Quote:
Originally Posted by oldskoolaudi
As you can see I am a new member and generally an Audi guy. I just purchased this 2004 X5 4.4 for my wife to replace her aging jeep grand cherokee. About 50% of the time when we try to start it, it takes about 10 or more cranks until it fires up. The other 50% of the starts are perfect. I have not noticed a differance of wether it's a cold/hot start and such. It just seems to be the luck of the draw and it's really embarassing if someone is around. I'm hoping this is an easy and not so costly fix as I like the vehicle and was that it would be somewhat reliable. I had a friend who is a bmw tech update the software, cause he thought that would be the problem but it started back up after a couple days. Thanks in advance!
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Former Audi owner also.
If you wanted something reliable should have brought another Jeep Cherokee.
No such thing as a easy and cheap fix on a BMW.
Since your X is 9 years old we can assume that the battery has been replaced at least once. Battery last an average of 5 years so the battery in your X could be coming up on that 5 year replacement cycle.
With the extreme cold temp that we have been experiencing I have taken to putting a maintainer on my battery. I put it on in the morning after the car had sat out in the cold over night. My maintainer has a digital read out that give me the health of my battery. For the past week, the readout has been anywhere between 60% to 70% capacity, lowest reading was 58% when we woke up to 5F. After a hour connected to the maintainer, the read out is back to 100%. I have also added distilled water to the battery because the electrolyte level was low and could account for my low capacity reading in the mornings.
I have posted about the battery on this forum
http://www.xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-foru...ance-free.html
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