Reminder - Weird and sudden electrical gremlins? Maybe its the Ignition switch

[Effduration]

Greetings.

Just a reminder that if you have a bunch of weird electrical gremlins, you might consider replacing your ignition switch- particularly if its age is unknown. It's a common failure point on these cars.

my car '05 X5 3.0 w/125 miles. I have owned it 1.5 yrs.

All at once, I had:
1. seat belt chime /light would not stop even if all seats were buckled
2.. Air bag light
3. Power to radio would pulse and eventually turn off
4. No ambient lights in steering wheel
5. problem with rear wiper
6. MFL errors on scanner (steering wheel)
7. interior lights would stay on..

I replaced the ignition switch (good videos on youtube), took an hour, and all elec issues are gone and car is back to normal. I replaced it with a Febi brand from FCP Euro.

The ignition switch had been replaced before. The bad unit I pulled out was an OE BMW part with a 2012 date code.

Not sure why these ignition switches fail so often.

[andrewwynn]

Because they are wildly over complicated. Largely to whatever moronic "foolproof" design that won't let you take a second shot at starting the car.eg when car stalls while you are in motion you can't just restart you must stop and take out the key (or at least turn to off requires putting in park). Every notice how firmly the key is held when you pull it out after turning off the car? It's 10-20x the force any of my previous cars.

Good report though. Key switch is a well known source of random electrical gnome.