4.8is SLS strange operating mode after calibration attempt

[Beniki]

So... it's been 5 months since I have had any SLS errors or issues. Guess the car felt that I am overdue for an error. I got a call from my wife today saying that the car is throwing the much loved SLS inactive error message. This was somewhat surprising as I have been keeping a close eye on the system's health (compressor temp, reservoir pressure, pressure response, strut sagging/leaks etc), and all has been well this whole time. My guess was a controller internal error (which has happened to me in the past while I had alternator issues).
I got the laptop out tonight, and a quick scan has revealed error 53, which as I suspected is a controller internal error. I have reset the error, and am hoping it is just a glitch. I know that these controllers are notoriously sensitive to any checksum errors, so I am guessing that it may have received a corrupt bus message.
I'll keep an eye on it and report back if any issue more sinister arrises.

[manuelprietou]

For me, I have not had the message agin since I did the calibration and reset the counts to zero in December. I guess then, that that was all the problem!! good help in this forum!

[Switch]

Wow! Thanks everyone for making this post. I almost broke my brain with "127 Activity plausibility front left" error, and strange counts over 8000 units on FL sensor.

There is no info over internet about need for resetting counts before calibration. Now I know)

[levinborn]

Beniki, thanks for this, brilliant report, it helped me identify the same root cause of a bizarrely different symptom: torque steer.

2005 X5 4.8is EUR RHD (in South Africa). I took the whole car apart (engine out, gearbox remanufacture, differentials, replaced all bags, joints, etc. etc. The idea is to drive it across the continent, so the starting point was a full refurb of everything. I am preparing a longer post on all the different things learnt in the process.

In this case, I took the car for its first long road test: transkalahari highway Johannesburg -> Windhoek and back. No faults, no issues, car felt solid. About 250KMs into the 1500KM trip, my steering wheel started pulling hard left on braking and hard right on heavy acceleration. To note, the car stayed straight - only the steering wheel was pulling.

I ran the diagnostic (INPA and DIS) and got similarly whacked out readings from the FR sensor (2500's, not as high as yours, but still whacky). I pulled the fault history and indeed, at some point, there was a plausibility error and a 'no reading from sensor' issue. I jumped under the car to have a look and noticed that the small metal knuckle (not the plastic bit that is part of the sensor) that attaches to the suspension was slightly bent. in comparing it to the FL one, it was clearly sending a very odd road surface reading to there machine, which was over compensating on both the suspension adjustment AND steering input changes through the DSC.

What is odd here is that I never thought these X5's had any kind of actuator in the steering column that compensated for road lean. Again, the symptom was manifesting on steering wheel feel, not actual physical lean.

Hope this helps the next person with such an odd error. I will of course report back once I follow Beniki's replace and reset steps.