day how many problem you get.


Rich...

[n1k85]

Indeed,

It's better to have a higher mileage well maintained car than a low mileage un-maintained car IMO.

The ultra-low mileage VX220s I mentioned earlier often had the original tyres on that were 6/7/8 years old, as well as all the original fluids. The brake lines etc had perished from having no use, and the tyres were all cracked and split. The new buyer would be in for a shock when they came to put it back on the road and MOT it! But they still paid £2000+ more than all the rest, just to have mega low mileage.

The adverts even stated "not even due its service for 3k miles" as a selling point... but regardless of mileage, they need to be serviced every year!

The only upside was that the bodywork was generally mint, but can you imagine garaging your X5 for 7 years, then just jump starting it, taking it out for a spin and expecting it to be 'all good'

Likewise a car with 40k that has been used to do the short-journey school run across town every day for a few years will have more wear and tear than a 100k car that was driven 150 miles a day up down the motorway.

But as you say, a lot of it is just down to luck!

[Kerryx5]

So tonight I've replaced the expansion tank. Flushed the cooling system with wynns radiator flush. The stuff that came out was unbelievable.

So all seems to be ok.

Feel I still have a battery drain! Seems to be since I enabled aux heating. Even tho the heater timer isn't set.

Going to disable it tomorrow and see what happens!

The car is going into full shut down with the multimeter on testing the drain it's down to less than 0.5a.

So something is draining it but what????

[n1k85]

Was it you that fitted DVD headrests recently?

Is it possible they are causing the drain or was it present before fitting?

[Kerryx5]

The battery was flat before I fitted them. They are powered by an isolation switch so no chance of them flattening the battery.

[jaynana]

[quote=""Kerryx5""]

Feel I still have a battery drain! Seems to be since I enabled aux heating. Even tho the heater timer isn't set.

Going to disable it tomorrow and see what happens!

The car is going into full shut down with the multimeter on testing the drain it's down to less than 0.5a.

So something is draining it but what????[/quote]

[not really experienced this so my 5p worth based on common sense..]

when you connect the multi-meter serially between the car and the battery, with everything shut down you observe a 0.5A current on amp meter?

on complicated electronic beasts such as the X i wouldn't expect it to go down to zero, cos the moment the battery is connected the standby electronic components will run their start up sequences (including in my case the nav dvd player - for what reason that comes up i don't know but the red light starts blinking)

in any case if you've done mods, what i would recommend is to try the elimination of causes method - ie, disconnect mods one by one, to see if u can identify at which point the drain stops.

other things i can think of:
- although you said the battery is new, any chance of it being old- maybe check the manufactured date? batteries once bad do not retain charge
- run the scanner to see what errors it reports...

[Kerryx5]

So I think I've cured the battery drain problem and if any one else has the same issues this could be the culprit.



Old part to the left and the replacement to the right!

The final stage resistor (FSR) cost about £80 from my local dealer. They keep them in stock as apparently I quote "we sell loads of them!" a common fault!

An easy job to replace just takes time to remove panels under the steering wheel and around the dash.

All seems well now, I just hope that this was the problem and all my current nightmares have ended!

So after fitting I gave my car some love! Full minting inside and out!



Here's hoping!!

Kerry

[jaynana]

excellent! how did you figure out this was the fault?

[Kerryx5]

Spoke to soon!

Just gone out to the car and the battery is flat again!

[X5Sport]

500mA drain is too high. Check it with the car completely asleep and the alarm on. It should be around 120mA, or less, in sleep mode from the discussions I had with my dealer when was suffering constant battery issues. It took some time, but as the car was under warranty there was no cost. They replaced the rear boot locking system eventually, but there were other causes investigated and a lot of fuse pulling to find the circuit causing the drain. The tracking device was also blamed, but in my case wasn't the cause - even though they wrecked it playing around

Electrical faults are a cast iron b!tch to track down, so I feel for you given the number of circuits to check and fuses to pull, but it is the only real way unless you have te BMW checking tools which might identify the fault.